After the funeral Cate’s sister Vicky moves into her boyfriend’s house. And now it is just Cate and her father, rattling around at home. Her father gives up cooking, and Cate often forgets to eat. She stops writing essays for the extra Oxford classes. Hannah is simultaneously horrified, appalled for her friend, and in a small uncharitable place, relieved.

They apply for their colleges. Since neither they nor their teacher know anything about the university, they choose them randomly—Hannah, hers because it looks the most beautiful; Cate, hers because it says it takes the largest number of state-school students each year. They take the exam. They are both invited up for an interview, one dank weekend in November. Hannah is given a room looking over a quadrangle, which is misted in the morning and makes her heart rise with the beautiful future that seems to breathe from its walls. Cate is in modern accommodation around the back of the dining hall. Her window looks onto a ventilation shaft and the smell of cooking fills her room.

They get their letters a month later, just at the start of the Christmas holidays. They call each other, as they have arranged. They open the letters. Hannah looks down at hers in disbelief.

Cate looks at hers. “Shit,” she says. “Oh shit.”

Cate

“MORNING, MY LITTLE SOLDIER!”

Despite the early hour, Alice is her usual immaculate self: vest, hair, ironed jeans. “How’s my little soldier doing today? Are you ready for our date?!”

Tom grins and flaps his hands and makes eyes. “Good,” Cate says. “He’s good. We’re good.”

“Have you got a kiss?” Alice swoops on Tom. “Have you got a kiss for Grandma?”

Tom lunges delightedly for his grandmother. “Terry’s in the garden.” Alice takes Tom into her arms. “Terrible wind last night.” She nods through the window to where Sam’s father is wrestling gamely with a leaf blower. The three of them regard him for a moment in silence. Terry seems to be creating as much mess as he is managing to contain.

“I never know quite what they do,” Cate ventures. “Those things.”

“They clean up the leaves,” says Alice.

“Ah. Yes.”

Terry looks up, sees them, and manages a wild wave, while Tom kicks and bucks in Alice’s arms. “He wants to be with the big boys,” says Alice. “I’ll take him out for a bit. And we’ll see you later.”

Cate swallows down her horror; her tiny son, that stupid machine. “Whatever you think.”

“I think,” says Alice crisply, “that it will do him good.”