‘This get-up,’ Chloe complained, ‘does nothing except make me feel rampantly sexy. How can I write exams?’ Chloe’s sheer black stockings were seamed, and her chic black velvet suit was braided and frogged. At the throat of her white frilled blouse was a black ribbon fastened with a cameo brooch.

‘Think of the poor man sitting next to you,’ Helen grinned. The severity of her own plain black and white showed off the pale cream of her skin, and the lights in her black hair. The billowing length of her scholar’s gown made her look slimmer still, flattering beside Chloe’s cut-off commoner’s version.

‘And this awful hat,’ Chloe moaned, pulling the black square down over one eye like a pirate. ‘Why can’t we have schoolmaster-sketch mortarboards like the men?’

Along the gallery, Pansy flung her door open.

‘How elegant and serious you both look.’

‘Not like traffic wardens?’

‘Not one bit. Just terrifyingly clever. I’m so glad my dear little course doesn’t involve anything as serious as exams. Come on, I’m going to make you both some breakfast, poor lambs.’

Pansy was yawning, white-blonde and tousled as she pulled her dressing gown around her, and her room was empty.

‘Stephen’s staying in College,’ she said evasively. Helen and Chloe raised their eyebrows at each other and changed the subject.

At nine-fifteen exactly they were ready to leave the house. Rose shuffled out into the dim hall and planted a moist kiss on their cheeks.

‘Every year I see them going off, clutching their caps and nice new fountain pens and looking like they’re going to the guillotine, just like you two. And then a minute later it’s all over and it doesn’t seem to make a scrap of difference afterwards. Still, I’m no scholar. Make sure you do well, now. Keep up the good name of the house.’ She winked at them and went away, snuffling with laughter.

Outside the streets were full of black and white figures, walking or bicycling, gown tabs fluttering.

‘Oh, God,’ Chloe said.

Helen was walking briskly, but her face had gone dead white. At the steps of the Schools, they exchanged a last, apprehensive smile and then filed away across the echoing black and white tiles to their separate halls.

Tom had to haul Oliver out of bed. As soon as he was conscious he looked blankly around him, and then his face contracted with the unpleasant recollection.

‘Oh, Christ.’

Tom looked with sympathy and a stab of guilt at his grey face.

‘Sorry. Last night was mostly my fault. Here, black coffee.’