So, we made a plan. A double-cross of our own.

I luxuriated in the painful wait for Saturday, everything speaking to me of what had happened in the wake of that flood. Eve Grogan, one of my Fourth Years, intoned the lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘I think of thee!’ to the class and the words lifted from the page. Seven pairs of eyes pierced me as I sighed at the idea of a tree trunk set all bare. In chapel, I sang ‘Make Me a Channel of Your Peace’ with a sinful fervour. Prints made by the lower school went up on the corridor walls – tomatoes and pomegranates, split in half, spilling their seeds, obscene in their pinks and reds. I blushed and looked away. Whenever he was near, I ached for his touch, to be there again, beneath the white-hot gaze of St Rita.

‘Shall we go to the Anchor tomorrow night?’ I proposed to my colleagues in the staff room on Friday.

They looked up and around, certain that someone else must have spoken, not sullen Miss Cedars who had taken to sitting alone on the low, soft chairs in breaktimes, chewing on an apple.

‘It’s been a difficult week, hasn’t it?’ I went on. ‘Doing that walk to chapel every day in the rain.’

‘We glory in our tribulations!’ shrilled Miriam from the kitchenette, not turning from the sink. ‘Knowing that tribulation worketh patience!’

Ben’s gaze flickered across to meet mine and away again – our plan thwarted at the first move – but Ruth was wise to our silent exchange. She grinned at me wryly, one sinner to another, said: ‘But a beer will help though, Miriam, don’t you think?’

I prepared for that evening by working on my verses, scripture being the most effective retaliation to gossip. I did not want this to play out on Lark’s stage, for my precious Knight of Cups to be dissuaded by too-hasty rumour. Welcoming strangers so easily wasn’t our usual way – though it should have been. I cautioned my own reflection in the window as I did the washing-up, arming myself, rehearsing, justifying my friendliness to Ben, negating it. ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers,’ I told that echo of me in the glass. ‘For thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’

Upstairs, I tried on the mermaid skirt, turning my hips to make the pleats fly.

‘For I was an hungred,’ and ye gave me meat: I told Leah in the mirror. ‘I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in.’

I put the skirt away. If I wore it, everyone would know, immediately.