Miss Edwards the school secretary came to the junior science laboratory towards the end of the afternoon while Ben was teaching. She handed him a note from Mr Hopcyn, the headteacher: he needed to see Ben immediately after the bell. Ifan Hopcyn’s straight-talking brusqueness had upset a number of the staff in the two years he’d been at Bro Meirion, but Ben could only speak as he found, and he liked him. As the children cleared away their things, Ben wondered if the Head had finally got a decision for him on the Year Twelve field trip.

Ben heard Catrin’s advice echo in his mind and without flinching he looked into Ifan Hopcyn’s grey eyes and asked, ‘Why do you want to know if I’m a homosexual?’

‘I’ve got the reputation of a school to defend and over three hundred adolescent boys to protect,’ he said, almost pleading. ‘Don’t you think that those are good enough reasons for me to know?’

‘But I’m not clear why the school’s reputation needs to be defended nor what the boys need protecting from,’ Ben replied firmly.

‘I’ve heard that you told your Year Ten tutor group you might be a homosexual.’

‘No,’ Ben interrupted. ‘We had a discussion about homosexuality which Iddon Jones and your daughter, Manon, introduced with clippings from today’s newspapers.’

Ben recounted the direction of the arguments and explained how, when asked if he was gay, he’d deliberately chosen to be ambiguous so that the class would think about the issue in general terms and not get caught up in personalities.

‘But I still need to know, Ben,’ Ifan Hopcyn said. ‘When parents start phoning me up worried about their children’s physical and moral welfare I have to be able to put their minds at rest either by telling them that you’re not a homosexual, or if you are, that I’ve taken all the necessary steps…’

‘What are you talking about, Mr Hopcyn?’ Ben asked, with an edge of disbelief in his tone. ‘We’re at the end of the twentieth century now… not the nineteenth!’

‘People in this community will not tolerate a homosexual teaching their children, damn it!’ Ifan Hopcyn banged his desk with a solid fist. ‘We’re not living in a left-wing London borough, Ben – this is cefn gwlad for God’s sake,’ he said, his voice raised.

A terse silence overwhelmed them.

When Ifan Hopcyn spoke again he’d regained his composure, ‘I won’t have homosexuals teaching at this school and I believe that the governors will support me in this.’

‘You’re going to put every teacher at Bro Meirion through this then,’ Ben said. ‘Some kind of purge, to cull the so-called morally unacceptable?’

‘Is that your admission?’ he asked.