As soon as she’d finished her last university exam, Lydia had stopped thinking about books in the critical language she’d had to learn for her degree; yet in her exams she’d done very well, almost as well as Christine. She spoke about that critical analysis as if it was a trick you could put on and off, for strategic purposes; this was bruising to Christine, who was betting her future on analysis. But then she was used to being bruised by Lydia, she didn’t mind. Christine had had such a happy childhood, she’d been so encouraged, she had a lot to make up for. Lydia’s family were perfectly all right too: her parents ran a pub. Only they weren’t very interested in their daughter’s cleverness, and wondered why she didn’t get a proper job. When she won a free place at the grammar school they’d supposed she might become a businesswoman, or a lawyer. Christine was in awe of Lydia’s parents because in those days she romanticised the working classes, so they thought that Lydia’s inseparable friend was stand-offish. And certainly didn’t think of themselves as working class.

The friends had met in a long look of shared incredulity at their first school Founder’s Commemoration Day, across so many submissive heads bowed in prayer, the muddy tide of voices obediently murmuring forms of words learned by rote. It wasn’t that they were naughty: other girls who believed everything the school told them were far naughtier. Christine Drinkwater and Lydia Smith had the subversive earnestness of true dissenters. They pinned on the noticeboard newspaper articles denouncing the evils of private education, they boycotted the Form Charity – which was always for animals. Christine was drawn to Lydia’s concentrated energy, which wasn’t turned outward but was like something unrealised, burning with a slow heat inside her. Her daring negativity opened up possibilities, promised adventures.

Christine was bemused now by the long days when she had nothing to do except study in the university library, or at her desk at home. She didn’t need a job because she had a full grant for her PhD – and she hadn’t embarked yet on any university teaching. She was diligent, and liked her work, but it couldn’t really fill all the hours of her day, or all the space inside her. And so she too, like Lydia, lived in a suspended state, expecting to discover something more serious to be the business of her life. Perhaps it would be motherhood, Christine sometimes thought. Her own mother spoke significantly about the happiness that came with children, and Christine believed in it – and yet that possibility seemed remote, so she waited patiently.