When the nice lady teacher turned up one evening and told Pyrrha and Camilla how wonderful the school was and how it had almost twenty other children and reading and writing at all the levels and an hour of the sciences every day and games, and talked about how it was even more important for children in the refuges to have a routine so why didn’t they want that for Nona, Cam had to tell the nice lady that Nona was nearly nineteen.

The nice lady was totally foxed.

“But she’s such a dot.”

Pyrrha explained without missing a beat that what with everything Nona had gone through she had been ill and still didn’t eat very much, which was why she was so knobbly and undergrown. The nice lady said that yes, many of the children had problems like that, but it was still hard to imagine Nona was anywhere over fourteen, wasn’t it? The nice lady added that she obviously didn’t get her build from her father, and she smiled at Pyrrha. Before anyone could stop her, Nona laughed and laughed and said, Pyrrha wasn’t her father. The nice lady got suspicious—Nona could see it in her hands—and suggested that Nona should come anyway, could even be a Teacher’s Aide, someone who helped the other children with their lessons. They told her Nona couldn’t read or write and the nice lady said, Oh.

But at this point Nona felt the lure of not only an hour of the sciences every day and games but also the glory suggested by the capitals of a Teacher’s Aide, and she said: I want to go, please and thank you.

The nice lady asked why didn’t they try it out the next morning and see how it went. Nona was delighted. The lady said she was the main teacher, but they also had a wonderful science teacher and it would be lovely to have someone else on the team. Their last Teacher’s Aide had tragically died. Pyrrha said, Were the kids that bad then. The teacher’s mouth thinned and she said, No, the water plant explosion, and so Nona said, Yes she would go! before Camilla or especially Pyrrha could say anything else. Then Pyrrha, much to Camilla’s disgust, flirted outrageously with the nice lady teacher until the nice lady teacher left.

After Pyrrha saw the nice lady teacher out, Camilla, who had been pacing around the kitchen, looked up and said coolly—

“What was that?”

“Getting us out of hot water, my naive beauty,” said Pyrrha, collapsing into a chair with an appalling creak. “She paid you and junior the compliment of thinking you were working girls, and that I was your pimp. God knows I’d have had better luck pimping out Augustine and Alfred.”

Nona wanted to know: “What’s pimp?”

Instead of getting to know what pimp was, she got in trouble for giving anyone their door number and house number. Nona cried, lavishly and immediately, but Camilla and Pyrrha wouldn’t budge. They also agreed that no way, no how was she going to school, not then and not ever. Camilla said it was too dangerous, and Pyrrha said it was a shame but they were going to play it safe. Nona went to lie down on the bed and be angry.