It had been raining when they stepped off the train, and although Esther had tried to hold the umbrella over both of them as they walked from the station, by the time they reached the school Kate’s long hair was straggling down her back in untidy wet strands. There was a peculiar fluttering feeling inside her stomach, just below her ribs, like a captive bird struggling to get out.

A maid opened the door; a young girl in a long black dress with a white apron and mob cap covering her short hair. Her face was pale and pinched. She was young enough to be a pupil, but obviously she was not one of them.

‘Wait here. I’ll tell Miss Denham.’

They were left standing in a hallway that stretched up and up three storeys high. From the centre of the hall the stairs rose to the first floor and divided into two and then again up to the second floor, dividing again. On each level the landings ran around the open square so that even from the topmost floor it was possible to peer down and see who was standing in the hall below.

Kate heard the echo of whispering and looked up to see herself being observed by three pairs of curious eyes, their owners leaning over the balustrade on the second floor. Somewhere a bell sounded and the three girls scuttled down the stairs to the first floor and disappeared.

The maid returned. ‘This way,’ and they followed her through a huge oak door at the left-hand side of the hall and into a book-lined study.

From behind a wide, leather-topped desk rose the tallest woman Kate had ever seen. She towered above both Kate and her mother and her height was accentuated even further by her grey hair scraped up from her face into a bun on the top of her head. Miss Denham stood tall and straight-backed, and her shape looked as if her body were trussed up in a corset, moulded by bones and padding, all tightly laced. Her bosom was high and rigid and her waistline, though by no means slim, curved in and then out again to generous hips. Her hairstyle and dress, a grey striped close-fitting gown with a white collar and a small velvet bow at the neck, were out of date for the shapeless fashion of the twenties. But if intimidation of the girls in her charge was her endeavour, then, in Kate’s wide eyes, Miss Denham succeeded.

‘Good morning, Katharine. I am Miss Denham, and I am the Principal of this school.’ The voice was deep, almost masculine, but it fitted the frame from which it issued. Kate felt the woman’s cold grey eyes taking in every inch of her appearance from the top of her very wet head right down to the muddy toes of her lace-up boots. The woman was pointing now at Kate’s feet.