“She did,” Walden said, “but honestly … once I found out, I would have wanted to talk to you about it anyway. So. Oxford?”

“Oxford,” agreed Nikki, rather glum.

Walden had had a little speech planned—opportunity, grasping of; challenge, rising to—but now she was actually in this conversation, she could see that Nikki was too grown up to be steamrollered that way. “Do you want to talk me through it?”

“Do I have to?”

“It’s me or Matron,” Walden said. “I think I disagree with you about this, but I’m not going to make up my mind until I’ve actually heard what you think.”

Nikki sighed. “Okay, okay. I have thought about this. Matron acted like I was just being emotional. But I thought really hard.”

“That makes sense,” Walden agreed. “You’ve always struck me as a person who thinks carefully.”

“You know how I wanted to drop Invocation?”

“I remember, yes. I was quite concerned.”

“So … obviously I let them talk me out of it,” said Nikki, “because … realistically, I need A-levels, don’t I? If I want to go to uni at all. And I do. And Dad—I mean, Reverend Ezekiel—” Matron and Dad, thought Walden; she’d learned more about the internal dynamics of School House in the last five minutes than in years of working with Ezekiel and Ebele. “—well, he said that if I really wanted to drop out completely, they’d make sure I still had somewhere to live, and I could go to college or an online school and get a job at the same time,” Nikki took a breath, “which is really nice of him, like it’s really really nice of him, but it’s not like I’m … you know. The Chetwood scholarship fund isn’t going to pay for me to live here anymore after this year. No one is.”

“Nikki,” Walden said.