Gilly rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t know anything.’

‘Yes,’ Edie said, her voice lower now, and calm. ‘I really do. Look, I’ll be the first to admit that when you first turned up, I wrote you off. But I know you better now. I know you have talent. I know you can work hard when you want to. Right now you’ve got a roof over your head and you’ve got people willing to help you. If you’re smart – and I know you are, Gilly, damn it, I know you are – you will make the most of that while you can. If you can tell me clearly right now why you don’t want to go to college, why you don’t want to take this opportunity – if you can make a proper argument against it, then fine, I’ll never bring it up again. Never, from this day. But if you don’t want to go just because you know it’ll be tough – well then, hell, Gilly, I don’t even want to know you.’

A silence followed this tirade, and in it Gilly became aware that the hush extended to the rest of the bookshop. Ezra had been playing a game of chess with Ron when Edie came in, but now both men had turned towards the tableau at the counter. Rachel stood beside her, still and quiet. Gilly could imagine Toby sitting upstairs where he had been all afternoon, his pen poised over his notepad, his head tilted as he listened. Even Bukowski was sitting looking up at her with his ears pricked.

‘I don’t have the money for college,’ Gilly said, and was both surprised and proud that her voice was strong despite the listening silence.

‘Kay – that’s the head of the course – will help with the forms to get you the tuition.’

‘It’s not just tuition though, is it?’ Gilly asked. ‘It’s books and materials. Travel, even. I don’t—’

‘We can cross that bridge when we come to it.’

‘I don’t have any Highers,’ Gilly countered. ‘I know they don’t let you into college without those.’

‘You need three good passes for this course.’

Gilly raised both hands palm up in a shrug. ‘There you go then. Even if I wanted to go to college, I can’t. Case closed.’

‘Kay’s willing to take the assessment of a guided portfolio of your work with me as the submission for Art,’ Edie said. ‘Which means you only need two more.’

‘I told you,’ Gilly said loudly, her anger rising, ‘I don’t have any!’

Edie shrugged. ‘So you need to get some, and pronto. Two, to be precise. You need to get two more Higher passes before the cut-off point for the college intake next year.’

‘But I don’t—’

‘What would you study, Gilly?’

The voice belonged to Ezra. He’d got up from the chess table and was walking towards the counter with Ron close behind him.

‘What?’

‘If you could learn about anything, what would you want to know?’