‘What we have so far is a very basic system. An old horse and cart, if you like,’ Watson-Watt said. ‘But it is slow and unreliable, and the wheels keep falling off. What you lot are going to do is turn it into a Rolls-Royce fit to win a war. And we don’t have long. Political insiders suggest two years, maximum. So I’ll see you at tomorrow morning, eight o’clock sharp in the Stable Block.’

‘Yes, s . . .’

His audience with the big man was over.

Watson-Watt stood and opened the door. ‘And bring that big brain of yours with you, Mackensie. You’re going to need it.’

5

Summer slipped away, and Kath found herself squeezing into her school uniform once more. It was too small and the buttons of her blouse kept popping open, but Ma said it wasn’t worth getting a new one just for a term, and produced a couple of safety pins.

Walking the familiar route to school that first morning she’d pulled her raincoat hood around her face, fearful of being recognised, but within a few days she discovered that her exam resit companions weren’t all ‘thickos’, as she’d so uncharitably called them. Most were kids just like herself who had simply failed to study hard enough. United by a shared sense of the world’s injustices, they soon settled into a supportive friendship group.

Which was just as well, because Billy Bishop had dumped her. He was off to engineering college and told her it wouldn’t be fair to carry on when he was so far away. Anyway, he said, they were both too young for a serious relationship. Although in her heart she knew he was right, she was hurt and annoyed that it was him, rather than her, who’d ended it.

She’d been relieved to discover they were only expected to revise the previous year’s curriculum, so everything felt much more familiar, and without the distractions of Billy and her old classmates it was much easier to get down to homework. A couple of hours each evening began to pay off, and she found herself for the first time actually interested in her subjects.

She re-read Silas Marner, the text prescribed for the English syllabus, and even enjoyed it. When the teacher asked ‘What is this book about?’ she put up her hand. It was about a weaver who was wrongly accused of theft, she said, and became so miserable all he could think of was his hoard of gold. The teacher interrupted. ‘That is the plot of the story, Kathleen, what happens. But I asked what you think the book is about?’

A familiar knot of panic bunched in her stomach. She hadn’t a clue what the teacher was getting at.

‘After you’d finished it and closed the book, did you think about it at all?’ the teacher prompted.

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Then what did you think about it?’

Kath took a deep breath: ‘Silas thought money could make him happy, but in the end he realised that it couldn’t.’