Free No Talking after Lights by Angela Lambert

entirely ignorant about their own sexuality. By the time they reached theLower Fourth some had started the curse, but they couldn’t have explained accurately what its function was, even though they giggled in class when the English teacher read out, The curse is come upon me! Cried the Lady of Shalott.’ They kissed each other good night, but these kisses were still the smothering hugs of children and not yet the explorations of precocious young women.
    Occasionally a ‘pash’ between a pretty junior and a receptive senior might lead to a secret meeting in the long grass at the end of the games field. They would usually just talk, unfamiliar with the vocabulary of desire, hardly knowing why they wanted to be alone, until by accident they brushed against each other’s little breasts and discovered how nice it felt. But the prelude was so long and the subterfuge so elaborate that most ‘pashes’ were over before reaching even this innocent stage. In any case, ‘pashes’ were discouraged, and once a term Mrs Birmingham would talk vaguely in Prayers about being pure in mind and body and (the relevance was obscure) about the undesirability of friendships between girls from different forms. Then the school would sing ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling’.
    Very rarely was there a scandal. Letters hidden under pillows during term or sent by post in the holidays would be intercepted, diaries read; there would be a brief episode of melodrama, and all contact would be forbidden. For a while the girls concerned would whisper and cry in the dormitory at night, but it never lasted long. Sometimes a girl would develop a passion for one of the teachers, but this was ridiculed. Teachers were in the enemy camp, although Miss Valentine was an exception. Her face glowed with such cheerfulness, her voice was always so lilting and good-tempered, that she was generally agreed to be ‘an absolute darling’.
    The Lower Fourth breathed heavily over its prep.
    â€˜I saw you sucking up to Miss Valentine. Yuk! How could you? Practically slobbering all over her. It’s only because she gives you good marks…’
    â€˜It’s got nothing to do with you, so MYOB. If you weren’t so jolly lazy, Fiona Cathcart, you might get decent marks too.’
    â€˜I haven’t got a pash on her, so I don’t write it all out twice and do beautiful darling little maps with lovely green and blue outlines,
that’s
why.’
    â€˜I don’t care,’ said Madeleine and made a face, scrunching up her nose and mouth and poking her head forward.
    â€˜Anyway,
some
people are trying to
work
, in case you hadn’t noticed. Which, ‘cos I’ve looked everywhere and I still can’t find my rotten pen, is hard enough, without your sarky comments.’
    Constance looked as though she were working, but she was not writing her English essay (’My Best Friend’), which had been easy and had only taken her ten minutes, even though the best friend she described was imaginary. Now she was writing a letter. She knew it was hopeless and she was only putting herself in the wrong and sounding ungrateful. She knew her mother would tell her to make more of an effort to join in and find a friend. So she added, ‘I do
try
and join in. But I’m no good at jacks and nobody ever tries to catch me in Kick the Can. Oh, well, there goes the supper bell so I’ll have to stop now. Masses of best love, Constance.’
    I’m going to run away and that’ll show them, she thought. She made a song of it: I’ll run away, far, far away, and come again another day - no, that was silly - she’d never come back. Not ever.
    Sheila stared at her supper, an iridescent orange triangle of smoked haddock lying in a tepid puddle of milky liquid. She ate the bits of potato that weren’tdyed yellow and put her knife and fork together.
    Charmie was talking across her to Mick and