Inevitably, Susannah was awake in the early hours of the morning. She tried turning onto her side to get comfortable, ending up sort-of halfway there. Various things passed through her mind as she lay in the dark, and – perhaps unsurprisingly, though for the first time in a while – some of her thoughts revolved around school and her memories of it. She wondered how much would've changed, and how much Bea and Raffy had changed – she'd seen Raffy five or six years ago (she still couldn't bring herself to call her Ella, she'd always be Raffy to Susannah), but she hadn't seen Bea since they'd left the place. It really would be good to catch up with them both. It was a shame how they'd all just sort of drifted away – she couldn't remember even saying goodbye to Bea – but that last term had been pretty shit, really. Bea'd had a mini-meltdown when she'd found out she'd failed her organ exam and had decided it was a sign: all Susannah knew was that she went off for a year abroad instead of going to Cambridge, and ended up doing languages somewhere else and becoming a teacher. Raffy had had her bust-up with that lad from her Sports A Level course – as far as Susannah knew, she hadn't had a long-term boyfriend since, although there'd apparently been one or two flings along the way. Part of Susannah had always privately thought that if she was surrounded by dozens of fit, young sportsmen – as Raffy usually was – she'd be making up for all the lost time spent at an all-girls' school. Not that she didn't love her partner, of course, and she was glad she'd got most of those urges out of her system in her first couple of years at uni. She reached out and stroked her boyfriend's arm gently in the dark in an instinctive gesture.

He snuffled her shoulder from behind. 'What's up?'

'Nothing. Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you.'

He snuggled closer, positioning himself behind and half-under her to support her weight. 'You were huffing and fidgeting. I was awake anyway.' He slid his arm round her bump and kissed her neck.

'It'll be weird going back to school tomorrow. I haven't even seen Bea for ten years. And I can't believe Sister F is retiring, though she must be knocking on a bit now.'

'You don't talk about school much. I've never heard of this Beatrice girl, and I only know of the other one from her Christmas cards.'

Susannah thought about that. 'Yeah, weird isn't it? We were pretty close at the time. Things went wrong in our last term, but I'm not sure how. That's what I was just thinking about.'

'People do drift apart. And A Levels are stressful.'

'Mmm.' Susannah thought about their last year at school and the last term particularly. Only Raffy had got into her first choice of uni course – Bea'd run off to France, and she herself, well, she'd had to do Biology and a medicine conversion course instead of going straight into medicine. Which had been good for her actually, she now reckoned, but had been a massive blow at the time. She linked her fingers through Ollie's on her swollen stomach. 'Do you think I'm a good doctor?'

Her boyfriend grunted drowsily. 'No idea, sweetheart, you've never treated me. But I'd imagine so. You know your stuff, you're good with people and unflappable in a crisis...'

'Wasn't always.' When he just moved his shoulder a little in a sort of shrug, she went on. 'One of the nuns conked out in chapel once, in our last year. Not in a service, she was just praying, but I was there sorting things out for the Sunday service and heard her go over. I just froze, I didn't know what to do.' She sighed. 'Bea and Raffy were there for some reason as well, and called an ambulance. Bea even got her in the recovery position – I mean, Bea, who's as unworldly a girl as you can imagine, while I just stood there like a plank. How she knew to do that, I don't know. Anyway it was all OK in the end. Well, I think it was, she wasn't back from hospital by the time we left school. But it really shook me, that.'

*

Beatrice lay awake in bed and thought about what Ella had told her. She couldn't imagine having bottled something like that up, denied something like that to herself, for ten years; she was grateful in a way that she'd been forced into recognising and accepting her own sexuality quite early on. She felt sorry for Ella that the one time she had tried to talk about it, events had overtaken them and robbed her of the moment.

Sister Amata's collapse in the chapel seemed to have been a bit of a turning point in more ways than one, she reflected, and chided herself lightly for assuming all this time that it had only been she herself whom it had affected.

She wondered if Susie remembered it as vividly as she and (she realised now) Ella did. Beatrice remembered that Susie had been visibly shaken when she'd rushed out of the sacristy to see what the fuss was, but soon stepped in to do useful things like find Sister Francesca. It was one of the many things for which Beatrice was grateful to Sister Francesca: the way she calmly and discreetly handled the whole thing, from that night onwards. The whole thing. She wondered if Sister Francesca knew properly how deeply grateful Beatrice actually was – she'd have to mention it one day, even if it did bring up things which were in some ways best left unremembered.

Ella hadn't let on much about her secret crush at school either, which she'd said tonight was partly what she'd wanted to talk about to Beatrice back then – that and this girl at the netball trials. The secret crush was intriguing, though. Probably more than she should let it be, in fact, but maybe that was inevitable with them being back at the old place now – just being back here was bound to stir a few unanticipated memories. Although it did sound as if Ella still carried a very small, very faint candle for the girl, even now. The part of her which still got an immature thrill from girlish secrets wondered if the mystery crush was going to be at the do tomorrow, and whether Ella would say or do anything.

She also wondered briefly about this Caroline or Carrie that Ella had mentioned: she'd have to try and find out more about her over the weekend, as well as what Ella felt about it – she'd only said that this Carrie girl had made it clear she liked Ella; Beatrice knew Ella would be a great girlfriend to anyone and thought she deserved a chance at a bit of happiness after so long trying to find it in the wrong places...and if that was with another girl, Beatrice was pleased for them both. She determined to be a much better friend from now on, and give Ella all the support she ever needed, in a way perhaps only she could.

Beatrice smiled at the thought of Ella being happy, then wondered how she hadn't realised at school that Ella had been struggling with her sexuality just as she had. She tried to think back and remember if there'd ever been any clues – she didn't think so, although she had been so dreadfully wrapped up in herself at the time that she may well have just missed them. She wondered also how things would've been different if she had noticed or known that Ella also liked girls: whether things would've been awkward between them, or even easier than it always had been; whether they'd have been able to support each other better, maybe got even closer. For a small moment, Beatrice felt a flicker of curiosity at how close they might have actually got.

She was surprised that it didn't feel as weird as she might've expected to contemplate that.

Still smiling, she eventually closed her eyes and used the trick she used when she was about to start playing in public to empty her mind, before turning over and going to sleep.