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tightened.
    Sensing confusion, Lara bit her tongue.
    ‘Exams, exams, exams … I don’t want to do them.’
    This was an astonishing
volte face
for, up to that moment, Maudie had been fixed in her determination to dominate and triumph over the system.
    Lara snapped on the kettle. ‘OK. Mother-daughter summit.’ She folded her arms across her stomach. ‘I’m listening.’
    Maudie folded herself on to the bench that served as seating for the table. Taking after Bill, she was the tallest of the daughters and practically filled the tiny kitchen. The stubborn, troubled expression cleared as she confessed, ‘OK. I don’t mean that about the exams. That’s all fine. It’s just I’m in a bit of a state.’
    ‘Tell.’
    Frisson of maternal anxiety. Maudie may have been heading for nineteen and inclined to moods but a gin-trap mind propelled her Nordic blonde five-foot-eleven frame. (Where had she sprung from? The goddess Freya or, failing that, Brünnhilde.)
    ‘I’ve done something,’ she said.
    Lara steeled herself. Drugs? Pregnancy? Cheating?
    ‘Alicia …’
Case Notes
    Alicia Runyon, 26, Tutor in English (with special reference to Feminist Studies) at the Winchester Sixth Form College. Winner of Kathleen Snape Award for the best essay on feminism in literature. To quote: ‘a work of the highest intellectual standard combined with the scholarly ideals’. On a couple of years’ secondment from her native US … etc.
    Lara waited.
    Maudie’s eyes reflected the colours of a deep and stormy fjord. ‘Alicia says … I mean, Alicia is keen …’ She leaped up from the bench.
    Lara folded her arms and leaned back against the cooker.
    Maudie took two paces to the right. Two paces to the left. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ve applied to Harvard.’
    ‘
What?
’ Lara reprised the last few weekends. Maudie’s closed-down expression, plus the irritation (plenty of that). There had also been the quick-to-anger Maudie and the quick-to-despair Maudie. ‘When did you decide this?’
    Maudie shrugged.
    ‘And without telling me. Or anyone?’
    Maudie was flapping her wings. Hard.
    ‘Yup.’ She had calmed down. ‘Alicia’s explained everything. I take their, I mean the US, SAT exam and apply for funds. If successful, I go next year.’ She stacked thelast book on the pile. The confession appeared to have brought a new resolve. ‘It’s sorted, Mum.’
    Lara said, ‘What do
you
know about funding?’
    Quick as a flash, Maudie said, ‘If it was left to you and Dad, nothing.’ She tugged at her hair. ‘Why don’t parents teach you useful things?’
    ‘We had to have one flaw, surely.’
    ‘No, but really,’ she said.
    ‘And you never thought to discuss it with me?’
    ‘I discussed it with Alicia. We went over and over it. She told me about the financial things and she helped me with the forms. I’ve done spreadsheets. I’ll have to work in the vacations. Of course. And live like a pauper – but, hey …’
    Lara found herself tiptoeing through a maze. ‘Spreadsheets? Oh, spreadsheets. Could I remind you a spreadsheet is not the real thing?’
    ‘Stop it, Mum. You’re not listening.’
    Lara folded her arms more tightly. Snap, went the wire-cutter that Maudie was wielding. ‘I’m your mother, Maudie. I had a right to know.’
    ‘Of course,’ agreed Maudie, in a kindly way, ‘and I’m telling you now.’
    Lara persisted, ‘You should have told me earlier. I can see that Alicia is very useful, but she’s not family.’
    ‘Shall we just leave her out of it?’
    ‘You brought her into it.’ What was it she told her patients? Negotiate. Face up to the problem. ‘Are you sure she’s the right influence, Maudie? Should she be influencing you? Think about it.’
    ‘Most friends do influence each other.’
    ‘If she’s that much older, it must be hard to contradict her.’
    Maudie adopted the expression that meant she was trying,
she was really
trying
, to be ultra-patient. ‘Alicia and I