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would make me more marriageable!’ Carla couldn’t stop herself.
    Sergi’s face loomed even closer into hers. ‘The only thing that will make you more marriageable is to teach you your place, you stupid girl.’
    She forced herself not to back away, and looked into his eyes. ‘I haven’t done anything,’ she repeated. ‘Nothing you have to worry about, honestly.’ She kept her voice calm. ‘But you can’t force me to leave university. I’m less than a year away from graduation, and I’m not a child, I’m twenty-three years old.’
    ‘I can take away your money, girl, that’s what I can do. You have no means to live, and nothing to pay your fees with.’
    A silence fell, and he stood back, with a smug expression on his face that made Carla want to strike out herself. She thought of her room in the hostel, paid monthly by Sergi, the tuition fees for her course, her generous quarterly allowance, which paid for food and all her living costs. A chill came over her as the implications of his words came home to her. She looked across at her mother again, in desperation this time.
    ‘Mama, won’t you tell him I’ve done nothing? I need to finish my degree!’
    Joana looked up at her this time, but her eyes were veiled. Carla thought she saw an imperceptible shake in her mother’s blonde curls, but no more. It was Sergi who thundered, ‘Leave your mother out of this.’
    So where do I go from here? Carla wondered, thinkinghard as her heart seemed to thump against her left lung, interrupting her breathing. Without her degree she had no future, or none outside her father’s narrowest plans. But nothing she could say here was going to change her father’s mind, that was clear. Could she find money to finish her studies without him? She couldn’t think straight – no one else in her family had any money, that was for sure.
    Could she maybe stay with Uncle Josep if she lost her father’s support? Her mind was reeling and she didn’t know. His home was already crowded with three young boys. But somehow surely she could manage? Even if she had to sleep on someone’s floor and clean houses, or even defer her degree for a year while she earned some money. And she had her savings. That thought steadied her, and her mind came clearer. I will get my degree, she thought, with a return of courage, and she looked up into Sergi’s eyes with her old defiance.
    ‘All right, then I’ll pay my own way through the rest of my studies.’
    Sergi’s lip curled. ‘And how then, little princess, without your precious allowance and all your fees paid? You know the second instalment of fees is still to be paid for this year?’
    She nodded, and resisted the impulse to withdraw her eyes from his. She could see his brain working, trying to decide if she was serious, contemptuous of her but also deeply frustrated, as so often before, by this daughter who wouldn’t fall easily into his world of total control.
    Her silence forced him into speech again. ‘This is all just stupid Carla, and you know it! You’ll go with Toni nowand collect your clothes from that hostel. It’s over, do you understand? You’re not a student anymore.’
    She shook her head, again not saying anything. To speak would mean she had to defend her position, and what she wanted right now was just to leave, without surrendering, and find her way into that outside world where she could work out what to do.
    ‘Damn me, I’ve a good mind to lock you in your room!’ Sergi’s face had become alarmingly red again, and she realised he might even do so, in a fit of temper. It had been a favourite ploy of his when she was a child, but even he must realise that he couldn’t shut her up now, at least not forever, and that as a grown woman she could walk out of here if she wanted to – if she was prepared to give up her parents’ whole world. She braced herself to be seized, or shaken, but it didn’t happen. He was staring at her as though trying to work out where