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the head-teacher and told the others to scarper.
    “But we were just telling Claudine that she’s going to die!” one of the girls said in parting.
    When I turned to Claudine she had her back to me and was staring through the railings at the distant speck of the Onward Station. I wanted to touch her shoulder, but stopped myself.
    “Are you alright?”
    She nodded, not looking at me. Her long blonde hair fell to the small of her back, swept cleanly behind her ears. When she finally turned and smiled at me, her expression seemed carved from ice, imbued with fortitude.
    That afternoon I remained at school an extra hour, catching up on some marking I had no desire to take home. It was dark when I set off, but at least I wasn’t trapped behind the school bus, and the lanes were free of traffic. A couple of miles from school, my headlights picked out a quick, striding figure, silhouetted against the snow. I slowed down and braked, reached over and opened the passenger door.
    She bent her knees and peered in at me.
    “Claudine,” I said. “What on earth are you doing walking home? Do you realise how far...?”
    “Oh, Mr. Morrow,” she said. “I missed the bus.”
    “Hop in. I’ll take you home.”
    She climbed in and stared ahead, her small face red with cold, diadems of melting snow spangling her hair.
    “Were you kept back?” I asked.
    “I was using the bathroom.”
    I didn’t believe her. She had missed the bus on purpose, to avoid her classmates.
    We continued in silence for a while. I felt an almost desperate need to break the ice, establish contact and gain her confidence. I cleared my throat.
    “What brought you to England?” I asked at last.
    “My mother, she is English,” she said, as if that were answer enough.
    “Does your father work here?”
    She shook her head minimally, staring straight ahead.
    I concentrated on the road, steering around the icy bends. “Couldn’t you have phoned your mother to come for you?” I said. “She does drive?” Private transport was a necessity this far out.
    “My mother, she is an alcoholic, Mr. Morrow,” she said with candour. “She doesn’t do anything.”
    “Oh. I’m sorry.” I felt myself colouring. “Look,” I said, my mouth dry, “if you don’t want to catch the bus in future, I’ll drive you home, okay?”
    She turned and smiled at me, a smile of complicity and gratitude.
    I was aware of the pounding of my heart, as if I had taken the first irrevocable step towards founding a relationship I knew to be foolhardy but which I was powerless to prevent.

    I looked forward to our short time together in the warmth of my car at the end of every school day. I probed Claudine about her life in France, wanting to know, of course, why she was not implanted. But with an adroitness unusual in one so young, she turned around my questions and interrogated me. I found myself, more often than not, talking about my own past.
    At one point I managed to steer the conversation away from me. “I’ve been impressed with the standard of your work,” I said, aware that I sounded didactic. “Your grades are good. What do you plan to study at university?”
    She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, I thought perhaps philosophy. I’m interested in Nietzsche and Cioran.”
    I glanced at her. “You are?”
    She smiled. “Why not?” she replied. “They seem to have all the answers, I think.”
    “Do they?” I said, surprised. “I would have thought that a young girl like you...”
    We came to a halt at the end of the track leading to her house, and the sudden silence was startling. She stared at me. I could see that she had half a mind to tell me not to be so patronising. Instead she shook her head.
    “Life is awful, Mr. Morrow,” she said. “It always has been. And it hasn’t improved since they arrived. If anything, it has made things even worse.”
    Tentatively, I reached out and took her hand. I wondered for a second if I had misjudged the situation completely; if she