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month. Papers are put in front of you, with lots of questions. Some are hard or easy sums, some ask you to pick out an odd item on a list, some want you to put things in their places. For you, the tests are easy, even fun. You’re pleased when you know the answers. Most of you on the Top Table come to enjoy the tests. Mary, who gets even more of the answers than you, asks Mrs Daye, the Class Five teacher, for more tests.
    In Class Six, you have tests every week. Dad says you’ll soon be given a special test called the Eleven Plus. Which school you go to next year depends on how many questions you get right in your Eleven Plus. If you do as well as you have been doing, you’ll go to Dr Marling’s Grammar School for Boys. If not, you’ll go to Hemphill Secondary Modern. Laraine is in the Girls’ Grammar, a separate school from Marling’s. At Marling’s, you’ll have to wear a blazer, a tie and a red cap, and you’ll play rugby instead of football. Paul Mysliwiec, of the Middle Table, claims Marling’s boys have to do five hours of homework a night. He’s glad he won’t have to go to Marling’s, because he wants to watch telly and play football.
    Robert Hackwill, the Ash Grove Bully, goes to Marling’s, and is looking forward to old victims arriving so he can resume his reign over them with all the power invested in him by God as a prefect. You hear that Marling’s prefects are allowed to cane younger boys and that none of the teachers can stop them. Paul claims Hackwill has already crippled one boy and been let off because he’s a prefect, but you don’t know if you believe that. Panic-stricken, you tell your dad you don’t want to go to Marling’s however you do in your tests. Dad is angry and, as he rarely does, shouts at you. Mum explains it’s important for your future that you go to the school for clever boys like you.
    A good thing about Marling’s is that no girls are allowed, but even that strikes you as somehow wrong. You don’t like girls, of course, but it’d be strange not to have them around. You realise you quite like Vanda Pritchard. You can talk to her, sometimes. She likes Tintin books too, and has introduced you to school stories, Jennings and Billy Bunter and Chalet School. She doesn’t think she’ll go to the Girls’ Grammar, but Mary – the monster – probably will. Of the Class Six boys, only Shane Bush, Michael Dixon, Stephen Adlard and you are expected to pass the Eleven Plus.
    Go on.

8
    A fter the Easter holidays, you turn up at school one day and find the classroom rearranged. A teacher you don’t know is in charge of the tests. A rumour runs around. This is the Eleven Plus. The important test. No, not a test. An exam.
    Reading over the questions, you realise you could easily answer most of them. That would mean going to Dr Marling’s Grammar School for Boys with Shane and Robert Hackwill. Or you could deliberately get quite a few wrong, which would mean going to Hemphill, with Paul and Vanda.
    If you fail the Eleven Plus, go to 11. If you pass, go to 16.

9
    A fter the Easter holidays, you turn up at school one day and find the classroom rearranged. A teacher you don’t know is in charge of the tests. A rumour runs around. This is the Eleven Plus. The important test. No, not a test. An exam.
    Reading over the questions, you realise you could easily answer most of them wrongly. That would mean going to Hemphill Secondary Modern, with Vanda and Paul. Or you could try hard and get many of them right, which would mean going to Marling’s with Shane and Robert Hackwill.
    If you pass the Eleven Plus, go to 12. If you fail, go to 15.

10
    I n 1982, the week after your father’s funeral, you are in town, early in a spring evening, going for a drink in the Lime Kiln with your brother.
    Laraine has stayed home with Mum, but you both feel the need to get out of the memory-permeated house. James went into the army at sixteen and you haven’t seen much of him in the last few