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pause.
    ‘What did Leila tell you?’ she asked him.
    ‘Leila Roberts? Not a lot. She seems more bewildered than upset. Anthea too, I suppose. It is bizarre.’
    ‘They were an item, of course.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Leila and Ronnie.’
    ‘Were they?’
    She raised her eyes heavenward. ‘Oh, Max,’ she said. ‘Do you notice nothing?’
    ‘Well, I did catch Debbie Whatserface with her hand in the Acheson boy’s trousers last year. That was quite a coup, I thought.’
    ‘Yes, but you missed the gang bang with her and the First Fifteen, didn’t you? No, no,’ she laughed, ‘just my idea of a joke. Leila and Ronnie were going out all last summer.’
    ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was her type,’ Maxwell mused.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Well,’ he rationalized, ‘she’s not anybody’s type, really, is she, Leila? I mean, she’s seventeen going on forty-eight. I’ve never seen a spinster school ma’am in the sixth form before. I’d have thought she’d be fonder of her hockey stick than Ronnie Parsons.’
    ‘That’s a dreadful thing to say!’ Sylvia scolded him. ‘And anyway, I never noticed much difference between Ronnie and a hockey stick.’
    ‘What, you mean bent or wooden?’ Maxwell asked her. ‘Or both?’
    ‘I mean, I always had Ronnie down for a bit of a non-event.’
    ‘Good-looking lad, though,’ Maxwell ventured, ‘isn’t he? To women, I mean?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’ Sylvia smiled. ‘Very. But I think Leila wants more than just a pretty face. Did Anthea say anything about them on the trip? I mean, was there a row or anything?’
    ‘Anthea said not,’ Maxwell told her, ‘but you know how it is, Sylv, fifty screaming idiots in paroxysms of delight because we’ve let ’em out for the day – and a day of the Science SATs too. I blame myself
    ‘Now, don’t be silly, Max,’ she scolded him. ‘You were burning up with fever. It simply wasn’t possible for you to go. How are you feeling now, by the way?’
    ‘Well, there’s nothing like a double disappearance for reducing the temperature and the size of my glands. Anyway, that Oriental Bezoar Stone you gave me was pretty powerful stuff; not to mention the old eye of newt and wool of bat. Old Maxie’s pulled through again.’
    ‘What about Dannie?’ Sylvia suddenly asked.
    ‘Dannie?’ Maxwell was lost. ‘Who’s Dannie?’
    ‘Dannie Roth. Don’t you remember? She left two years ago.’
    ‘Dannie Roth!’ Maxwell clicked his fingers. ‘Ah, how soon we forget. The siren of Year Ten, luring doomed male members of staff onto the rocks of their marriages.’
    ‘There wasn’t any truth in that, was there?’ she asked him. ‘Alan Tullet and Dannie?’
    ‘Well, you know what those Drama types are like.’ Maxwell sipped his coffee with all the bigotry of an historian. ‘Into nymphets in a big way. Certainly he was unwise to be seen going to the theatre with her.’
    ‘He was quite dishy, too,’ Sylvia remembered with a wistful smile.
    ‘If you like men too bone idle to shave properly, then, yes, I suppose he had a certain something. Scarcely got my blood racing, though. I shared a locker with the man for a term. He read Barbara Vine. But what’s he got to do with Ronnie Parsons?’
    ‘Not him,’ Sylvia said. ‘Dannie. Ronnie carried a torch for Dannie.’
    ‘Along with half the lads and staff in the school,’ Maxwell nodded.
    ‘Where did she go?’
    ‘Oh, Christ, now you’ve asked me. I’ll have to check the files, of course, but I think it was Sussex. What, you think Ronnie was carrying on a seduction correspondence course with Dannie and they arranged for him to slip away from MOMI and catch a southbound train for an idyllic mid-week at Fulmer? Come on, Nursie, my garden’s a better plot than that. Besides, I would have thought darling Dannie’s shacked up with some ageing juvenile luvvie who’ll never see forty again.’
    ‘Oh,’ Sylvia was arch when she wanted to be, ‘went for the older man, did she?’
    ‘Only