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voices chorused.
    Special friendships were discouraged, and Cecilia seriously tried to comply with this rule. But Breda sometimes seemed to be more a force of nature than a person. How could you not love the sun or thrill to the sound of thunder? She and Breda no longer sat next to each other in the refectory, nor knelt together in chapel and they avoided each other at recreation as Mother Holy Angels had requested, and yet their friendship blossomed. In the main it was unspoken. When something struck them as funny they would turn to each other before they had time to think. Neither of them seemed able to help it.
    All meals were taken in silence, apart from the Sister whose turn it was to stand at the rostrum to read to the whole congregation. At breakfast the week before, Mother Holy Angels had rushed in from outside to interrupt Mother Mary John of the Transfiguration, who was reading aloud from The Lives of the Saints, to give two serious announcements . Everyone had put down their cutlery and waited, eyes on their plates, all of them very alert. Cecilia had tingled with excitement but also with dread. The one other time the Silence had been interrupted in this way was when Reverend Mother had come in to tell them that the American President, John Kennedy, had been assassinated. So something momentous must have happened. Had war broken out? Was some other terrible disaster unfolding as they sat there quietly eating their meal? Could the Holy Father in Rome have taken ill?
    But Mother’s first message was that Sister Cyril would be teaching correct shoe-cleaning procedure after Benediction that evening. And the second was that as St Augustine had deemed excessive eating and drinking unholy, the postulants were not to have more water than what was absolutely required when they were cleaning their teeth.
    Cecilia’s and Breda’s eyes had met across the tables. When Mother left the room, they had both raised an empty hand to their mouths at exactly the same time, as though gulping down water from a glass. For the rest of the day they’d had trouble suppressing laughter every time they’d caught each other’s eye. Perhaps it was wrong, but until someone showed Cecilia the papal decree that outlawed laughter she thought … what harm?
    Just on six-thirty a.m. the door to the dormitory creaked open, a two-second flicker before the place was blazing with fluorescent light, and the rotund body of the Novice Mistress was among them, walking up the aisle between the beds calling, ‘ Praise be to Jesus ’, her stern face expressionless as she waited for each half-asleep postulant to return the phrase.
    The mumbled responses were thick with sleep. Praise be to Jesus. They pushed off their bedclothes and sank to their knees by their beds. O praise be to Jesus. All kneeling now and praying together. O praise be to Jesus …
    It’s on. I’m on the way. Cecilia wanted to yell out the excitement that bubbled up inside her; instead she buried her face in her hands and tried to concentrate on the prayer.
    O Jesus, through the most pure heart of Mary, I offer thee all the joys, prayers, work and sufferings of this day …
    At the end of the morning offering, she rose from the floor, drew the curtains around her bed, pulled off her long nightdress and slipped the long black petticoat over herself. Then the black stockings, followed by the black serge dress pulled in at the waist by a leather belt. The cape and white collar would come later.
    She picked up her towel, pushed back the curtains surrounding her bed and took a moment to stare at the light beginning to break outside. She longed to look around at the others, if only to give them a smile of encouragement. But this too would be against the rules, and anyway it was important to get down quickly to have a good wash in the little warm water allowed in the mornings.
    When she’d first arrived at the convent, one bath a week had seemed