That night she asks Corvina the question she has sat on since the first morning: the letter says she is to be housed and nothing else, so what is she for.

CorvinaYou are for keeping the roll open. Four pupils is the minimum and the placement is the fourth.

CorvinaYou are also an eighteen-year-old girl, and I am not going to spend my life talking about you in the second person.

Mila sits with that. It is awful and it is honest, and after two years of being managed she will take awful and honest.

MilaRight. Then I want my name in that register in my own hand, and then I want to know what happens in June.