Chapter 013

Chapter 13: IMMACULATA

Immaculata's sensible flat shoes clicked along the pavement as she hurried past the open iron gates of the school hall car park. Her slight and youthful figure was respectably covered by her ample grey overcoat and a plain blue scarf held her long dark hair tight against her head. Her monthly confraternity meeting at the church had run unusually late because of a talk given by a visiting missionary father with a high pitched voice and a slow delivery: it was quite dark now, and she could hear the repetitive mechanical bass line of an undistinguished dance record playing inside the hall. The end of term disco was clearly getting under way.

The signs of the impending event barely registered in Immaculata's brain, it was not the kind of thing that interested her: for some reason she had never felt drawn to the activities of other girls of her age.

"Immaculata!"

She stopped dead in her tracks. It was Billy Sullivan, the son of the local filling station proprietor, a