I just know it,’ Paula moaned as she struggled to remember the theorem she’d learned off by heart twenty minutes ago. ‘Whoever invented the Leaving Cert should be strung up by the goolies,’ Jennifer muttered as she fretted over a balance sheet that would not tally. ‘How do you know it was a man?’ Paula leaned back in her chair and stretched and yawned. Jennifer gave her a pitying look. ‘Don’t be daft. You don’t think a woman would be that stupid?’ ‘You’ve a point there,’ Paula conceded, reluctantly getting back to the task at hand. The girls were up to their eyes in revision. It was the Saturday before the start of the Leaving Certificate exams. Intense swotting was the order of the day. They were studying in Paula’s bedroom. All that disturbed them was a blackbird singing in a deep pink cherry blossom tree that flowered in exuberant profusion outside Paula’s bedroom window. Jennifer gave a deep sigh. She felt restless.
