Allie's Conversation With Ali

As autumn gives way to winter, I decide to take my lead from Ali about the abortion. If she wants to talk things through, I'm ready for it, though it's still messing with my head and I don't really know what I can or should say. It's been six weeks now, and she never brings it up. Instead, she talks for ages about her year groups, which is boring,. About some of the other teachers. They're even more weird than I thought. Finally, she asks, so do you think you've got a place at Oxford then? And pleased she's taken an interest, at last, in the entrance exam I said a few weeks earlier -