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She unfolded the sheet of clean white paper, and read the words in thick black type Cheraphy, B Mathematics, C Physics, B She read the words over and over, holding the paper up to the light, a pale gasp of excite out from her pursed lips The first in the family to stop on at school, and now the first in the fao on to university She refolded the paper and put it back into the jagged-toothed envelope She propped it up on the kitchen table, leaning it against the e her naht aho to tell, whether to have a drink and celebrate, whether to start packing her bags there and then

All the different ways there were of leaving home, and the one she'd chosen had finally settled within reach Her first brother, aith the merchant navy before she was even born Her second and third brothers one with a story that no one ever spoke of And now her, with a place waiting at Edinburgh University, ready to slip out of the house for good

She heard footsteps on the wooden stairs and herjust inside the doorway, looking at her What's that you've got there? she asked, her voice a little sloith sleep

Eh? It's just a letter frohtly Is Da awake? she asked Is he up yet?

No, he's still sleeping for now, heracros

s to the kettle and filling it ater What's the letter for? she asked Eleanor turned round in her chair

It's the results, she told her Ivy put the kettle on top of the stove

Oh aye? she said I didn't know you were expecting those There was a creaking fro out of bed, footsteps across the floor So what does it say? Ivy asked Eleanor listened for the steps to co, and at her mother, and at the empty doorway Well? her mother said Eleanor handed over the piece of paper in its thin brown envelope

It's good, she said quietly, pre-e her , and looked the other way

Ivy read the sheet of paper, nodded, and made an mmhmm sound in the back of her throat Oh aye, she said Stewart came into the room and looked at them both expectantly Ivy handed him the sheet of paper and went back upstairs Will you make that pot of tea? she said, as she left the rooo, unsure whether to be shocked or not, waiting to see if she would colohistle, breaking into a shuffling jig around the kitchen table, pulling Eleanor into a tight and startling ehbours' doors, launching a day of toasts and hugs and hearty thumps on the back - and never you mind what your mother thinks, he whispered to her at one point, wonderfully - a day in which the letter would take pride of place on the front-room mantelpiece, repeatedly taken down and unfolded and passed around from hand to careful hand

And by six o'clock, when the front room was crowded full, the ed out of their aprons and headscarves into solasses full to the bri round to work and weather and sport, she ed to slip out of the house to the telephone box, dialling the number she still had scribbled on a paper napkin from work

It was the first time she'd actually phoned him After all their letters, and after all the tiether, it was still so all that way down the line while he stood in the entrance hall of the house, twisting the cable in his hand and glaring at his sister who had coly

That's bloody brilliant Eleanor, he said when she told hi at all as fro into his neat house like that,some kind of test I knew you'd do it, he said

Oh, she said, and then she was quiet for afor someone to say that all day, she said

She told hi that had happened, how she'd waited a few moments to open the letter, how she'd hoped her father would see it first, how she hadn't really been surprised by her mother's reaction, and as her money started to run out, she said quickly, so you'll be coe for rinned and said you do that as the line went dead