Best Kept Secret

He’d immediately burst into tears and apologized, explaining that his mother and father always travelled first class, and he didn’t even realize there
was a third class. He had got away with it, but then he’d only been eleven at the time. Now he was seventeen, and it wouldn’t only be the ticket collector who didn’t believe
him.
    He dismissed any chance of a reprieve and, accepting that he wouldn’t be going up to Cambridge in September, Sebastian began to consider what he should do once the train pulled into
Paddington.

    The headmaster didn’t even glance at his speech as the train sped through the countryside towards the capital.
    Should he go and look for the boy and demand an explanation? He knew Clifton’s housemaster had supplied him with a third-class single to Bristol, so what was he doing in a first-class
carriage bound for London? Had he somehow got on the wrong train? No, that boy always knew in which direction he was going. He just hadn’t expected to be caught. In any case, he’d been
smoking, despite having been explicitly told that school rules would apply until the last day of term. The boy hadn’t even waited an hour to defy him. There were no mitigating circumstances.
Clifton had left him with no choice.
    He would announce at assembly tomorrow morning that Clifton had been expelled. He would then phone the admissions tutor at Peterhouse, and then the boy’s father, to explain why his son
would no longer be going up to Cambridge that Michaelmas. After all, Dr Banks-Williams had to consider the good name of the school, which he had nurtured assiduously for the past fifteen years.
    He turned several pages of his speech before he came across the relevant passage. He read the words he’d written about Clifton’s achievement, hesitated for a moment, and then drew a
line through them.

    Sebastian was considering whether he should be the first or the last off the train when it pulled into Paddington. It didn’t matter much, as long as he avoided bumping
into the headmaster.
    He decided to be first, and perched on the edge of his seat for the last twenty minutes of the journey. He checked his pockets to find he had one pound twelve shillings and sixpence, far more
than usual, but then his housemaster had reimbursed all his unspent pocket money.
    He had originally planned to spend a few days in London before returning to Bristol on the last day of term, when he had absolutely no intention of handing the headmaster’s letter to his
father. He removed the envelope from his pocket. It was addressed to H.A. Clifton Esq.: Private. Sebastian glanced around the carriage to check that no one was looking at him before he ripped it
open. He read the headmaster’s words slowly, and then reread them. The letter was measured, fair and, to his surprise, made no mention of Ruby. If only he’d taken the train to Bristol,
gone home and handed the letter to his father after he returned from America, things might have been so different. Damn it. What was the headmaster doing on the train in the first place?
    Sebastian returned the letter to his pocket and tried to concentrate on what he would do in London, because he certainly wouldn’t be returning to Bristol until this had all blown over, and
that might not be for some time. But how long could he hope to survive on one pound twelve shillings and sixpence? He was about to find out.
    He was standing by the carriage door long before the train pulled into Paddington, and had opened it even before it had come to a halt. He leapt out, ran towards the barrier as fast as his heavy
suitcase would allow and handed his ticket to the collector before disappearing into the crowd.
    Sebastian had only visited London once before, and on that occasion he’d been with his parents, and there had been a car waiting to pick them up and whisk them off to his uncle’s
town house in Smith Square. Uncle Giles had taken him to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels, and then on to Madame Tussaud’s to admire the waxworks of Edmund Hillary, Betty Grable
and Don Bradman before having tea and a sticky bun at the Regent Palace Hotel. The following day he’d given them a tour of the House of Commons, and they’d seen Winston Churchill
glowering from the front bench. Sebastian had been surprised to find how small he was.
    When it was time for him to go home, Sebastian had told his uncle that he couldn’t wait to come back to London. Now he had, there was