Gifted and Talented Read Online Free PDF

enthusiasm if nothing else, Diana thought hard about which flowers could lift and soften concrete walls. The contrast could even be dramatic. She assembled an entire folder of drawings and sent them off. The day the letter arrived inviting her for interview had been her happiest in months.
    Arriving for her interview, she had marvelled anew at the grand college entrances with their coats of arms and heraldic beasts, the stained-glass chapel windows, the towers with their gilded pennants.
    At Branston, which looked nothing like that, she had marvelled at the fact that the garden itself was so much worse than she had imagined. It was a wilderness of scrubby, unloved, Action-Man landscaping, done originally, Diana guessed, by bulldozer. There were entire areas of arid aggregate or mouldy patios of cracked concrete slabs. The weeds were rampant, great glossy dandelions and ground elder as far as the eye could see.
    There had been a gardener of many years’ standing, apparently. Although perhaps ‘sitting’ was a better way of putting it. ‘What did he actually do?’ Diana asked, looking round in amazement.
    ‘Sit on the bench, mostly,’ sighed the fat official showing her round: the deputy head of the college, the Bursar. A new Master had been appointed but was yet to arrive, Diana learnt.
    The money offered made Diana gasp – and not in a good way. ‘Branston’s not one of the rich colleges,’ the Bursar said.
    ‘Shit!’ Diana now exclaimed, slamming on her brakes and twisting her wheel violently to the side. They were proceeding along the road at the back of Branston, to the staff entrance. Diana had been about to turn into it when something shot out and hurled itself at her.
    ‘Mummy!’ Rosie rebuked from behind. ‘You swore!’
    ‘Sorry, darling,’ Diana said, heart hammering at the near miss. It had been someone on a bicycle. Why did these people never look where they were going?
    A dark shape in a cycle helmet now loomed at her side window. As the sun behind was too brilliant to see him properly and the window of her battered car had long since lost the ability to lower automatically, Diana had to open the door to squint up at him. She forced herself to smile, expecting an apology and determined, despite the shock, to be gracious about it.
    ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded in a grating American accent. He was looking at her piercingly; Diana was suddenly conscious of her hat, a charity shop affair in purple fleece which looked, if anything, even cheaper than the 50p it had cost.
    ‘You were going too fast,’ she objected.
    ‘You could seriously injure people, driving like that,’ he went on, angrily.
    Diana felt Rosie’s sharp little chin pressing into her hair as the child leant excitedly forward to listen. However unfair the circumstances, Diana knew she could not argue with another adult under the surveillance of those small, bright brown eyes. She had been fiercely protective of her daughter over the divorce, refusing to fight with Simon in front of her or – and this had been a struggle at times – say anything nasty about him within Rosie’s hearing. She had no intention now of undoing all that good work by rowing with a stranger.
    ‘ You were the one going too fast,’ she repeated, screwing her eyes up against the drilling rays of the sun. That he was tall was all she could see. The helmet obscured his hair and face.
    ‘I think this jalopy speaks for itself, don’t you?’ the cyclist sneered at her car.
    Diana knew that. Her current vehicle, an ancient estate, looked most disreputable. She had bought it second hand, its gear stick lacked a knob, there was no functioning lock and it had dents in both front wings. The boot would not shut properly and needed to be tied on for days like today when the rear was full of plants. It was a moot point as to whether the car looked better dirty or with the dirt cleaned off showing the scratched blue paintwork beneath. But