Excerpt: Being A Good Girl

Lyn felt she had been given a new life and a brand new start; it was even more of a new beginning than coming to this school for the first time, for then she had still been Marilyn, slow, bookish, but without much else to offer. Now she felt more alive; the daily walk to the station and then to School, taken through the autumn countryside, the confidence that had come with learning to cook, and learning to garden, made her feel a different person. She was. She was Lyn, and she cast off ‘Marilyn’ as a butterfly casts its chrysalis, and faced the future with a bright face.