The Quality of Love Read Online Free

that because it meant you staying later at school.’
    â€˜No, he didn’t,’ Sarah defended. ‘It was only when we had rehearsals in the evening.’
    â€˜Yes, and then he always came to meet you and insisted that you went straight home while we all went off to the milk bar and enjoyed ourselves.’
    â€˜It was just his way, it was past my bedtime,’ Sarah mumbled, the hot colour rushing to her cheeks.
    â€˜Sarah, you were fifteen! You were old enough to decide for yourself what time you went to bed. Does he still expect you to go to bed when he says?’
    Sarah bit her lip. ‘Does it matter?’
    â€˜Not to me it doesn’t, but I would have thought it would to you. You’ll have to stand up for yourself when you get to university or you’ll have no life at all. Perhaps it is just as well that you are not going out to work, you wouldn’t do very well; staying on at school is about all you’re fit for.’
    Sarah looked at her friend open-mouthed. In the past they’d always shared all their problems, especially when they’d felt they were being unfairly treated, whether it was by their teachers or their family. Even so, they’d never been as frank or outspoken as Rita was being now and it left Sarah feeling shocked. She didn’t know what to say because she felt that to join in criticising her father like Rita was doing would be disloyal.
    Far from persuading her that going to university was wrong for her, Rita’s comments were making her all the more determined to go and do her very best. She’d make her father proud of her even if Rita did despise her for doing so.
    From now on she wouldn’t talk about it.There would be no more exchanging confidences or soul-searching heart-to-hearts with Rita, she told herself. She took Rita’s comments very much to heart. She’d always regarded Rita as being her very best friend and in the past they’d agreed about most things. She’d had no idea that Rita had such strong feelings about what her parents said she could and could not do and she felt quite upset about it.
    She’d hoped they would stay friends even though she realised that their interests were no longer the same, but she suspected that they’d never again be as close as they had been while they were growing up. She would be lonely without her company because she was the only really close friend she’d ever had.
    There was only one thing she could do and that was to look ahead, make the most of her time at university and hope that at the end of all her studying she would achieve the goal she was setting herself and also be completely independent.
    Sarah had been looking forward to spending a great deal of the three months’ vacation between the end of the school year and starting at university as a time of relaxation and enjoying herself. There would be days out shopping with her mother and going out with Rita at the weekends. However, it was nothing of the sort. Her father insisted that she should spend at least a portion of each day studying and when he came home at night he questionedher in great detail about what he’d told her to do, so there was no chance to shirk.
    It kept her from worrying about the deep chasm growing between herself and Rita and from dwelling on the fact that things would never be the same between them ever again. She tried to console herself that perhaps it was all for the best since from now on they would be leading completely different lives.
    There was some respite from studying, however, because her mother insisted that she must have new clothes before she started at university. They spent a good many afternoons looking around the shops in the city centre. The sales were on and Lorna felt that it might be better to wait until the stores had new stock, but it didn’t stop them window shopping and browsing before committing themselves as to what they both considered to be