Emily gets a job in Cambridge in England as a conductress on the buses, but her real dream is to get into Newnham, one of two women's colleges. She had no real understanding of the near impossibility of this goal for a working class girl in 1950. To ... Read more

Emily gets a job in Cambridge in England as a conductress on the buses, but her real dream is to get into Newnham, one of two women's colleges. She had no real understanding of the near impossibility of this goal for a working class girl in 1950. To make matters worse, she is upset about her psychic gifts and wants a normal life. She still has the pebble containing the sorceress, Vivienne, who caused a great deal of trouble in the past. While Emily is musing about what made the witch so cruel, it occurs to her that Vivienne might also have felt rejected. In a moment of empathy, she kisses the pebble. Emily makes two special friends. Maisie is a brilliant scholarship girl from Lancaster who goes to the college Emily wishes she could attend. Maisie, who is a fat girl also from a working class family, feels inferior to the other students who she views as slim and wealthy. Deeply troubled, too, about the death from a war injury of her beloved brother, she is unable to overcome her compulsive shoplifting. She is also upset about her little sister remaining alone with their alcoholic father. George is a rich boy who has to hide his homosexuality and his feelings for Edward, another student at Trinity. George is doing poorly in his studies because he isn't interested in the degree his father is insisting he must get in order to go into the family business. While Emily is at a lecture about psychic phenomena with George, Maisie gets into her flat and steals the pebble talisman. Vivienne begins planting thoughts in her mind and even manages to burn her hand, causing her to run into a church where she leaves the pebble. In the hope of contacting their lost loved ones, Emily, Maisie, and George (just for fun) attend two Spiritism séances where Emily is reminded of the psychic abilities she'd just as soon deny. In spite of the strong warning against Ouija boards, they'd received from the expert in psychic phenomena, they begin to dabble with them. An evil spirit attaches to Maisie but because Maisie stole the pebble, Emily thinks it must be Vivienne. Emily eventually gets a chance for a university interview, but is no longer desperate to become a student at Cambridge, realizing that in spite of the whims of circumstance she can make her own choices. Less