Class

When I disembarked at Blundellsands & Crosby, there was a girl ahead of me. She was about seventeen or eighteen, wearing a loose thin shirt over a crop top and tiny white shorts. In the crook of her right arm was a cooler. She peered into the window of the waiting room and then, when she couldn't see whoever she was meeting, she pulled out her phone and began hastily tapping.I guessed that she was on study leave from her A-levels and was using the opportunity to go to the beach with her mates. I didn't blame her. It was an incredibly beautiful day. The blue sky seemed to reach up and over us, a huge dome of bright. Blundellsands Road West, the route to the beach, is a parade of elegant Victorian mansions and classy villas set behind long gardens. Some of them have been converted to flats, but a lot haven't; large cars with personalised number plates park on block paved driveways. In between them are prep schools and junior schools and kindergartens. It meant that I heard, in the mid…