How very like him, I thought, to keep this a secret from everyone. Four days, he’d hidden it from all his friends at St. Oswald’s—St. Oswald’s, the place where everyone knows everything about everyone. Four days, he’d hidden it from me, his oldest friend, his confidant. Four days, I’d thought he was sulking over that idiotic gnome, when actually—

“Eric, I’m so sorry,” I said.

His tears had already vanished into the map of his haggard face. “I’m not. I did what I could. Now it’s my turn to live my life.” It was almost exactly the tone he’d adopted when he told me he was leaving to work at King Henry’s Grammar School; almost exactly the tone with which he’d refused to speak for Harry when I was a character witness. Stubborn; bullish; but underneath, obscurely lost, and yes—afraid.

“When yours went so soon, I was jealous,” he said. “Mine took over twenty years. I never put her in a home—I couldn’t bear it—but all the same. You start to think they’ll outlive you; that even when there’s nothing left, they’ll still be there, like the Albatross, just a parcel of feathers and bones, suffocating you with guilt.”

His voice had risen a little; I looked to see if anyone had heard. But the Common Room was almost empty, except for a group of Games staff talking around a bulletin board, and Robbie Roach, the historian, reading the Daily Mirror with a look of vacuous absorption. I’d missed Assembly, I realized. I hadn’t even heard the bell. Still, my boys were used to dealing with my infrequent absences: Sutcliff or Allen-Jones would have already taken the register, and they would have gone down to Chapel alone, in more or less orderly fashion.

“Eric, don’t.” I touched his arm. We Tweed Jackets don’t tend to be of the touchy-feely persuasion, but sometimes one has to force oneself to make the comforting gesture. “It’s natural to feel this way. I did when Mother died.”

He nodded. “I know. Survivor’s guilt.”

That word again. Survivor. As if bereavement were a shipwreck. And maybe that’s what it feels like, for people like me and Eric Scoones, clinging to St. Oswald’s as if it’s the only thing still left afloat.

“I’ve been going through her things,” Eric went on. “It’s appalling. So many boxes of papers and clothes. I’m going to have to get someone in. You know, one of those house clearance firms. God knows where it will all end up. You see this stuff at garage sales. Personal things. Photographs. Sometimes, I just feel like setting fire to the whole house.”

“I’ll help you,” I said. “Go through them, I mean. I’m drawing the line at arson.”