Harrington explained that both were experts in their fields: fund-­raising; image; pastoral care; gender awareness; cultural sensitivity; and learning difficulties. He explained that Ms. Buckfast would be in charge of the “rebranding” of the School, and that Dr. Blakely had close links with the children’s charity Survivors, as well as being the creator of a national think tank to discuss “abuse situations,” and was in the process of drafting a Zero Tolerance Policy to deal with all aspects of bullying.

“Every school has its failures,” he said. “We must face ours with humility. Only last year, St. Oswald’s suffered the ultimate tragedy. We let down a troubled young man by the name of Colin Knight”—at this I thought he glanced at me—“a young man who might still be with us today, if there had been a policy to deal with his situation.”

I suppressed an indignant oof. I’d like to see the policy that would have prevented what happened last year. Besides, in my experience, pastoral care and paperwork exist in inverse proportion to each other, like common sense and training.

However, once more, I forbore from comment. Suits and their policies come and go, rather like Headmasters. St. Oswald’s has borne such attacks before, and survived; I expect it to do so again. Still, I suspect that this will mean a tedious round of training days, organized by Thing One and Thing Two, during which such as Yours Truly will have to demonstrate awareness of such practices as cyber-bullying and Internet grooming, while performing role plays, building forts from furniture, and generally indulging in the kind of party games favored by the Drama Department.

Abuse guru. Ye gods.

Certain of my colleagues, of course, will respond to all this nonsense with the enthusiasm of a group of Cub Scouts gamboling around their Akela. Geoff and Penny Nation, the husband-and-wife team currently attached to the German Department, are both veterans of think tanks and focus groups; besides which, Penny once went on a course entitled Kids in Counseling, which left her under the delusion that she is approachable and relates well to “youth issues.”

For his part, Bob Strange seems impressed by the fact that, under the new regime, all St. Oswald’s current problems will be transferred to a series of policy documents, and will therefore completely cease to exist in the real world. As for Dr. Devine, well. He must remember the Harry Clarke affair, but he never taught Johnny Harrington, or had much to do with him. Eric too is aware of it; but he was on the outside of events, and his involvement in that old tale is mostly mine to remember.