He spotted his younger sister, Beep. She yelled: “Is the president dead?”

“Nobody knows,” Cam said. “Who’s got a radio?”

She thought for a moment. “Dr. Duggie has one.”

That was true, there was an old-fashioned mahogany wireless set in the head’s study. “I’m going to see him,” Cam said.

He made his way through the corridors to the head’s room and knocked on the door. Dr. Douglas’s voice called: “Come!” Cameron went in. The head was there with three other teachers, listening to the radio. “What do you want, Dewar?” said Douglas in his customary irritated tone.

“Sir, everyone in the school would like to listen to the radio.”

“Well, we can’t get them all in here, boy.”

“I thought you might put the radio in the school hall and turn up the volume.”

“Oh, did you, now?” Douglas looked about to issue a scornful dismissal.

But his deputy, Mrs. Elcot, murmured: “Not a bad idea.”

Douglas hesitated a moment, then nodded. “All right, Dewar. Good thinking. Go to the hall and I’ll bring the radio.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Cameron.

• • •

Jasper Murray was invited to the opening night of A Woman’s Trial at the King’s Theatre in London’s West End. Student journalists did not normally get such invitations, but Evie Williams was in the cast, and she had made sure he was on the list.

Jasper’s newspaper, The Real Thing, was going well, so well that he had dropped out of classes to run it for a year. The first issue had sold out after Lord Jane attacked it, in an uncharacteristically incontinent outburst during Freshers’ Week, for smearing members of the governing body. Jasper was delighted to have enraged Lord Jane, who was a pillar of the British establishment that disfavored people such as Jasper and his father. The second issue, containing further revelations about college bigwigs and their dubious investments, had broken even financially, and the third had made a profit. Jasper had been obliged to conceal the extent of his success from Daisy Williams, who might have wanted her loan repaid.

The fourth issue would go to the printer tomorrow. He was not so happy with this one: there was no big controversy.

He put that out of his mind for the moment and settled in his seat. Evie’s career had overtaken her education: there was no point in going to drama school when you were already getting film parts and West End roles. The girl who had once had an adolescent crush on Jasper was now a confident adult, still discovering her powers but in no doubt about where she was going.

Her distinguished boyfriend sat next to Jasper. Hank Remington was the same age as Jasper. Although Hank was a millionaire and world famous, he did not look down on a mere student. In fact, having left school at the age of fifteen, he was inclined to defer to people he thought were educated. This pleased Jasper, who did not say what he knew to be true, that Hank’s raw genius counted for a lot more than school exams.