“Oh, kiss my ass.”

“Here? Word would get around, mon ami.”

I didn’t react to this. For the very first time I couldn’t bring myself to laugh at one of Scott’s jokes. He watched me closely through the square inch-thick glasses he’d recently started to wear, of his own free will, in order to look like a geek. “Know why? Because of the girls.” There are no girls at Colet Court.

“When are you going to go and see him again, Valentiner?”

I shrugged. “My mum won’t let me.”

Scott tugged at the three hairs on his chin that he’s been trying, unsuccessfully, to sculpt into a beard. “She can’t stand the fact that you like him, mon copain. Jealousy. Like my dad. It rankles him that my mother loves me. The same problem all fathers have at the birth of their first son,” he stated pompously. He’s known that he wants to study psychology since he started seeing a psychotherapist at the age of nine near St. John’s, the church with the unicorn on its coat of arms. He intends to specialize in psychosis and somatic delusions.

Now, however, he was observing a group of older St. Paul’s pupils, who no longer had to wear a school uniform but were allowed to wear whatever they liked—as long as it included a jacket, an ironed shirt, and a tie, as well as full-length trousers. They were holding the doors open for one another.

“Where exactly did the accident happen, Valentiner?”

“On Hammersmith Bridge,” I replied. “Yesterday morning.” As we stared into each other’s eyes, the penny finally dropped in our highly gifted but idiotic brains. It always takes geniuses longer to understand the easiest thing. We’re totally and embarrassingly unequipped for everyday life.

“Merde, Valentiner! That’s just around the bloody corner from here! Your dad was hit as he—” Scott stops abruptly.

Yes, it would seem that my father . . . was on his way to see me. He was going to come! My sense of joy blazed for one bright second, but then the full force of my guilt came crashing down on me. If only I hadn’t sent him the email, he’d never have been on that bridge. If I hadn’t invited him to come, he wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed now, half-dead. If I hadn’t . . .

“Valentiner?” Scott asked.

I couldn’t answer.

“Valentiner! Whatever you may be thinking right now, check this out and then think again!”