The truth was that she was barely even Saffy, most days. Dr Walden was the self she had made, the home she possessed, a person with knowledge and experience and power and status and a place to belong. Saffy was a compromise, because people liked you to have a human side. And of course she did have a human side. Who didn’t?

She felt very human just then, smiling at a good-looking woman in her kitchen at two in the morning. For a moment—just a moment—she was not really, not at all, thinking about her job.

“Good night, Saffy,” Laura said. “I’ll see you in the morning. And I’ll look forward to half term.”

“Likewise,” said Walden. “Good night, Chief Marshal Kenning.”

“Oh, for—”

“Laura,” said Walden, and she felt very human indeed, and quite brave, when she boldly dropped a kiss on the Marshal’s cheek, before she left her sitting in the kitchen and went to bed.

OCTOBER HALF TERM

chapter twelve REPUTATIONAL DAMAGE

“Dr Walden, thank you for waiting,” said the Chair of Governors. “We’ve agreed a compromise.”

Walden’s gaze flicked round the meeting room—panelled walls, oil paintings, uncomfortable blue plastic folding chairs around an ancient long refectory table—trying to assess what ‘compromise’ meant. Two intensely busy weeks had passed since Old Faithful had made its move, broken through in a critical incursion, and died at Walden’s hands. The governors were mostly male, though there were a few women among them. They were all well-dressed, and almost all white. David, as Headmaster, sat at the Chair’s left hand. His expression gave nothing away. This meeting was the final stage of the governors’ formal investigation into the disaster.

“Chetwood is one of the leading schools of magic in this country—I daresay, in the world. You were appointed Director of Magic as part of that mission. Now, our whole school community must take this demonic incursion very seriously.”

It was quite something to be accused of ‘unseriousness’ about demonic incursion by a person who had probably had to look up eleventh-order demons on Wikipedia two weeks ago when he got the phone call. Sometimes Walden regretted being a grown-up. It meant you could not say what you actually thought. But she kept smiling. She had no leverage here. It was quite likely that she was about to unceremoniously lose her job. She had been deep in crisis management for the last two weeks. She knew how many angry and frightened phone calls from parents there had been. She knew that next year’s eleven-plus entrance applications were down. The bloody local journalist had not been able to resist the drama: a critical incursion, an eleventh-order demon, right here in our sleepy Buckinghamshire village—just think of what could have happened to the children! And think of what could still happen to our house prices!