Daubery. Well, that explained it. And it also gave Walden a better guess at his age: he had to be an alumnus, but she had no memory of ever meeting him, so he was at least half a decade older than she was. She gave Will’s uncle, a magician who did ‘military stuff,’ a friendly and professional smile. There was no way to avoid having him imposed on her, that was obvious. And there was no need to assume the worst. But she did not like that she had never met him before. She did not like that he was a consultant, outside the school hierarchy; it was clear that she was not supposed to be able to tell him what to do, nor even to go over his head to David.

On top of that, knowing perfectly well that it might be unfair, she was immediately suspicious of the charming smile and good suit. Will as a schoolboy you could tell off for his nonsense was bearable, and even quite funny. Will as an adult colleague presented a range of unpleasant possibilities, including but not limited to ‘incompetent bullshitter’ and ‘absolute bastard.’ No sensible woman over the age of twenty-five felt anything but dubious in the face of a smiling posh chap with good cheekbones.

Mark Daubery’s smile was easy, but his eyes were cool and assessing. “The famous Dr Walden!” he said. “William talked about you right through Christmas dinner last year. It’s a pleasure.”

chapter thirteen RED LION

The Marshal barracks was a small house on the edge of the school site: two storeys, four bedrooms spread over both floors, a communal kitchen and living room, shared bathroom, peeling magnolia paint. This could use some smartening up, Walden thought as she let herself in that evening.

Keeping the school site pleasant and attractive was a roll-the-boulder-up-the-hill task. The grounds and maintenance team that Todd commanded obviously had to prioritise the areas that the students used. No matter how many tidy-up initiatives or environmental awareness days or stern school assemblies you arranged, it was impossible to prevent a large group of teenagers from being, essentially, a mindless hurricane of destruction. They stood on desks and plastic chairs and broke them; they were ungentle with the blinds and broke those; they leaned the wrong way against some ancient piece of plasterwork and broke that too. They made paper aeroplanes and used wind spells to fly them everywhere, and then never got around to collecting them up again. They lost pencil cases and schoolbooks and PE kits. They ate crisps and forgot to put the packets in the bin, they ate apples and chucked cores into bushes. They unbent paper clips and tried to scratch their names into the ancient wood and stone of the school chapel, joining a tradition of bored adolescent vandalism that stretched back six hundred years. Walden’s own initials, interlocked with Charlie’s, were etched secretly somewhere under a pew in there.