“We’re not going to let her throw her future away over this.”

“Of course not,” Ebele said, and Walden realised with a start that she was on the receiving end of the soothing pastoral voice right now. She must look shaken, or worried, or— How embarrassing. But Ebele smiled at her comfortingly. “Don’t worry, Saffy. She’s been through a lot. And she’s a proud girl, very serious, very thoughtful, she doesn’t like to make mistakes. It’s perfectly normal to have some wobbles.”

chapter fifteen VAPE

Walden taught the rest of the lesson, ignoring the atmosphere that lingered over the other three students. She went back to the infirmary at break time, but Nikki was no longer there. The door of Ebele’s office was shut. Perhaps they were still talking; or perhaps Ebele was already caught up in the next crisis. There was always another crisis.

There was always another lesson; there was always another meeting; there was always another bell ringing, and this was one of the great comforts of school. Hour to hour the majestic machinery of the timetable moved hundreds of people around the corridors and offices and classrooms. You never had time to stop and worry. You did the job to the best of your ability, which meant you did what you could and moved on. When the problem of Nikki Conway came back in front of Walden, Walden would focus on it again. Until then, she had work to do.

Five o’clock, well after sunset at this time of year: now the end of Prep, and the double bell for after-school period, when the boarding pupils were shepherded to what the timetable called Enhancement Activities and the students called, obscurely, Trimmers. The day pupils who were not signed up to clubs streamed out of the school’s front gates and into the shiny cars—BMWs, Land Rovers, Teslas—of waiting parents, or waiting au pairs. Headlights blazed through the gloom. The twenty minutes it took to clear them all off the school site were some of the most tightly orchestrated of the day.

Walden, as senior staff, was on sweep duty through the sports hall’s basement locker rooms. Nothing the maintenance team could do would ever change the fact that this cramped underground maze of narrow wire lockers was where every teenager in the school dumped their sweat-soaked sports kit after Games. It smelled atrocious. She discovered a pair of malingering boarders, two fourteen-year-old girls, in the back corner of one of the girls’ locker rooms. She gave them a mild look. They stuttered with unconvincing innocence and fled.

Walden glanced up at the vape detector on the low basement ceiling and frowned. There were chalk marks around it. She was tired enough that she did not bother with either word or gesture. She just folded her arms and glared.