It was the better part of twenty years since Walden had been on a pub crawl. She’d done it at Oxford—determined, as an undergraduate, to enjoy herself and try everything—and she’d soon discovered that hangovers were not fun and that most people were more boring when they were drunk. The friends worth hanging on to had generally reached the same conclusion, and by the time she was twenty her whole social group had largely gotten over the impulse. It had been a bit of a shock to arrive in the States for her postgraduate studies and discover her peers, age twenty-two, all still in the eager stage of Well, we’re allowed now! when it came to alcohol. She’d felt a bit superior about it—although, to be fair, twenty-two-year-old Saffy had been capable of feeling superior about almost anything. What a little monster she’d been. You’re so fucking smug, Roz had told her, witheringly unimpressed; that conversation had probably been the best and most improving thing to happen to her during her first year in California.

The crush of the weekday evening Tube—even this late, in London, it was a crowd made as much of commuters as partygoers—and the cold air and the bright Christmas lights in Leicester Square together sobered her up a bit. The younger crowd were arguing about where to go (I’m not getting the night bus all the way back from fucking Brixton; Camden is shit now; A Spoons? Are you serious?) and she and Mark exchanged looks. He was wearing a wool winter coat and a college scarf. Walden nodded at it. “What college?”

“St John’s,” said Mark. “Cambridge.”

“Oh, so you’re a thaumaturge.” A magical degree, for obscure historical reasons, was called Sorcery at Oxford and Durham, Thaumaturgy at Cambridge and St Andrews, and Magic everywhere else.

“Guilty,” Mark said. “Trying to get my measure, Dr Walden? What about you?”

“Oxford. St Catherine’s,” Walden said. “Catz. Large and modern. It has a spectacular Brutalist building which I found quite homey after seven years in Scrubs. Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about Cambridge colleges. If you’d told me you were a Christ Church man I would have been able to draw some conclusions.” Posh, mostly, which she already knew. Every college had its reputation. Sometimes it was deserved.

“St John’s is the wanker college,” Mark said helpfully. “Lots of money, has the best May Ball, and there’s a little song about it.” He hummed and then sang quietly into the London night: “I’d rather be at Oxford than St John’s, oh I’d rather be at Oxford than St John’s…”

Walden laughed. “I’m sure you’re not all that bad.”

“Not at all. I met lots of perfectly lovely girls at John’s.”

“And you were perfectly nasty to them.”