The old man gave her a thoughtful look. “Something, all right,” he agreed. “Bit like the boilers, if you ask me. Better to sort it out before it goes bang.”

By the time Walden got out of her meeting, the school day had officially ended. There were still plenty of people about. She paused for a moment in the colonnade on the west side of the quad. She had barely had a chance to look out the window, let alone step outside, since she had started her working day at half past six that morning.

It was a glorious October afternoon. The light had that peculiar autumnal clarity that made the quad look like an antique print of itself: greens, reds, blacks, a blue and golden sky. The shadow of the chapel’s angular roof cut a neat diagonal across the lawn. A chattering line of students in scarlet uniform blazers snaked out of the door to the tuck shop in the Old Refectory and round the edges of the perfectly mowed green. Half a dozen Year Sevens were playing a game with light spells, evoking beginners’ firework illusions in pink and orange and shouting excitedly as they weaved in and out of the columns of the colonnade. Some Year Elevens walked past in a tight, conspiratorial cluster, giggling about something on a phone. Under the tightly pruned oak tree at the far side of the quad, a pair of sixth formers had claimed a favoured spot—the quad’s only bench—where they were sharing a packet of crisps. The staffroom’s outer door was open on their left, and Walden could see a group of teachers sagging into armchairs and drinking tea. At the doors of the chapel stood Reverend Ezekiel, a tall middle-aged Black man in dark gown and clerical collar. He caught sight of Walden and waved.

Walden waved back. She felt a glow of warmth for the whole scene: the buzzing, noisy, complicated, exhausting, surprising, entertaining, endlessly delightful life of a healthy school. She was well on the way to another sixteen-hour work day, she could feel it—she had marking and lesson planning still to do, there was a faculty meeting to chair tomorrow morning before registration, she needed to set up that session with Kenning and the archivist, spend an hour tuning the thaumic engines, and in fact write her own incident report on Old Faithful’s attempt this morning—but it didn’t trouble her. Walden loved her job. Chetwood was hers and she belonged here, in this place where she did good and meaningful and interesting work every day of her life. What had she spent the last two decades working for, if not this?