The class lasted an hour and a half. At the end of it, we thanked the doctor, who informed us that our regular supervisor would return at the end of the week. We threw away our gloves and passed out into the corridor, the room exhaling us like a long-held breath, the tension of the morning dissipating. Some of the students, exhausted from maintaining their pretence of indifference, laughed and made jokes in their relief. As we were putting on our coats the girl with the brown hair came up to me and whispered, ‘Ghoul,’ over my shoulder. Then she ran back down the corridor to catch up with her friends.

The two of us were the last to leave the building. Francis said he had to meet some friends for brunch on the other side of town, and did not invite me to join him. Before he left, I demanded an explanation. ‘How did we get away with that?’ I asked him.

‘I pay Willis and King a retainer to tell me when one of their teachers is off sick. They usually know before the lesson, because the teacher will email to cancel that day’s supervisions. Then I pay them a flat fee not to turn up. To be honest, I think they’re rather grateful. Do you have any idea of the average starting debt of a medical graduate?’

‘And what about the other students?’

‘What can they do? They may not like it, but since they didn’t say anything the first time, they really don’t have much choice other than to continue in complicity.’

It seemed odd to me that I had asked him how he had accomplished the morning, and not why, which was the single question turning over and over in my mind throughout the lesson. It was only when I came to actually asking it that I realized I was afraid to hear the answer. I was afraid because, despite my anger and disgust, I had done nothing to stop what had happened. In the lecture hall I had convinced myself that my compliance was forced, that Francis had roped me to the dissection with the threat of discovery. But even now I couldn’t find it in me to raise my voice to him, though the two of us were alone in the snow-covered street, with the experience and the danger it entailed left somewhere behind us in the warm corridors. Certainly, I had felt myself compelled to go through with the plan. Compelled, but not forced. Francis was waiting to see if I had finished questioning him, a good-natured smile balanced on his lips. He was tapping his feet in the slush, impatient for the company of his other friends. It was the wish to hold on to him for a few more moments that finally forced me to ask the question.

‘Why did you want me to go through that?’