I was leaning against the stage, queuing up, and a posh voice said, “Oh, Tallulah, begorrah, bejesus. Did you have a noice time in your holidays?”

It was Lavinia and her mates Davinia and Anoushka.

Lav, Dav, and Noos.

For some reason, Lavinia pretends she’s Irish and even though I’m only about two years younger than her she treats me like I’m a half-witted five-year-old. I can’t really not like her because she’s so nice to me. But I know it’s only because I know Alex and she rates him. In fact, as I was thinking that, she said, “We must see that noice friend of yours again. . . . What was his name . . . Alex? When he next comes home, to be sure, to be sure.”

She tinkled her girlie laugh and swished her copper hair as she went off.

Flossie said, “SHE loves you as well. There’s a lot of love in the room for you, Tallulah.”

Gudrun, Sidone’s assistant, came onstage with the register. She was covered in knitwear from top to toe, including a knitted beret. She banged her gong and everyone ignored her except Flossie, who said, “Is she a knitted person?”

Gudrun shouted at us, “Achtung, Fräuleins!!! Bitte!! Achtung! Ve müssen sign the register!!!” (She always gets a bit German when she’s left in charge. It goes to her head.)

We carried on chatting. Gudrun shouted again, “Willkommen, girls. Danke for your attention. Erm, those girls at the back, will you just come down from the stag’s head? It’s, well, it’s not really made for sitting on. I don’t know how you got up there in the first place . . . and we don’t want any accidents . . .”

At that moment the stag’s head and the girls on it crashed to the floor. We all cheered.

After registration, we went to the loos. The water in the taps was freezing. And when I went to use one of the taps, it fell off in my hand. Then we found there were no towels, just a notice written by Bob:

No paper towels this term—we are saving the rain forest, dudes.

Remember,

Be a shaker

Not an endangered resource taker.

I had to dry my hands on my leggings.

As we came out, Bob was dragging a big roll of plastic sheeting up the stairs that led to the roof. I said, “Hi, Bob, didn’t recognize you without your horns.”

He said, “Yeah, it’s a bummer because my first love is the band, but hey, you’ve got to earn your bread.”

Flossie said, “What’s the plastic sheeting for?”

Bob said, “There’s been, like, a roof incident.”

Jo said, “What incident?”

Bob said, as he huffed and puffed away, “Well, dudes, it’s essentially blown off.”

I said to the Tree Sisters, “Get your umbrellas out. You’re going to need them when you go to bed.”

The rest of the morning we had tutorials and sorted out rehearsal times and class syllabuses and book lists, so we didn’t see much of each other until lunchtime. Still no sign of Sidone. Apparently, she’s off doing some community-work thing.