‘Has it happened to you?’

‘They tried, but I’m not having none of that.’

‘Who tried?’

‘Why’m I gonna tell you that? I’m not gonna tell you that. This is my job. You think they go after the students who pays them nine thousand pound a year? No, they go after me, they get rid of me. And there’s nobody else gonna talk to you about this, either.’

‘Actually, someone has.’

She felt Duncan look sharply at her, and ignored him.

Irina’s small mouth twisted and released a contemptuous laugh. ‘What idiot’s gonna talk to you about that?’ She turned to Duncan. ‘You got any more rubbish in here?’ And when he said no, she left, abruptly, with the transparent sac spinning by one stretched handle from her thumb.

Duncan was still looking at Claire. ‘She hasn’t given you permission, has she? Whoever she is.’

Claire approached other scouts at her college the next day, but found them unwilling even to chat about ordinary things. The story sat open on her laptop, unattributed, glowing with power. It distracted her from Measure for Measure so much that she had to write her essay before she’d finished reading the text. She expected the tutor to humiliate her for this, but he seemed half-asleep, and in fact only corrected her very mildly on a few points, as if he’d never anticipated anything better from her. She trudged back to her building, past the girls lying out on the lawns. The pages of their magazines glistened in the grass; their hair fell forward around their faces, and she could almost smell their shampoo: coconut and synthetic apples.

She got herself a Diet Coke, and as it clunked out of the vending machine she saw June pass by with her cleaning kit, humming to herself. She followed her upstairs to the communal kitchen, and found her cleaning the hobs.

‘I still can’t believe it,’ Claire said, watching June closely. ‘What happened to you.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ June replied. She had reached a tough bit of something unidentifiable, once onion, perhaps, now blackened, oily and welded to the burner, and she was having to press down on her knot of steel wool with both hands to try and dislodge it. The effort seemed immense. Claire started forward, as if to help, just as the clot gave way.

‘Look at that.’ June pinched it between her yellow-gloved fingertips and held it up as if it was a dead spider. ‘That’s been cooked about six times, that has. It’s their noodles. Honestly, they wouldn’t ever think to clean up.’