Within fifteen minutes of arriving at Carvell, I already wanted to slit someone’s throat.
The tweed-clad woman in front of me glared at her clipboard as though it had personally wronged her. ‘Name?’
I shifted on the heels of my Doc Martens. They squeaked conspicuously on the chequerboard floor of the cavernous entrance hall. ‘Alice Wolfe. Philosophy.’
Judging by her disdainful expression, I got the feeling she’d been roped into these tedious welcome greetings in the absence of any student volunteers. Which made sense, because I was one of the first students to walk through the doors in ten years.
Her watery-blue eyes scanned a list. ‘You’re not on here. Did you submit your enrolment paperwork before the deadline?’
Through gritted teeth, I replied, ‘Yes.’
She gave a terse schoolmarm tut, pushing her half-moon glasses further up her nose. ‘You mustn’t have, because you’re not on here.’
Anger snapped across my chest like an elastic band; a hot, familiar sting. I couldn’t keep it from my voice. ‘Well, I definitely did. So it must be a cock-up on your end.’
At this the women inhaled sharply, as though the unsavoury word had caused her physical pain. Eyelids fluttering with distaste, she replied quietly, ‘There’s simply no need to be so rude. Iassureyou this is no fault of our administrative staff. I’m afraid you’ll have to resubmit your paperwork.’
I’d spent hours on that godforsaken paperwork the first time.
Deep in my blazer pocket the obnoxious Nokia ringtone blared, echoing around the cold stone entrance hall. The queue behind me was growing restless.
Breathe. Just breathe.
I lowered my voice and said, ‘I’ve already done the paperwork. Please would you check again?’
She issued a tight grimace. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to step aside and complete another set of forms. There are a lot more students I have to see.’
She looked down her nose at me, smug with self-importance, and the dam holding back my anger crumbled.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ I snapped. ‘Would it kill you to check one more time?’
She blinked sharply, as though a loud bang had gone off. Then, lips curling, she disappeared into a small office behind her welcome desk.
As usual, there was a soft ebb of pleasure as I let the anger out, followed by the cold tide of guilt and self-loathing; a deep undertow of shame.
Then came the acute sensation of being watched.
Following the paranoid tug, my gaze landed on a tall, bespectacled man in a walnut-coloured corduroy suit who was staring impenetrably at me. I recognised him as head of philosophy; his headshot had been in the prospectus. And he’d witnessed my outburst.
Hands folded over his sloping stomach, he gave me a chastising head shake, like a disappointed grandfather.
‘Such wrath isn’t very becoming of a young woman, you know,’ he said in a crisp academic tone. He adjusted his mustard-yellow tie. ‘And Iwouldprefer you not to speak to our faculty members in such an unpleasant manner.’
I glared at him, momentarily speechless.
Did heactuallyjust play the ‘unbecoming of a young woman’ card?
Before I could sling a low and dirty retort in his direction, the woman reappeared from the office, cowed. Without meeting my eye, she said, ‘We found your paperwork. Accommodation office is in the Jerningham building. Inauguration speech is at four p.m. in the chapel. Attendance is mandatory.’
The victory felt hollow. She handed me a dark green lanyard that cheerfully proclaimed ‘I’m a new student!’ and I scurried out of the entrance hall, head down to avoid the cold glares of the other students.
The campus was built in concentric semicircles around the grounds of a former convent; a proud stone building of stained-glass windows and ribbed vaults, flying buttresses and pointed arches, spires and towers and intricate tracery. The cobbled walkways were lined with black Victorian street lamps and gnarled trees with branches like crooked bones.
Outside the entrance hall was a statue of Sister Maria, one of the last nuns to live in the convent before it was converted into an academic institution. Her stone hands were clasped in prayer as she stood vigil. The folds of her habit draped down to her ankles in rough-hewn ripples, and her chiselled features bowed in a way that made her eyes sink into shadows. The beads of the rosaries snaking around her wrists were fat, glimmering rubies, surrounded by shallow scratches where many a desperate thief had taken a chisel to the precious jewels. The attempts were fruitless; they may have been worth a fortune, but the rubies were embedded in the stone as though by some greater force.
Sister Maria had been the original North Tower victim, falling to her death a little over a hundred years ago. Whether she jumped or was pushed, nobody has ever known.
Laying down my briefcase on the cobbled forecourt, I stood against the statue for a few minutes, taking in great gulps of the late September air and trying to gather my emotions.