Dean Mordue stood behind a polished walnut lectern in a tailored blue dress. She was shorter and thinner than I expected her to be, but her shoulders were squared proudly, her chin tilted to the ceiling of the old chapel. Behind her was a vast rose window, glazed with cherry-red and forest-green stained glass, the whole thing divided into floral segments by intricate stone mullions. A black cat sat on the windowsill, peering in with vague interest.
Hands clasped tightly around the sides of the lectern, Mordue addressed the several hundred students packed into the pews.
‘Many of you know of my own rich history with this school.’ Her accent was crisp and neutral, but there was a subtle Scottish rumble to it if you listened closely. ‘It was my very first faculty job, in its very first year of opening – back in the early sixties, which must be an inconceivably long time ago to your young minds. I had just received my doctorate in English literature from the University of Oxford, having been taught at undergraduate level by none other than J.R.R. Tolkien.’
There was an audible gasp. I looked around at my peers, at the two stunned strangers flanking me in the pews, amazed they didn’t know this already. It was almost as though they hadn’t spent the whole summer researching Carvell and its faculty in immense detail. Weird.
She smiled warmly. ‘I arrived at Carvell bright-eyed and stuffed with wonder, ready to impart everything I’d learned. Shaping young minds was nothing short of magic, to me. I still feel that way today, even after a long decade away from the place that has always felt like my home – both academically and spiritually. But, as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it is with immense gratitude that I welcome you all back here today.’
At the mention of the school’s closure, the cold air was pulled taut.
A few pews over, I saw Lottie sit up straighter. By the look of things, she’d already made friends with a couple of other girls. They were wedged tightly together in the pews, as though close physical proximity would cement their relationship faster. Something bitter curled in my stomach. People like Lottie would always make friends easily. It was my own fault I wasn’t one of them.
I turned my attention back to Dean Mordue, who had let a misty silence settle around the chapel.
‘The North Tower victims are with us today,’ she said firmly, but with a kind of defiant tenderness. ‘They will always be with us. Sam Bowey, Janie Kirsopp, Fiona Taylor, Dawn Middlemiss. I think of them every day. I pray for their families every night.’ She lifted a hand to the dainty cross necklace hanging at her throat. ‘They came . . . Sorry.’ She took a quiet moment to compose herself, as though the emotion threatened to spill over. ‘They came to this university to give themselves better lives, and instead they lost them. This tragedy should never be shied away from, never be swept under the rug. May they never be forgotten.’
She shifted on the stage, and it creaked beneath her pointed ankle boots. An old brown radiator sighed nearby. ‘That said, tragedy tourism will never be welcome on this campus. There will be no press interviews. There will be no photographs sold to the media. There will be no rumour-mongering, no childish speculation, no dishonouring the victims in either life or death. No putting their families through even more pain than they’ve already suffered. And finally, the North Tower is permanently out of bounds. Any student found breaching this rule will be expelled on the spot.’
A murmur spread through the students like wind through rushes, but Mordue simply talked over it.
‘First and foremost, we are here tolearn. To grow. To think.’ She spread her arms wide. ‘We must never lose our thirst for knowledge, for understanding, for wisdom. So too must we strive for kindness, for sincerity, for collective purpose. And we must always look inward. We must study ourselves with rigour, and interrogate our flaws. We must becomebetter, in all the ways it is possible to be so. We must not leave this school the same people we were upon arrival.’
I shivered underneath my black wool turtleneck. A bat’s gossamer wings fluttered in the rafters. As I peered upward, my gaze snagged on someone else’s. The professor who’d witnessed my outburst this morning was watching me carefully. When I caught him staring, he didn’t even have the good grace to look embarrassed. He simply smiled mildly and turned away.
Although the undertow of shame had mostly subsided, it rippled at the split-second interaction. A brilliant academic I had so badly wanted to impress already thought me awful. And who could blame him? My sharp edges were already snagging on the world around me.
Mordue clasped her hands together with an air of finality. ‘As I stand here, I am exceedingly hopeful and optimistic about the future of this school. How can I not be optimistic when I see the future in front of me? You are the future; the future is yours. Now go and claim it.’
It was a rousing sentiment; one that brought to mind gusty autumn winds and choral music and black graduation caps tossed in the air.
And yet within weeks, that very future I was supposed to claim would be all but burned to ash.