After I figured out that Lottie was investigating me, I second- guessed my every move, trying to view it through the lens of suspicion. What would it look like if I disappeared to the library – the potential scene of my crime – for hours on end? What would it look like if I started asking around for more details about Poppy’s death?
And so I maintained the air of aloofness I’d spent my entire adolescence honing. I was pleasant to Lottie without ever crossing into keenness. I attended all my classes, but didn’t spend too much time in the library after hours. I read books while I ate meals in the dining hall, and smiled politely whenever anyone approached. I was the kind of gentle I’d never imagined I could be.
The strange thing about it was that it didn’t feel difficult. After the ritual, the constant imaginary arguments ceased entirely, and so there was no prickly defensiveness in my interactions with other people. The urge to smash a person’s head against a wall if they looked at me the wrong way evaporated. In fact, I couldn’t even recall what those flashes of anger or violence felt like; it was as though they’d been severed from my psyche altogether.
But the calmer I felt, the sadder I was that I didn’t have anyone to share it with.
Encouraged by my new freshness of spirit, I texted Noémie:
Miss you x
I wished her no ill will when she didn’t reply, though I did think wistfully of the last autumn we’d spent together, taking long walks through the Cheviots and drinking home-made hot cocoa mixed with the darkest chocolate we could find.
This new ease with which I moved through the world was welcome, for the most part. Sure, it was unnerving to feel that I was no longer whole – that so much of what made me Alice had been dug out at the root – but it made my existence feel so much less fraught. And if the price I had paid for this peculiar peace was a few missing hours and a dead moth, it seemed like a fairly good deal.
Of course, there was always the lingering dread that wondered whether thatwasthe whole price.
What if the real cost had been Poppy Kerr’s life?
However, when several days passed without another visit from the police, I had to deduce that the blood on my shirt had been proven to be my own. And with the absence of Poppy’s blood on my person, what did they even have to tie me to the crime, other than the fact that our time in the library had overlapped?
The logical explanation was that I had passed out after the ritual – maybe the tincture was lightly poisonous? – remained unconscious in the philosophy section for a few hours, and then staggered my way out at 3:58 a.m. as proven by Kate Feathering.
Feathering. The thought of her still sent a flicker of unease through me. She’d known my name without me having ever given it to her, but I kept reminding myself that it probably flashed up on the system when I scanned myself in. She would’ve remembered me, thanks to my altercation with the guy who asked for ink. Another logical explanation I clung to like a raft.
The presiding sense of serenity was a gift to my academic progress. I found that I could achieve a much deeper sense of focus during my study sessions. I could wrap my mind around broader concepts, think critically about widely accepted principles. My thoughts had a clarity to them that they’d never had before; a pure, singular chime as opposed to a riotous symphony.
It was good timing, because around a week after Poppy’s death, I had my first private tutorial with Professor Dacre. Before the ritual, I would have been beyond nervous about meeting with him, especially after his first few impressions of me were less than favourable. Now though, I felt confident I could win him back around with my new composure; my singularity of thought. If he was to be my mentor for the next three years, I wanted his opinion of me to be a positive one. I wanted toimpresshim.
Dacre’s office was high-ceilinged and bright, filled with objects of distinct beauty: Persian rugs and porcelain; little paintings of gods and monsters; low bookcases teeming with rare first editions; fine china teapots in Byzantine blue, with the bitter botanical scent of Earl Grey. Cut-crystal vases of wildflowers and herbs; the blues and purples and greens of foxgloves and ferns, the citrus musk of marjoram. The rattle-paned window was propped open by an ancient copy ofRoget’s Thesaurus, allowing Salem to come and go as she pleased – it was a favoured spot for her early evening nap.
The room had a sweet, heady air to it I found incongruous with Dacre himself; with his brown corduroy and tobacco- stained fingers and a general air of personal neglect. We’d been exchanging pleasantries about the weather for a few minutes when I decided to grab the thistle by the hand.
‘Professor Dacre, I just wanted to apologise for the anger you saw in me on the first day of the semester.’ I shifted in the wingback velvet armchair opposite his desk. ‘I was stressed and flustered and embarrassed. It won’t happen again.’
Dacre offered me a genial smile, little commas appearing at the corners of his sagging mouth. ‘Worry not. It calls to mind Aristotle: “Anybody can become angry, that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power, and it is not easy.” FromThe Art of Rhetoric.’ He crossed one leg over the other, trousers riding up to reveal mismatched socks. ‘You are still young, Ms Wolfe, and learning to control your anger is a lifelong pursuit. Yet it is a pursuit worth the effort. Anger left to run free is like wildfire, indiscriminate in its destruction. But if you learn to tame it, to position it, to take aim with it? Then it becomes a candle. And what is the candle but one of man’s greatest assets? It warms. It nourishes. It shines a light in the darkest of places, and it illuminates the path forward.’
I grinned wolfishly. ‘Speaking of paths forward, I was a little pissed off when you told me such anger was “unbecoming of a young woman”.’ I made pointed air quotes around the phrase.
A grandfatherly chuckle. ‘Forgive me. I ought not to have said it. I was forged in a different time, a different culture, but it’s no excuse. I must move with the zeitgeist. It’s fantastic to have such passionate women at Carvell.’
Women have been getting degrees for over a hundred years, I wanted to say, but I was finally back on steady ground with Dacre, and I would try to keep it that way. The man in front of me was going to be crucial to my future as a judge – a personal recommendation from him would secure a place at any law school I wanted.
Suddenly, it all seemed back within my reach, and I smiled to myself. Dead body aside, I was thrilled with how the ritual had turned out.
But things that seem too good to be true usually are, and this was no exception.