iv

I don’t remember the last few auditionees or what I had to say about them. Nor do I remember leaving the faculty, arriving in the city center car park. But I do remember that, as I walked through market square toward college, the sun was low and the summer shadows were long. Although there still stood the usual stalls with their candy-striped awnings, their unsold flowers and doughnuts and vegetables and crystals yet to be tidied away, the square was quiet enough for me to hear the sound of Joseph’s voice momentarily pealing in my head. Even in the warmth, the hairs on my arms rose up like radio antennae straining to pick up the faraway tune. I hurried on past the little church whose name I never knew, past a row of Italian chain restaurants that hadn’t been there in my day. Past The Eagle, that pub where those scientists discovered DNA.

The one thought that has always calmed me is Alexa. And I reached for her then: I pictured her making tea, curled into the sofa, brushing her long, dark hair. I imagined calling her right now and telling her everything, heard her calmly telling me to walk back to the car and get home immediately. In my head, I spoke her name like a psalm, a plea for protection. Because it wasn’t friends or family or music that had sustained me across the dark years following Bryn’s death. It was her, and the fact of our friendship blooming inexplicably into something more. People say that love makes them a better person. But Alexa choosing me? It had transformed me completely, made me unrecognizable to my meek and forgettable former self. Now, when I came home after a poorly attended concert and turned on the radio to hear one of my university peers conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, or when a pupil’s parent spoke down to me because their estate agent salary afforded them better shoes than mine, I reminded myself: Alexa chose me. And everything I did—however terrible—I did for her. But I couldn’t call her.

Jesus, had I tried to explain even a half of it, to anyone, the words would have stuck in my throat like tiny bones. Just change quickly and get straight to the bar, I told myself. Have dinner, leave early, then sleep in the car if needs be.

I was so lost in these thoughts that college came upon me abruptly, like a mugger. As imposing as the day I first encountered it, with its vast gates and impenetrable walls. I had the distinct feeling of being not wanted, but maybe that was normal. Maybe I’d never felt particularly welcome here.

While I stared, trying to stop my teeth from chattering, the slow shift from day to night spread gold across New Court. Soft light fell across the chapel in its reverent quiet, the immaculate lawn, just like that terrible moment all those years ago. The only difference was that time was mirrored—back then, night had been turning into day. In that glorious, terrible glow I recalled the stilled fairground rides, the courtyard littered with empty champagne bottles. And I heard again the porter’s feet clattering on the path, his voice as he shouted at someone to Call an ambulance, now, his fierce composure useless as those beautiful limbs that lay splayed and broken on the unforgiving ground.

When I signed in at the porters’ lodge, the porter—someone new, unfamiliar to me—gave me overly detailed directions to my room, and I didn’t bother to say they weren’t necessary. He also confirmed that I’d be the sole resident of my staircase, what with it being the holidays (a fact that wasn’t as welcome as he assumed it would be), and looked at me strangely when I fumbled the keys he dropped into my hand.

The walls of Old Court leaned in close, and their windows peered guardedly down. Although I expected staff to come hurrying by, perhaps bearing fine wines or tableware for our dinner, nobody passed me as I made my way around the lawn. More than once I reached to adjust the record bag in which I carried my rumpled lecture notes and half-written essays, but that bag was long gone now.

Through the familiar double doors and into the hallway, the silence became more insistent and oppressive, so much like a presence in itself that it made me look over my shoulder. Straight ahead, the door to the room I’d booked as if I had no alternative. Mona’s room. My room. Its immediate familiarity was a strange and partial kind, like something from a film or a photograph—something only ever seen through a lens, or else completely imagined. But my body remembered it better, and when I slipped the key into the lock I automatically jiggled it, just so, like I’d had to back then. The lock responded with a soft click, allowing me inside.

For a moment I was sure I was in the wrong place. In the spot where the desk had been there was now a sad, brown sofa. By the wall, where the wardrobe once sat, a thin-legged desk and its matching chair. The coffee table was gone, replaced by another that seemed equally unstable. Although there were no pictures, no books on the shelves, the space gave off a strong sense of belonging to someone else. I threw my case on the bed and shrugged off my jacket. Then I paced the ugly carpet, letting my fingertips slide over the bare walls.

I’m not sure why I did it. But I stepped toward the closed door and put my ear against the wood, like I had all those years ago. There was no sound but a near-inaudible white noise, which might have been the shush of wind outside or the rush of blood inside my own head. Then, very slowly, I bent into a crouch and lowered my cheek to the floor. Peered underneath the door. Nothing, of course. I couldn’t help but notice the ache in my knees, the soft noise I inadvertently made as I leaned more weight into my hands.

Then, from above: a thud. Like someone landing two-footed on the floor. Instinctively I jumped to my feet, curved my hands above my head as if the ceiling might cave in. But after that, the only sound was my heart, thumping. What the fuck? The porter had explicitly said there was nobody else here. The distance to the lodge, to the common room and the bar, suddenly felt very great. It occurred to me that, while I’d started worrying about what might happen during the night, I might not even make it to dinner. Perhaps, in the next few moments, the lights would blink out and the door handle would turn and all would be darkness until Tim found me, gibbering and clawing at my own arms.

I unpacked my overnight bag. Dress shoes, new socks. The deodorant I only wore because Alexa said she liked the smell. Then I dressed, quickly. But not before jamming the chair under the door handle, the way people do in TV shows, and securing the window lock with my tie. When I stared at my pale reflection in the mirror above the tiny sink, I wondered whether the room recognized me, or whether it was as surprised by the ageing, frightened face as I was myself.

Don’t let him inside your head, I thought. Don’t give him the power. He has enough of that already.

Tim didn’t comment that I was late arriving in the college bar, that I’d left him alone to mingle with the other scholarship representatives. He merely pointed out the many things that delighted him: the jukebox, standing as brightly as before, the chalkboard still scrawled with special offers. Observing these things, I was momentarily my student self again. As if there was an essay deadline I was about to miss. Of course, Tim asked about the auditions (I almost spilled my pint when my mind resurrected the memory of Joseph’s beautiful, horrible song) but he believed me when I said everything had been fine.

Because of my lateness, we had only a few minutes before it was time to head up the old staircase, to join my fellow judges gathered outside the dining hall. As we moved forward in a queue, I had the feeling of time being disordered: pages of music, scattered in the wind. Once more, I felt a room of eyes upon me. That terrible burning in my leg.

And the more I stepped forward, the more I seemed to be moving backward, to that moment that was always waiting for me however hard I tried to outrun it.

May balls are possibly the most Cambridge thing about Cambridge. Huge, high-production events, they take place within the colleges during May Week: a period of partying which, despite the name, typically begins on the second Thursday in June, and which includes a day of heavy drinking known ominously as Suicide Sunday.

That year, our own college’s ball had the cryptic theme of Dreamscapes—“a night beyond your wildest imaginings”—and several of our group would be attending as part of a couple. Jamie would be paired up with Natalia, a horrible socialite who had, at our first meeting, made fun of my shoes for having rubber soles. Sarah would be bringing Jasper, a slow-witted bloke who had a rugby blue and was studying something called Land Economy.

And, of course, there was me and Alexa. Which was both a dream and a nightmare. How provoked might Bryn be by the sight of me and Alexa, the two of us slow dancing in our finery like forties film stars?

I couldn’t explain the whole situation. But I needed Alexa to understand that we mustn’t bump into Bryn at the ball, the argument being: We mustn’t rub our happiness in his face, Lex. This argument seemed best made over a nice dinner, and while my bank balance wouldn’t stretch to a meal out—not with the ball and its myriad expenses on the horizon—I could cook for us, take the food to her room. So, keeping the details a surprise, I asked Alexa to block out the evening, then I called my mum and asked what the hell to do. Although Mum tried not to react to the news of my burgeoning romance, I heard her excitement as she talked me through some recipes that were not only seductive but manageable for a novice with access to one small hob and a kettle (bolognese, then).

Which is how, the afternoon before the ball, I came to be crying over a chopped onion, my fingertips papered with bits of garlic skin. All the while I dreamed of what it would be like to be at the ball with Alexa. Surely the comedians would be twice as funny, the food more delicious. Even better—with her hand in mine, I myself would be doubly charming. Alexa would be a witness to these experiences I never expected to have, able to say: yes, you were there, and it really happened.

I texted Alexa from the smoky kitchen, revealing what I was up to, and she responded with genuine shock at the effort I was making. Then, after what seemed a ridiculous amount of simmering, I headed out to pick up some wine. Outside college, I found myself peering in clothes shop windows, admiring eveningwear extras such as top hats and canes, wondering whether they’d make me look dandyish (or maybe more like a cruise ship conjurer?). Only that morning Alexa had collected her ball gown from the dressmaker’s, and I imagined her inside an air-conditioned boutique, the walls lined with rails of silk and satin and lace; here, Disney damsel colors of powder-pink and duck-egg blue, there, alarming siren reds and arsenic greens. I imagined her surrounded by mirrors, rows of Alexas reflected infinitely into space.

I was inside the wine shop, working through the cheaper shelves, when my phone began to buzz. It was Alexa, and she sounded terrible.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, her voice scraping like chairs on a lecture hall floor. “I can’t catch up tonight. I feel awful.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I got a sore throat earlier, and it’s been getting worse all afternoon. I had a nap to see if I’d feel better, but I’m really rough. I know you wanted us to have dinner—”

“Hold on, I’m coming over.”

“Really, don’t bother—”

“Can I bring you anything? I’ve got cough and cold medicine, paracetamol—”

“Please don’t worry, I’m just going to sleep it off.”

Hanging up, I ran back down Trumpington Street and toward college, scattering the pigeons. With every step, I tried to quell my rising disappointment and anxiety. When I made it to Alexa’s I knocked gently at the door, as if the sound might cause her pain, and after a moment or two of shuffling and rustling she opened it, wearing her pajamas and a weary expression. She didn’t look sick—in fact, she looked lovely—but her eyes had a flatness I didn’t recognize.

I gave her a sympathetic smile. “Hey.”

She sighed, almost sheepish. “You didn’t have to come.”

“I wanted to check that you’re okay.”

“I am. I just need to rest.” Then, after a pause, “I’m really sorry. To cancel last minute.”

“Don’t be sorry. Dinner will keep.”

She offered something between a smile and a frown. I hoped she’d invite me inside for a bit, as if my presence might be a tonic. But she seemed dazed. Behind her, a zipped-up garment bag, crisp and new, lay flat across her sofa. I nodded at it. “Best that you get well for the ball. That thing isn’t going to wear itself.”

She nodded, listless. I took a couple of cautious steps into the room, still hoping for that invitation to stay. In the silence, I looked over Alexa’s shoulder at her desk, at her things in their comfortable chaos: a book of poetry, open like a bird crash-landed, next to a scattering of photocopies and a barely touched sandwich. Her Doc Martens, dumped in the middle of the floor.

And there, among the nail polish and the stray buttons, a postcard, writing side up. I say “writing,” but it was in fact a pattern of peculiar symbols. Loops and curls and crosses. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t immediately say why.

Alexa gestured at her rumpled clothes. “I’m not really fit for company …”

“Don’t be silly,” I replied, eyes on the postcard. “You look great.” I had the feeling of having forgotten something. As if I should pat my pockets: phone, keys, wallet.

Wait a second. These were the same scrawled symbols I’d first encountered in Bryn’s room, on the paper that I’d stolen from his bedside drawer, during that weekend when I’d actually wanted him and Alexa to be together. Shaking my head, I tried to gather myself. Alexa, increasingly puzzled, continued to hold open the door. Fuck. I needed more time, to see, to think. “So,” I said, stalling, “you’re just going to …”

“Go to bed.”

“Right, right. Good idea.”

Another glance. The corners of the postcard were neat and sharp, so it must have been either well looked-after or very recently received. There was no address or stamp, which meant it had been hand delivered, to Alexa’s pigeonhole or to Alexa herself.

“You know,” I said, rambling now, “call me any time. Like, even if it’s the middle of the night. I don’t mind.”

“I just need to rest up.”

I wished there was some way of me comparing this card with the paper I’d stolen, the one I’d carried back to Cambridge, the day I’d become ill.

There, that feeling of the floor falling away. The memory of that MR James story, tolling like a distant bell, of carefully written curses slipped from one man to another. The day I’d taken the paper from Bryn’s room, I’d become violently sick. Now, Alexa had a paper bearing the same weird symbols, and she was sick too. Was there something slipped into Mona’s pocket, something that had turned her mad? It wasn’t possible. But hadn’t I seen and heard enough now to know that, in fact, it was? Would I swear there was nothing poisonous about those papers, those charms, of his? Stupid, to think that he’d punished us enough. I knew all this, suddenly and surely, and there was nothing I could do to prove it.

If only Alexa would ask me to stay, I could take a closer look at the postcard. Maybe memorize some of those shapes, look them up. But she merely leaned against the doorframe, her smile like a blown rose. Think, think, think. Every extra second I lingered, awkwardness accumulated, cloying as hospital flowers.

But then Alexa stooped to pick a tissue from the floor, and in that fraction of a second I pictured how Bryn would do it: he’d pretend to look at his watch and then, easy as you like, he’d put his hand on the postcard, slide it off the desk and into his pocket. Fuck it, he’d probably swipe the sandwich as well, just because he could. While Alexa’s eyes were fixed on the ground, I mimicked those imagined movements: passed my hand over the postcard, pulled it toward me—

—felt it creasing as I stuffed it clumsily into my trouser pocket—

—saw Alexa clocking the movement, furrowing her brow—

“What are you doing?”

I stiffened. Blinked. “Nothing.”

Her voice was flat. “I saw you take it.”

“What?”

“Give it to me.”

She lunged at me, like a kid who can’t believe that you won’t let them play with that cigarette lighter, but I stepped backward into the corridor and her grasping hand only grazed my chest. “Lex—”

“Give it back!”

“Just hold on—”

“How dare you! You can’t just take my things, my private things!”

As she glared at me, her face a sheet of fury, I felt surer than ever. Sajid, Kenny, Mona. Now Alexa. The people who displeased him were dealt with, sooner or later. “Lex, please listen. I know this sounds crazy, but you shouldn’t be near Bryn.”

Her eyes and mouth became huge. “What?”

“When did he give this to you?”

“That’s my business!”

I had to give her a reason, however feeble or beside-the-point it may be. “Alexa,” I said, pleading, “Bryn doesn’t treat people well.”

“He’s not the one going through my stuff like a fucking stalker!”

“Remember what he was like with other girls.”

She came at me again, but I put out a hand, fingers spread, ready to hold her back if I had to. When she finally stepped away, resigned, she let out a laugh that was bitter, ugly, new to me. “You’re fucking out of order, you know that?”

“Lex, I swear to God, I’m doing this to protect you. On my life, okay? I’ll explain everything, if you’ll let me, but I can’t give this back to you, I have to do this …”

As we observed one another, I felt as if there might be someone, something, up the staircase, listening. A draft passed around my neck, as if a face leaned close to mine.

Then I took the postcard in both hands and ripped it in two. Ripped it again. I think Alexa shrieked, or maybe it was in my head. I kept pulling and tearing until the whole thing was unreadable, and when some of the pieces fell from my hands I didn’t bother to pick them up.

The door slammed in my face. Somewhere, someone seemed to stifle a giggle. How long might it take for Alexa to go back to normal? Should I wait a while and knock again? No, I needed time to work out what to say. I trudged back down the stairs and through college, depositing different bits of the postcard in different bins along the way. It seemed safest, somehow.

When I got back to my own staircase in New Court, I headed up to the kitchen to grab some of the bolognese I’d prepared. There I discovered that, instead of turning the hob off, I’d actually just turned it very low. So, the sauce was now nothing more than a blackened residue, baked solid onto the pan, filling the kitchen with the stink of charcoal. I threw the pan into the sink and retreated to my room. All the while, an idea burned at the back of my brain. It wasn’t just Alexa’s sickness that had disturbed me. It was that she hadn’t been herself.

When we act in a way that seems uncharacteristic, who is the new “self” that feels so wrong? And where does the real self go? But the biggest question: How could I think he’d let us get away with it so easily?

The next day, lighting rigs and stage equipment sprang up in the courtyards, rides and inflatables and fast food vans. Everywhere was a kind of merry chaos, so unlike the imperious calm that usually characterized college. Crates of clanking bottles, instrument cases, elaborate flower displays—all made their way through the college gates in preparation for a night that, the marketing assured us, would live long in the memory.

I didn’t see Alexa directly before the ball. It didn’t seem wise. In any case, although a series of texts revealed that she’d calmed down after the postcard incident (her illness having disappeared remarkably quickly after my intervention, a fact that chilled me), I wasn’t quite back in her good books. She’d decided to get ready with the girls, and I was going to find her once the celebrations were underway.

So, as the clock above the chapel chimed seven, I opened the champagne I’d bought for us to share and made a toast by myself. I thanked the universe for Alexa. And I made a quiet but fervent plea that we could avoid Bryn for the night. After tonight we’d be packing up and heading home for the holidays, where I’d have time to work out what to do.

Wishing for an extra pair of hands to help with my cufflinks (which I didn’t particularly like and had only bought because he had some similar), I caught sight of myself in the mirror. They say a tux makes anyone look good, but I wasn’t sure whether I looked better or just not like me. Maybe those things were the same. I added a pocket square, tied my bow tie. Then, knowing that all I needed now was Alexa on my arm, I drained my glass and stepped out into the evening.

New Court was so spectacularly beautiful that I momentarily forgot my fears. The walls were washed with turquoise light, creating the impression that we all stood within a Barbadian cove, or at least an enormous fish tank. Above us, acrobats whirled on invisible wires like fireworks exploding against the violet sky. Immediately to my left were two punts, beached on piles of glittering sand and painted seashells, lined with ice and filled with bottles of fizz. Most partygoers headed for the two attendants—mermaids, apparently, who were languidly presenting freshly filled flutes—while others yanked whole bottles from the ice and continued cheerfully on their way.

To my right was a row of stalls, decked in greenery and artificial flowers in the style of an enchanted forest. From the first came the smell of freshly fried doughnuts, all warm yeast and powdered sugar. From the next, onions, blackening sweetly, ready to be slathered on top of startlingly pink hot dogs. Crêpes, French fries, waffles and ice cream, the latter topped with dinky marshmallows and rainbow sprinkles and neon-red raspberry sauce. Childish pleasures from seaside days and circus nights, a subtle sign that we, even in our eveningwear, were still a long way from the adults we were destined to be.

I paused amidst the hubbub, texted Alexa to ask where and when we should meet. Pressing send, I spied Tim at one of the stalls, a hot dog in each hand, licking at some sauce dribbling down his wrist. The sight of him made me wince. Since our museum visit I’d been awkward around Tim, only ever agreeing to meet him when I was sure Berenice wasn’t around (once literally running away when I saw the two of them emerging from the post room) and never once admitting the absurdity of my behavior. While I wondered whether to scarper, Tim turned and spotted me. I felt like a schoolkid caught in a sweet shop when they should be in double science.

But here he was, waving his steaming snacks in the air and smiling, striding toward me. Plain, dependable Tim, in his imperfectly fitted jacket and his clip-on bow tie, who was always there and who I didn’t appreciate in the least for it.

“Everything’s free, so I got two,” he announced simply, hands outstretched. “Want one?”

“Yeah, go on,” I said, taking one. “Thanks.”

He beamed, bright and unconditional as ever. “So,” he said, “I’ve done a recce. The main stage is in Old Court. Apparently the headliner is a Christina Aguilera impersonator.”

“The budget must have gone on the fizz.”

“Do you want to head to the bar? I think there’s some comedy on.”

Actually, all I wanted was to find Alexa. But maybe the bar was a decent place to hide out, better than being in a wide open space where Bryn could appear from anywhere. I followed Tim’s lead, stopping briefly at a gin stall to take a cocktail with my free hand.

Stepping inside, I scanned the crowded bar. Embroidered drapes swagged from the ceiling, punctuated by golden pantomime lanterns, and beyond the windows that usually looked out onto New Court, starry fabric hung, giving the impression that it was already night outside. Aladdin’s cave, maybe, or Scheherazade’s chambers? On a small stage a man and a woman improvised valiantly while audience members fidgeted and chattered. There was no sign of Bryn.

A familiar voice cut through the crowd. Was that Jamie? Yes it was, commandeering several tables with some boat club buddies. His black tie jacket was, confusingly, white, and I wondered whether the rules were deliberately designed to baffle or whether he was allowed to break them. Beside him was Natalia, stony-faced, weary at the world’s constant failure in its duty to please her. As we passed, I leaned in to say hello—but there was a hardness in Jamie’s eyes, as if he were pretending not to see me. Not surprising, really, that he’d sided with Bryn.

Tim and I squeezed through the crowd, careful not to blot ketchup against furry shrugs and dinner jackets, before settling ourselves at the back. I eased my phone from my pocket, to see if Alexa had replied, but put it away when I realized we’d picked the only spot that never got any signal.

The performers plowed on over the ceaseless chatter. Tim ate his hot dog, I worked on my cocktail. Punchlines came periodically, and the audience reacted slightly behind the beat, distracted by friends appearing, disappearing. I very quickly felt restless. For all its glitter, the scene seemed flat. As my attention drifted, I found myself staring at the long, leaded windows that should have looked out onto the courtyard but now showed only an artificially created night. Our own selves shimmered in the glass, a sea of smiling expressions.

But there, standing right in the middle of the reflected audience, was Alexa. Only she looked different to the rest of us. Not smiling at all.

I turned from the window and scanned the actual room. But where Alexa should have been, there was only the chaos of the bar and its patrons.

Another look at the window. Yes, Alexa was there in that reflected scene, her face pale and forlorn. And looming behind her was another figure: one whose smile was unnaturally wide. Within this tableau, Alexa moved toward the door. The figure moved too. Fuck.

I leapt up and looked again around the space. But I couldn’t see Alexa among that real-life mess of body parts, the wine-stained mouths. The crowd shrieked with laughter, a pointed, hysterical peal.

Once more I looked back at the window. Alexa was disappearing out of the bar, just a pale shoulder and a coil of dark hair now. The figure was following, its face a blur, like a pencil drawing smudged with the heel of a hand. But I knew it was him—the way you can conjure a whole person from a scrap of their handwriting or from the smell of their clothes.

Without a word to Tim I crashed into the crowd and fought my way out, ignoring exclamations about my rudeness. My one thought: that I had to reach Alexa before he did.

I ran around Old Court, scanning every silken silhouette and every band of black jackets. Here, a string quartet playing a stupid classical pastiche of some Britney Spears song while girls twirled the skirts of their evening gowns in a sloppy courtly dance. There, a collection of fairground games: a coconut shy, a hook-a-duck, a dunking chair on which a third-year historian shivered nervily, bare skin prickling in the evening air. No sign of Alexa or Bryn. The garish colors of the soft toys, the novelty hats, the striped paper bags of sweets, were all sickening beneath the electric lights. Kicking uselessly at a balloon sculpture, I dashed back into New Court.

An arch of flowers bloomed extravagantly above the staircase that led to the dining hall. Deciding it was worth a try, I took the steps two at a time, moving beneath an undulating ceiling of green plastic vines. At the top of the stairs was the tail end of a queue, making its slow tread into the hall itself, and I fell in at the back, occasionally standing on tiptoes to peer above a sea of coiffed heads. If I didn’t find them here, I told myself as I dialed Alexa’s number, I’d go back to the bar and ask Tim for help.

I’d reached Alexa’s answerphone more than once by the time the queue carried me through the large wooden door that opened into the hall. Inside, the lights were already low. Chairs, all occupied, were arranged in neat lines, divided by a central aisle. All faced the dais where the college tutors usually sat for dinner, which was now transformed into a stage. On this stage was a table. And pointing at the table, two cameras, each hooked up to a large projection screen. Presumably whatever happened onstage would be broadcast, to make sure that nobody missed a thing.

People pressed behind me, forcing me down the aisle, and a steward began ushering me toward the front, saying that the show, whatever it was, was about to start. I opened my mouth to object, but then, there on the right, a knot of black hair—it looked like Alexa, but I couldn’t quite tell.

I allowed myself to be bundled toward the front row, the only place where a handful of chairs still waited, empty. In my seat, I half-stood, searching the scene for Alexa’s bright eyes, but the crowd obscured the dark head I thought I’d seen.

I sat, stared at the stage.

Now that I was closer, I could see that the table on the stage bore a brown leather suitcase, and around it, little objects. Small rag dolls, made with a deliberate carelessness, with faces cut from color photographs. Balls of hair, piled like after-dinner delicacies. All around the edge of the stage sat squat black candles, neat and regular as tombstones.

Before my mind could arrange itself, a door behind the stage opened, causing everyone to clap and cheer. The screens flickered into life. And he appeared.

His face wasn’t warped and strange, like when it had been reflected in the windows of the bar. It was open and beautiful as he took his place center stage and made a deep, professional bow. When he held up his hands, his smile just the right amount of bashful, the applause subsided, leaving a quiet punctuated only by the odd ironic “whoop.” Just like the first time I’d seen him, that day on the college steps, I was struck dumb by his effortless poise. Attention was a birthright. And didn’t he deserve all of it?

“My name is Bryn Cavendish,” he announced, his voice firm and clear. “And I have a question for you.”

A pause, for effect.

“What is magic?”

A begrudging silence from students who were used to having all the answers. Then, a voice from a few rows back: “Magic is deception.”

Bryn gave a look, ready and wry. “Deception,” he repeated, as if the word itself had an unusual taste. “Alright. So, I tell you that the ball is here …”

He raised his hands. We saw the small red ball in his left palm, the image doubled, magnified on the screens behind him. Then he closed both hands into fists.

“But I’m deceiving you,” he said, “because it’s really over here.”

There was the ball again, appearing behind the slowly spreading fingers of his right hand. A chuckle danced through the audience.

“But,” he continued, “let’s imagine I sell you a painting, telling you that it’s a Van Gogh. But when you get home, you find it’s a fake. That’s deception too. But you’re not going to give me a round of applause for it, are you? So, I ask you again: what is magic?”

Audience members sat tight-lipped this time, pupils reluctant to disappoint a favorite teacher. Eventually, another voice, brave or foolhardy: “It’s about suspending disbelief.”

Bryn raised his eyebrows, gave a pout that said Not bad. “Suspending disbelief. What that means is: you’re watching a play, and there’s a scene where someone is flying. Although you know it’s not really happening, you’re willing to accept it in the moment for the sake of the story. Yes?”

He spread his arms, tilted from side to side, a child’s imitation of an airplane.

“But when a magician makes something fly?” he continued. “No. None of you is ready to accept that. In fact, you try desperately to work out how it’s happening, to discover where the wires are, because you don’t want to suspend your disbelief. You’re dying to know how it’s done.” Here he raised his hands again and, even more slowly this time, had the red ball disappear from one hand and appear in the other. “So, I’m not sure that’s it, either. Any other suggestions?”

This time there was no word from the audience, who, like the ball, were in the palm of Bryn’s hand.

“For me,” he said, conspiratorially, “magic is a challenge. It says: Why be constrained by the ordinary when it’s possible to make something out of nothing? Why accept your life as it is, when you could imagine something more?”

The idea spun in the air, a planet waiting to be discovered. I turned and looked to the exit, wondered whether I should try to creep out. But at least I could keep an eye on him here. On stage, he couldn’t do anyone any harm.

He took an oversized playing card from the suitcase. Turning to a girl a few seats along from me, he held the card in the air. “Could you tell me what card this is?”

The girl arched an eyebrow at Bryn, trying to appear resistant to his charm. “The six of clubs,” she said.

Bryn became still, held the card lightly at the corner for all the room to see. Then he gave it the faintest shake, turning it immediately into the queen of hearts, the screens showing the preposterousness and impossibility of this action. Gasps and applause rippled through the room. “You see. Why should we accept things the way they are?”

Shaking her head, the girl failed to conceal a smile.

“Maybe that’s why,” Bryn continued, “some of the most pioneering thinkers in history have been drawn to magic. They explored religion, alchemy. The spirit world. Now, I need a volunteer.”

I saw it in my head before it happened in the room. Bryn, ignoring those who reached like congregants in supplication, meeting my gaze with an expression that could have been surprise, malevolence, or both. Pointing a slender finger. “This chap, here. Let’s have a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen.”

My voice came out small and pleading: “Wait, no—”

“Up he comes. A warm welcome, please”

Applause broke around me. I shook my head—No, really—but somehow my legs were taking me up the little steps onto the stage, through the fairy ring of candles, and I saw my own image appear on the huge projection screens. I looked terrible. Bryn’s eyes followed me as I found my place beside him, and I suddenly felt very hot—as if I were standing next to an open fire.

“Thank you,” he said, letting his hand rest heavily on my shoulder. The touch was uncomfortably warm. “Your name is …?”

I opened my mouth, but he put a finger to my lips.

“Actually, no. I’ll tell them. Your name is John.”

I tried to pull away, but my feet stayed planted where they were. “No, it isn’t—”

“Yes. Tonight, you’re John Dee. A man who studied right here at Cambridge, also known as Doctor Dee.” He turned to the audience, spoke as if from a pulpit. “Born in the early sixteenth century, Dee was a remarkable man. Mathematician, philosopher, astronomer. Astrologer and alchemist, expert in cartography and cryptography. Explorers in the court of Queen Elizabeth the First consulted him about finding the Northwest passage to China. The queen herself had him look to the stars to choose the most auspicious date for her coronation. You know what else John Dee did for decades of his extraordinary life?”

He’d told me the answer long ago, and, unable to extinguish my desire to please him, I almost raised my hand. But he was the one who said: “He tried to speak to angels.”

I looked out at row upon row of captivated faces.

“This was pretty controversial,” Bryn explained, “not because people didn’t believe what John Dee said. They did believe he was talking to spirits. They just didn’t believe those spirits could possibly be good spirits. They thought that, instead of talking to angels, Doctor Dee was talking to devils.”

Bryn moved slowly to the suitcase and reached inside. I reminded myself: at any time, I could just step off the stage, walk away.

“Whatever they were, Dee had a particular way of reaching them. In the way that fortune-tellers might use a crystal ball, he used something called a shewstone to see his spirits.”

From the suitcase he lifted a round mirror, framed, the size of a dinner plate. The one from his wall, its surface almost black, like looking into a well. He held it carefully, and I could see my reflection, warped and ugly.

“The problem was, Dee wasn’t too good at using the shewstone himself, so he had an assistant named Edward Kelley look into it for him. So, Doctor, here’s one shewstone for you. And another,” he said, pulling a second from the suitcase, “for me. Tonight, I’ll be your lovely assistant.”

The audience laughed. A prickling sensation rushed across my skin, as if long nails were being drawn lightly down my back.

“Spirits sometimes want to deliver a message from our dear departed,” Bryn said, casually, as if explaining how to enter the church raffle. “Or to give us a warning of some kind. Sometimes they come for revenge. So let’s see if any of them have a message for you, Doctor. Shall we?”

I breathed out, long and loud. Taking my unease for cynicism, the audience laughed again.

“Now, I need you all to stay very quiet,” Bryn said to the audience, serious now. “Give the dead a chance to speak.”

The room fell into an obedient silence. Bryn stood, holding a mirror in each hand, searching for something in the unsettling black. He stayed this way for so long that it became almost awkward, as if something had gone wrong. But, at some point, the pressure in the room seemed to shift. The stillness became oppressive, panicked, like a person forced to hold their breath for too long. There was an odd sound, too—Bryn was muttering nonsense words quick and low, words that didn’t sound like anything I’d heard before. They came faster and faster, sparking on his tongue, getting louder and stranger and more disorienting—

Then, a huge crack: Bryn had snapped the faces of the mirrors together, as if closing a book. He held them toward me, one on top of the other.

“Doctor,” he whispered, “put your hands on here. Gently.”

I laid my hands on the uppermost frame.

“Can you feel it? Can you feel the spirits speaking to you?”

I shrugged, clueless, my mouth too dry to speak. The audience giggled again, but this time through tension alone. The whole room was braced, as if for a thunderclap. I didn’t even move when I felt the heat in my hands, building, as if I were protecting a candle flame from the wind.

Without warning, Bryn shouted: “Stop!”

I jerked my hands away.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “The spirits have spoken.”

In the silence, he slowly separated the frames. Those circular surfaces, which had both been black and empty, now bore writing, thick and chalk-white. The audience gasped, and heads moved, straining to see.

“Let’s read the message,” Bryn said, holding the first frame aloft. “The first one says: She’s just … and then, the second one …”

The front few rows had already started to laugh.

“… not that into you. Oh. Love advice. Bad luck, John. The spirits can be a bit direct, but it’s better to face the truth I suppose.”

Laughter rolled throughout the hall, and I tried to muster a magnanimous smile. But only for a second. Because, as the applause rose again, I saw something else on the stage, in the darkness, behind Bryn.

That shape. Long and dark and horribly thin. The same shape that had crouched beyond the bathroom window, that had clamped itself on the wall of Old Court. The one that had haunted me both dreaming and awake, never far from Bryn. Now it stepped softly, as if through a doorway, into the circle of candlelight, so that I could see its face in the cold, unforgiving glow.

He wore that same searching expression as in my dream, but, this time, he was the right age, the age when he died. I recognized his old polo shirt, faded from the wash, the paint-spattered shorts he wore whatever the season. He shifted his weight from one foot to another, unsteady. But not because he was drunk. I think he was frightened.

My words were lost in the relentless applause. “Oh my God …”

I have the sense that Bryn lowered the mirrors, took a long, luxurious bow. But I can’t say for sure, because I was staring straight ahead, stupefied, appalled. Trembling violently, I whispered: “Dad?”

The clapping hands must have slowed, frowns must have appeared on the faces of those who were wondering what I was doing, who I was talking to, whether it was part of the act. I think I staggered.

“Can you see me?” I said, my voice barely a breath.

My dad’s mouth hung open as he cast his gaze uncertainly around. His focus seemed off, as if he were seeing not the hall but another scene in another time. As if he were searching for something that wasn’t there. I glanced, pleadingly, at the audience, before realizing they had no idea what I was looking at. Again, that bitter smell of something singeing. Then, tentatively, as if the movements were not his own, my dad staggered forward, hands raised, the twitching fingers groping and searching. His eyes flicked left to right, faster now, and I followed his frantic gaze—it was impossible, surely, that our eyes wouldn’t meet, any second now. Slowly, as if trying not to break a spell, I reached out my hand.

But, as the tears in my eyes turned him back into a shadow, I pulled away, drew falteringly backward. I didn’t want him to see me, or touch me. I didn’t want anyone else to see him. I didn’t want them to know that he belonged to me.

Bryn’s hand on my shoulder shocked me back into the moment. Standing there, his expression impassive, he didn’t even have the decency to look triumphant. “Get your fucking hands off me,” I shouted, shrugging him off as hard as I could. “How are you doing it?”

“Mate—”

“I said, how are you doing it?”

“Jesus, just—”

“You’re a fucking—”

“—Your leg—”

Only then did I feel the heat, the flames from one of the candles lapping up my calf. There was that awful gasp from the audience, revealing that something has gone awry, that someone has made a scene. I twisted on the spot, pushing at Bryn and swiping at my smoldering trousers, my breath catching, voice leaking out in whimpers. Bryn grabbed at me once more, but then, somehow, I was off the stage and sprawled on the floor, patting madly at my calf, the smell of smoke in my nose, pain flashing up my leg. From my splayed position, I still saw two shadows on the stage, the sight enough to make my head reel.

But before I could say or do anything more, someone was helping me down the aisle, and in the background Bryn was joking that some people don’t know how to behave around spirits, all while the applause rolled again, the room turned its back on me, and the tears fell freely down my cheeks and onto my rental suit jacket.

Outside the hall, members of the May ball team bustled around, headsets and serious faces on, as if they were stage managing an event at the United Nations and not a piss-up for a load of students. I slumped into a nearby chair and shooed the usher away, wiping at my face and telling him I was fine. Even then, some long-honed reflex hoped quietly that Bryn would come to check on me, and I had to tell myself not to be so stupid.

I stooped to inspect my leg, the skin unbroken but tight and red, and when I looked up again she was in front of me. She wore a blue satin gown, her dark hair in a tight chignon, unfamiliar but as beautiful as ever. “Alexa,” I called, feeling immediately better. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”

Kneeling, she peered at my scorched trouser leg. “Jesus. Does it hurt?”

“Emphatically yes.”

She gave me a look of tenderness. “Listen,” she said, “that trick was mean. But don’t take it personally. It was a joke. A stupid one, but still a joke.”

I pulled away from her, bewildered that she could still defend him. “Lex—”

“That line, on the glass, he could have used it on any guy in the audience …”

Of course. She was talking about the mirror trick. And making excuses, like I had so many times. But excuses would be no help when he took his revenge on her too, when he finally burned her up like a moth in his irresistible flame. She needed to stay away from him. But I’d already made a poor case for that, and it had pushed her briefly away. So.

Sitting there, I wondered. Maybe there was nothing left but to tell her the truth.

But could I, really? Alexa would need to have a religious kind of conviction to accept, without proof, what I had discovered: that our world is subject to ancient, esoteric forces harnessed by only a few, according to rules that the ordinary among us will never understand. She’d have to consider that, on some level, she’d seen it in Bryn, but had chosen—like so many of us—not to see. And that, in walking away from him, she’d be walking away from something that was not just horrifying but utterly enchanting.

A sickly looking first year clattered out of the hall and swayed past us, determined as a mule, dragging his dinner jacket along the ground. When he’d passed, I decided that I had no other choice. “Alexa,” I said, taking her hand, feeling as though it was someone else moving my limbs, choosing my words. “Bryn doesn’t do tricks.”

She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

“The magic he’s doing. It’s real.”

She paused, the curve of her lips drooping slightly. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s not a joke.”

A beat, before Alexa’s face folded into a genuine frown. “Even Bryn doesn’t pretend that’s true.”

“I know, it’s genius,” I said, laughing bitterly. “He’s pretending to be a magician, to hide the fact that he can actually do magic. It’s the greatest piece of misdirection of all time.”

From the hall came another round of applause. Alexa nodded, slowly, and dropped my hand. “When you fell, did you hit your head?”

“I know how it sounds, but I’m perfectly lucid.”

“Okay, calm down …”

“Alexa, I’m serious. That thing with the mirrors, and the writing, that wasn’t the trick. There was something, someone, on the stage with us. Bryn, he conjured it—”

“What do you mean ‘someone’?”

I couldn’t say his name. “A spirit. An actual fucking spirit, or a ghost, or whatever you want to call it. Standing there, as clear as I can see you now.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I’ve told you, it’s not a joke.”

“Stop it.”

“I fucking swear. On my mum’s life. I don’t know how he does it, but he … summoned something, to scare me. Because of what I did to him, because of me and you—”

Alexa’s posture became rigid. “Listen. It was really dark in there.”

“I was three feet away!” Then, trying not to think too hard about it: “So close, I can tell you the color of its eyes.”

She put a hand over her mouth. Looked more sad than scared.

“Alexa,” I said, grasping the folds of her skirt, “this isn’t just about tonight. Like, what about Sajid? Sajid broke the decanter that belonged to Bryn’s family and Bryn put a curse on him, then Sajid saw some creepy thing in his bedroom—”

“What?”

“And Mona? Bryn gets sick of her hanging around, and all of a sudden she’s refusing to go in her room and putting great big fucking locks on the door, and before you know it she’s left her whole course—”

She pushed my hands away. “What’s wrong with you? You know what happened to Mona!”

“Oh, that she had ‘a breakdown’?” I stood to do the scare quotes, and pain blazed up my shin. “It would be so much easier to pretend everything is fine, that Bryn is a normal, cool guy. But the truth is, I think he’s dangerous. I think he can make things happen, really fucking scary things, and yes I think it’s because he has some kind of power I can’t explain. I know how it sounds, Lex, I really do. And I’m only telling you this because I care about you and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

For a minute more, we didn’t look at one another. Eventually, she smoothed her skirt, spoke in a voice that was measured, cool. “I don’t know if you should come back inside.”

“You’re going back in?”

She looked at me, for a long time, as if I were one of Bryn’s tricks that she was trying to work out. Then, flatly, she told me that she had to get back to the show—one of her philosophy friends was in there, very pissed—and then she was disappearing, her skirts like a tide going out, back toward the danger that she couldn’t or wouldn’t see.

This, though I didn’t know it yet, was my cue to raise the curtain on the final act of this horrible drama. To begin the falling action of our story that would not tie up loose ends or lead us to resolution, but would instead give the audience nightmares from which they would never completely awaken.

When I arrived at the St John’s ambulance station, the medic was busy dealing with injuries from the bouncy castle (two sprained ankles, one slight concussion). So I limped slowly back to my room. With my trouser leg rolled up and a wet handkerchief taped around my calf, I sat in my armchair and stared through the window, watching helplessly as stage lights gave a noxious green cast to the immeasurable Cambridge sky.

I’d been there for some time when there was a movement in the air, a sound like a sigh as if the room itself felt sorry for me. By the time I turned, the door had already swung shut. He was there, close enough to conjure an apple from behind my ear or slip a curse into my pocket.

I blundered to my feet. Between us, only my coffee table, a small useless barrier. No place for niceties now, I murmured: “What do you want?”

Although his tux looked tired, Bryn himself looked unnaturally fresh. His mouth turned up at just the one corner, almost rueful. “I wanted to see you.”

Of course he wanted to see me. He hadn’t finished the job.

He picked up a mug from my table, sniffed it. Replaced it, very gently. “Look,” he said, his voice golden as a bell, “I should apologize. I get carried away by the performance sometimes.” He paused, looking wistfully at the floor, as if remembering his own brilliance. “Surely you understand that. Although maybe not, since you’re always the accompanist.”

From beyond the window, howls of delight. I said nothing.

“Anyway,” he said, “we’ve obviously had a little tension lately. And tonight,” he held up his hands, Nothing concealed here, “I went too far.”

A pathetic, hopeful feeling rose up in me like cinematic violins.

“After all,” he said, lowering his volume, “gentlemen ought to settle their problems behind closed doors.”

The violins became jagged, serial killer stabs. “I don’t see what’s left to say,” I said, unable to stop the tremor in my voice. “Things seem pretty settled to me.”

“Come on. It’s hard work having enemies.”

I moved slowly around the table, trying to create a clear path to my door. This was it, wasn’t it? I’d expected it to happen in a shadowed staircase or a deserted corridor, but in fact the ending would come amidst the faraway flare of fireworks, the distant jangling of fairground tunes. “Yeah,” I replied, shakily. “Which is why you get rid of your enemies, right?”

A laugh. “What?”

“Even Alexa. You made her sick.”

He clapped his hands together as he mirrored my movements around the table, the two of us circling like animals. He was enjoying this. “She did say my laundry management left a little to be desired. But ‘sick’ is a bit strong.”

“You’ve made your point, Bryn,” I said, feebly. ‘I’m humiliated. Isn’t that enough for you? You don’t even care about me and Alexa anyway, so please. Just leave us alone.”

A fraction of a delay, followed by genuine surprise. “Us? Oh my God.” He put his palms to his face, part appalled and part thrilled, as if watching a disaster unfold on the news. He turned in a little circle, performative, and the joyful physicality of him suddenly reminded me how insane it was that I could no longer reach out and clap him on his broad back, that he would no longer grip my shoulder and give me a firm, bantering shake. “Fuck me,” he said, “you still think it’s going to work out. I swear it’s kinder if I tell you: there’s no happy ending, mate.”

Cold with fear now, I kept on creeping toward the door. Now, when I looked at him, he was backlit by the window, light streaming around his powerful frame. A small, defiant part of me asked: Why shouldn’t there be a happy ending for us? Why shouldn’t the good guys win? The other part of me replied that such things only happen in stories, idiot.

The silence that followed was so close that I felt I was drowning. As Bryn stood there, his eyes dark—and somehow flat now, like the eyes of a goat—I wondered what punishments might be running through his head. Smoke rising in my room, from a fire that nobody had started. A shape at my window, unhindered by locks. When I thought I couldn’t bear it any longer, when I might cry out just to break the soundlessness (what might I shout? Let’s stop this, start over at the beginning?), he spoke, slow and matter-of-fact:

“It’s funny. Frances told me to be careful with you.”

There was a low thudding, somewhere in my head. “What?”

He pretended to think. “What was it she called you? Such a poor, frightened boy.”

I staggered to the door, the thudding intensifying all the time, sending me off kilter. Was it him, doing this to me? I grabbed at the door handle, tried to focus on its cold smoothness. I felt as if I might throw up.

“When the rest of us laughed at you,” he went on, his voice expressionless, without cadence, “Frances said it wasn’t funny. It was sad.”

It was relentless now, the bang bang bang in my brain, and despite having both feet on the floor I had a spiraling, vertiginous feeling—as if I were standing on a bridge, fighting not to throw myself off. This was coupled with a scorching kind of rage, the feeling of a naked flame coming closer and closer to my exposed skin, the reckless rage that makes dark words come from inside as if channeled by a medium. I staggered again, and all the while, that awful banging …

I snapped. Like a man speaking in tongues, I shouted uncontrollably about how I was going to speak to the chaplain, to the local press, how Mona and Sajid and Kenny would help me make sure he never hurt anyone ever again. I told him that Alexa regretted ever knowing him (a guess) and that I never wanted to see him again (a lie). Then, gripping the door handle, I paused to dream up one last dark benediction, a combination of words so precise and so cutting, intended not only to wound my opponent deeply but to win one last crumb of his grudging respect.

And at these, my final words, something clicked. Something cosmic: like a planetary alignment that shakes both the collective and individual consciousness, a shiver that runs from the stars right down to our cells; as if Mercury had at that exact moment occulted Mars or else slipped silently into retrograde. In the wake of this ecliptic shift, Bryn’s face registered a mixture of emotions. Surprise. Hurt. Something like admiration.

And then I fled, out the door, right out of college, not knowing that this would be the last time I ran from him. The last time while he was still alive, anyway.

I often wonder whether this conversation could have gone a different way. Is there a version of this story where we utter the magic words: Look, let’s stop this nonsense, let’s start over? Or was it the case that, once I’d begun, there was no way off this darkening path?

Unable to either return to my room or rejoin the throng of the ball, I wandered the streets of Cambridge. I might have felt frightened or tearful, but I think I actually felt very little. Used up, like a drained battery or a blown-out bulb. The thing that pained me, besides my sore leg, was the realization of my rootlessness—in this moment, I really did have nowhere to go.

But I couldn’t walk forever. So when, after several hours, I was sure the ball must be over, I returned to college. It was that odd, liminal time between the end of the ball and the beginning of the clear-up, and New Court was completely deserted. The sky bloomed pink, and the sun gave the scene a golden cast as if it were a dream. In another hour or so the Ball Committee would be back with a little army of tabard-wearers, all set to pick at the piles of discarded plastic glasses with long metal claws, ready to fold the silken banners down into neat, synthetic squares.

Even then, I didn’t head to my room. I made for the staircase nearest the bar. Head bowed, I scurried up, checking over my shoulder with each surreptitious step. Unnecessary, in the end, since there wasn’t a single person around. There was nobody to see me as I climbed the spiraling stairs, all the way to the top, before making my way down the corridor to the little window at the end. (Jamie’s room was on the right, and it sounded like he was in there. Maybe others too. But I wasn’t going to knock.)

I heaved open the window, wincing as it screeched in the frame. Ironically, it was only the memory of the pool party—my glorious jump—that persuaded me I really was capable of folding my body through the window and out onto the battlements, the way I’d seen Bryn and the others do so many times before. The muscles in my core screamed as I struggled to steady myself, every movement harder than I’d anticipated. Finally planting my feet, ignoring the cold that worked its hands around me, I pulled myself up onto the roof, careful of the ancient tiles, until I reached some kind of chimney stack to grasp onto. I rested against it with relief, trying not to think about how I’d get back down.

And you know what? It was breathtaking. The most beautiful view I’d ever seen. There wasn’t a soul in New Court—only the unmoving amusements and unmanned stalls, sitting in the morning light like something from myth: the architecture of a deserted island or an abandoned ship. Beyond, slumbering colleges and dreaming quads, postcard-perfect beneath a pale pink sky. From somewhere below came the metallic rattle of a bicycle, the silver ring of a shop doorbell. Tears burned unexpectedly in my eyes. I did do it, I thought. I was here.

And then, as if it were inevitable: him. Clambering out onto the battlements below me, still in his black tie. My heart seemed to stop altogether—even if I’d had the energy, there was nowhere up here for me to run.

But he hadn’t come for me. He didn’t even know I was there. He stayed below, leaning brazenly out over the stonework, his jacket flapping around him like the flag of an anarchist or a pirate, his face turned defiantly to the sky. Crouching behind my chimney stack, I watched him with a sense of awe. As if I were seeing a rare bird, or a solar eclipse, or the lights of the aurora borealis bright among the blackness—a wonder you’d talk about for the rest of your days. A thing you can’t hope to experience ever again.

Up there, it felt like there were just the two of us in the whole world. Only from my perspective, though, since he didn’t see me. And that’s why it was so magical. Supposing there to be no audience, he was simply himself. It was like the most exquisite piece of music you could ever hear. I allowed myself to sit for a while, taking him in, filled with the sad certainty that this would be the last time.

Some people say we’re our true selves when we think nobody is watching. But how do we know our own identities without others’ confirming gaze? If, like the tree falling in the proverbial wood, nobody is around to hear us, is our story a story at all? And when we’re different things to different people, what then? My mum always said I was kind, considerate. Tim said I was a good bloke. I disagree. So whose version is true?

There’s a type of spell called a “glamour,” which makes things more attractive than they really are. Perhaps most of us spend our lives looking in enchanted mirrors. How else would we get through our merciless, ordinary days?

Morning congealed into something solid, the sunlight glancing off discarded beer cans and broken glass. As I made my way back to my room, the chaos had already begun: the running of feet, the banging on doors, the first fretful voices. A plaintive wail, unseemly in that soft, decorous space. Rumor ran up and down the corridors like a hooligan.

It was Tim who knocked on my door, repeatedly enough that I couldn’t ignore him. His face was ashen and harried, as he was hurrying Berenice to her parents’ place. It was him who told me that Bryn was dead.

I already knew, of course. I’d seen Bryn’s face—beatific, like an angel destined for earth—as he fell.