Skulduggery got to his chair, frowned at it, and looked up. His moustache twitched, like it was about to bolt from his face.

Niall put up his hand.

“Aha!” said Skulduggery. “A question already! Yes, young sir? What do you have burning inside you, curiosity-wise?”

“Why are you wearing gloves?”

“I have cold hands,” Skulduggery answered.

Clodagh leaned forward in her seat. “Why are you wearing that hat?”

“It keeps my head warm.”

“Why are you wearing a cloak?” asked Bolanle.

“It billows impressively when I walk.”

Seimi folded his arms. “What’s with the moustache?”

Skulduggery tilted his head. “I have a moustache?”

The students stared.

“Welcome,” Skulduggery said loudly, “to this class of –” he looked at the books on his desk – “history. Ah, excellent. That’s one of my specialist subjects, you know, as I was there for most of it. My name is Mister Me. You may call me ‘sir’ or ‘Your Lordship’.”

“Your name is Me?” Cian asked.

“Yes.”

“The word Me?”

“The name Me, actually, but yes.”

“That’s not a name.”

“Yes, it is. It’s mine. I happen to come from a long line of reluctant narcissists. We don’t like to talk about it.”

“So … so you are Me.”

There were a few laughs, and Skulduggery took a moment, then broke into an unnervingly huge grin. “Ah! I get it! Yes! Wonderful! You, boy, have a keen wit! I shall call you Barnaby!”

“That’s not my name.”

Skulduggery waved away the objection. “I have neither the time nor the inclination to learn names – and that goes for all of you – so I will call you by whatever pops into my head. Try not to be offended by my casual indifference to your feelings – we’ll get on so much better if you can manage that. Now then, as a class, what topic are you studying right now?”

“Uh,” Rafaela said, “we’re revising the Great Famine.”

“Ah, the Great Famine!” Skulduggery repeated. “Thank you, Winifred! Also called the Great Hunger or the Great Starvation – great as in widespread, not great as in wonderful. Caused by what? Can anybody tell me?”

Caitlyn raised a hand. “Potato blight.”

“Potato blight,” Skulduggery said, “yes! The dreaded Phytophthora infestans that swept across Europe in 1845 had a particularly devastating effect on Ireland because … why …?”

“Because people loved potatoes,” said Raunak, and everybody laughed.

“Did they, though?” Skulduggery asked. He perched on the edge of his desk, adjusted his tassel, and observed the class grimly. “Let me tell you a story, then, of a nation forced to export huge quantities of livestock, fish, beans, peas – even honey – to Britain while being left with nothing but fields of rotting potatoes for themselves. Let me tell you a story of pain, of prejudice, of cruelty and of sacrifice. Let me tell you a story of people. A story of … yes?”

Haley lowered her hand. “Mister Me—”

“Please,” Skulduggery said, “call me Your Lordship.”

She sighed. “Your Lordship, we have our notes, and a test at the end of the week. We really don’t need stories of people.”

“But that’s what history is!” Skulduggery exclaimed. “History isn’t a list of dates or a collection of events – history is people. It’s the decisions they make, and the consequences of those decisions. History is a jigsaw puzzle, and when you have all the pieces in place you can step back and finally see the whole picture laid out before you. History is a mystery waiting to be solved.”

Rania held up her textbook. “Mystery solved, sir.”

“Ha!” Skulduggery barked so loudly that Adedayo actually jumped. “You can’t get history from a textbook! You can’t find truth in a Contents page! History is a living, breathing thing!”

“Hold on,” said Conor. “So history is people, a jigsaw puzzle, a mystery, and it’s a living, breathing thing?”

“It’s all of these things and more,” Skulduggery said, “and it’s a mistake to think that it can be captured and placed into a safe little cage on a safe little page to be memorised. History defies your tests and it denies your exams. But they don’t want you to know that.”

“Who?” asked Lucy. “Who doesn’t want us to know?”

“Governments,” Skulduggery said, almost whispering. “Corporations. Textbook manufacturers. They’re all in on it. That’s why I could never be a teacher – the idea that I’d be regurgitating falsehood upon falsehood for generation after generation would be, frankly, more than I could handle.”

“What do you mean, you could never be a teacher?” Cian said. “You are a teacher.”

“Once again, Barnaby, your quick wits impress me. Have a gold star.” Skulduggery dug into a pocket in his robe and flung a fistful of tiny gold stars across the room.

“Uh, thank you,” said Cian, brushing them from his hair.