This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2017-08-22

Contents

Cover

Chapter One

I know immediately that I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake. I can tell before I search through my folder for the essay I should have handed in, and instead find it still in there like a protruding tongue. Though once I see it and know for sure, I still pretend I did something else. I probably dropped a different piece of work on his desk. I gave him the one I did on Romanticism for Professor Pacheco, I tell myself.

But that essay is still in the folder too.

The only thing that’s missing is the story.

The filthy, appalling story that no one should ever see, never mind Professor Halstrom. Why did it have to be Professor Halstrom? Everything would have been fine if I’d just given it to squat, flustered little Garwood, or the guy who teaches linguistics and looks like Rory McGrath. They might never have mentioned it at all.

But I know he will.

He never lets anything go. He once made the captain of the football team cry for failing to hand an essay in on time – or so the legend goes. And I believe the legend, because that is exactly how terrifying Halstrom seems. His gaze is as flat and still as the surface of an undiscovered lake, yet oddly penetrating with it. I always get the impression that he sees absolutely everything about you in one stroke, yet finds you so dull and disappointing he can’t quite muster any emotion in his eyes.

He just takes you in, then spits you out.

And that’s not even the most intimidating thing about him.

No, the most intimidating thing is his enormity.

Every other lecturer at Pembroke is normal sized. They all look like academics, from their hunched, narrow shoulders to their neat little shoes. Occasionally you’ll come across one with a pot belly or maybe an unnervingly large head. But none get anywhere close to Halstrom. He must be somewhere north of six foot five, despite how ridiculous that number sounds to me.

Every time I leave his lecture hall I think, No, he can’t be.

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