“How many more, ma’am?” asked one of the boys.

“A lot.”

“Just ‘A lot’, ma’am?”

“Yes. For now, just ‘A lot.’” She paused. You might almost have called it a hesitation. “This is one reason that extremely wise, intelligent and knowledgeable people like myself bother to teach unutterably ignorant and callow people like yourselves when we could be happily feet-up in front of a big log fire reading a book, or talking urbanely amongst ourselves about the latest exciting idea or faculty gossip. There is, despite all the many, many appearances to the contrary, just a sliver of a chance that one of the better minds in this class might answer one of the questions that no one of my generation – despite the aforesaid wisdom, intelligence, et cetera – or any previous generation has been able to answer definitively, like why is Calbefraques unique, why is a transitioned soul unique, where is everybody, where did septus come from originally and precisely how does it work? That sort of question.”

A few people quietly went, “Ooo!”

“Yes, do let it go to your heads,” she said drily. “You’re not here to learn how to memorise stuff, you’re here to learn how to-”

“Think!” a few voices chorused.

You could hear the smile in her voice. “Well memorised,” she said, then raised her voice. “Of course, if you’re really smart, you’ll be imagining all this complexity that you’re looking at zooming out to meet you as you zoom in to meet it, the surface growing explosively, exponentially, all the time.”

“Excuse me, ma’am, I was already imagining that.”

“And I imagine your handwritten essay on, oh, the history of fractal theory will contain spelling mistakes, Meric. In fact, probably the closer I look, the more I’ll find.”

“Aw, ma’am…”

“Aw, ma’am, nothing. Fifteen hundred words. On my desk by tomorrow morning. What do we say, Meric?”

“We say thank you, Mrs Mulverhill.”

“Just so.”

Scotland is wet and dreary. Don’t let anybody tell you different. Even the hills are mostly just big mounds, not proper mountains like the Alps or the Rockies. People will tell you it’s all romantic and rugged but I’ve yet to see the evidence. Even when it’s nice it’s covered in a cloud of these bastard little insects called midges so you have to stay inside anyway. Plus it’s full of Scots. Case rested.

I endured the week we spent in Glen Furquart or whatever it was called. That’s what I did, I endured it. I did not enjoy it. Even the shooting was a bit shit. I don’t know why but I thought we’d be shooting rifles at deer or moose or Highland cattle or something, but no, it was shotguns, at birds. Shotguns. Like we were in a fucking Guy Ritchie movie or something. They were very nice shotguns with scrolling or whatever and engravings and stuff and they were heirlooms and blah blah blah, but still just shotguns. Shooters for the hard of aiming. And we were shooting them at birds. Lots and lots of birds. Pheasants. If there’s a stupider bird on the fucking planet I wouldn’t like to see it. Pig shit would get an honours degree by comparison.

When we were driving up there we saw a pheasant standing on the grass on our side of the road, halfway up a long straight on the A9. Few hundred metres ahead of us. There was this long stream of cars heading the other way towards us, just coming level with the bird. Suddenly the pheasant ran across the road, almost like it was aiming for the front car. We were all convinced the silly fucker was going to get hit. Miraculously, it didn’t. Maybe the driver braked – though he couldn’t brake hard, not with that line of traffic behind him – but anyway the bird got across to the other side with about a millimetre to spare. When it skidded to a stop on the grass verge on the far side you could see it get rocked sideways with the slipstream of the car passing. Then once the first car had whooshed past it the stupid fucker of a bird changed its mind and started running back across the road in the direction it had just come! The third or fourth car in the big line of traffic hit it full on and the thing exploded in a cloud of feathers. Everybody just drove on, obviously. But I mean. How stupid can you get?

Anyway, they breed them just to shoot them, which also seems a bit shit, though whether they do the same with the deer too I don’t know. Can’t imagine the deer are as stupid as pheasants, though.

I’d taken plenty of coke with me for the week but I was actually trying to pull Barney off it. I was wanting to get well in with Mr Noyce senior and being his boy’s dealer maybe wasn’t the best long-term position to be in. Barney wasn’t a cunt but he was a bit of a fuckwit, know what I mean? Sooner or later he’d have used my dealing him stuff against me. Threaten to tell his dad on me, basically. I couldn’t be having that. I had plans. Mr Noyce was part of them. Barney wasn’t.

We drank well. I was letting Mr N teach me about wine, and I did develop a taste for single malts, properly watered. So at least something good comes out of Scotland. We ate well, too. Not too much pheasant, thank God. The house was a sort of fake castle, a Victorian take on what they thought the Scots ought to have been building, with decent plumbing and no-nonsense central heating. I was definitely with the Victorians there.

Once again I hadn’t brought Lysanne, the girl friend, along. She’d have hated it. All that rain and no shops. Dulcima, Barney’s girl, hated it too, but I think she just wanted to keep close to Barney. At the time I thought it was cos he might be having second thoughts about her and his eyes had started roving again but later I decided she just liked that he always had lots of drugs and never asked her to help pay for them.

Dizzy bint even tried it on with me once in the back of a Land Rover coming back from a shoot, can you believe it? Hand on me tackle through me moleskin plus fours or whatever they’re called and whispered did I want her to come to my room that night after Barney had conked out, her wearing a pair of waders and nothing else?

I mean, she’s a gorgeous girl, and I’d certainly had thoughts about her, and my cock definitely liked the idea – this was towards the end of the week and it was getting to know my palm like the back of my hand, know what I mean? But fuck me, really. Dangerous ground. Too dangerous. A complication I devoutly didn’t need. I told her I thought she was the most humpable thing I’d seen all year and if I wasn’t such a good friend of Barney’s… She took it pretty well, all told. Maybe just after a bit of reassurance that she was still lusciously fuckable. Some girls are like that.

Long week, but worth it. We escaped eventually, back down the long long road to civilisation. I’d got on extremely well with Mr N. I’d dropped a hint that I was looking to take on a proper job, something serious, like what Mr N did. Nothing too obvious, but still a hint.

Next time I saw Mr and Mrs Noyce I took Lysanne. We went up to his family’s place in Lincolnshire on the coast near Alford. The place was called Dunstley but they called it D’unstable because it was right on the edge of the sea, standing at the end of a road on a sort of sandy cliff above a wave-washed beach. They were on their third garden fence because the other two had disappeared into the North Sea during storms and the garden had shrunk by two-thirds – nearly ninety feet, according to Mr Noyce – in the last forty years.

This time Barney and Dulcima weren’t there. Other things to do. So it looked like I’d made it to friend, not just friend of son. En route to protégé, with a bit of luck. Excuse my French.

Mr N thought Lysanne was a laugh, which was a relief. I could see her weighing him up soon as we arrived and could almost spot the point at dinner on the first night when she looked from him to Mrs N and realised that there was no opening there for her to exploit. That was a relief, too. No play that a girl like her could have made for a guy like him could have lasted longer than a night, but she could have messed things up for me. Mrs N exchanged a look with me over coffee that made me think she’d had pretty much the same feeling re Lysanne as I’d had.