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chapter nineteen

THE END OF TERM

Christmas at Chetwood School officially began on December 8, which was the day that Annie in the school office started wearing her tinsel bauble earrings. Ten days left! The slog of the Autumn Term was a little more bearable with the end in sight.

The final week and a bit of school was always, not to put too fine a point on it, a doss. Walden, who taught only an A-level class and a critical magical safety course, would not be spending any lessons making Christmas cards or watching ever-so-slightly relevant films on the school’s eStream, but she did not grudge her colleagues a single lesson of relief after what was invariably an absolute nightmare term. The children enjoyed it too, of course. Very few of them would realise that the fun and easy end-of-term lessons were only minimally for their benefit.

And, of course, it was impossible trying to get much useful done at this time of year anyway. While other teachers were sagging gently towards the holidays, PE, Drama, and Music were all going at a frantic pace. Students were constantly getting pulled out of lessons to rehearse for the Christmas concert—not to be confused with the carol concert, not to be confused with the carol service —so that a class with above-average numbers of musicians might be down by two-thirds every afternoon. And then there was the end-of-term Interhouse Sports—round-robin tournaments in rugby and hockey, for every year group, participation unpopular but mandatory—and the student pantomime, performed with enthusiasm for the dubious benefit of the residents of Woodland Hill Care Home on the other side of the village. You also had to contend with the fact that plenty of parents pulled their children out of school a week before the end of term in order to get them on off-peak flights to wherever they were going for their winter getaway. Some families were apologetic about it, some were brazen. Some students had an unexpected death in the family every December like clockwork, and some parents just turned up cheerfully in their Tesla or Land Rover with a cry of, “Hello, darling, ready to ski?”

Aneeta’s whole family—including her younger sister, in Year Ten, whom Walden had only vaguely known existed—were visiting relatives in India already. Aneeta was not. “I wouldn’t get anything done if I went,” she said grimly. “I have A-levels. I need to revise.” Will was going on the school ski trip, which left two days before the end of term; so was Mathias, to Walden’s surprise—not that he could go, there was a travel bursary programme for exactly that sort of thing, but that he wanted to. Nikki and Aneeta seemed to have arranged an extended holiday sleepover, combined with an intensive revision plan, which would take place at Aneeta’s family home in Kensington during the week after Christmas. Walden had her doubts about how much work they would actually get done, but they were both very excited, and it was nice that they were taking the mocks seriously.

Walden finished the sixth formers off on the final Wednesday with a little speech of encouragement and a pack of practice papers each. The first two weeks of the Spring Term were going to be eaten by mock exams, so she would not be teaching them again until late January—nearly a month without contact hours, the longest break she would have with this set apart from last summer. They would do their mock practicals after the written papers were over. Walden wanted to give them as much time as possible to get the theory solid first.

All of them, even Mathias, seemed to be feeling positive about the trial to come. Walden was quite positive herself, despite the wobbles she’d observed in their recent practice papers. Revision would tidy all that up. And you could tell when you’d taught a group well. It was in the papers you marked and the practicals you observed, but it also came across in the atmosphere of the classroom, the expressions of satisfaction or determination on their faces as they worked, the conversations you eavesdropped on as they talked each other through questions and problems and challenges. It wasn’t enough just to get them to memorise concepts and systems—that worked at GCSE, sometimes, but not at A-level. A successful A-level set had skills . They kept calm in the face of the unfamiliar. They trusted their own capabilities. They spoke with confidence, not just regurgitating Walden’s teaching but recombining, putting together things that Walden had never explicitly connected for them, starting to see the glittering constellation of the big picture. Some of them—Nikki, especially, but all four now and then—were reaching for that big picture, a wider vision of knowledge and power and skill. They were starting to spot the holes and simplifications that were hidden in the secondary syllabus, and to ask the questions that Walden had more often heard in her postdoc days, lecturing undergrads.

And after all, they were eighteen, or nearly; adults in law, if not in context. They were old enough to vote or to marry, to buy alcohol, to join the army. Only six months of school were left to them. They didn’t just know magic. They knew how to think .

It was a good feeling, being proud of your students.

The Phoenix stirred at the back of Walden’s mind at the end of that final lesson. It had been blessedly quiet since the night she’d drunk all that gin with Mark. Power, growth, change, it murmured. Walden ignored it as usual. In the corridor, Will and Nikki were having a quiet, urgent exchange. “Promise you’ll message me?” Walden overheard—poor Will, honestly, desperation had to be an unfamiliar feeling for him—and Nikki’s answer: “Yeah, okay, I promise.”

True love. Walden covered a smile as she gathered up her papers and her half-empty flask of sludgy staffroom coffee.

And then it was the end of term, and the extremely long final assembly—David in full academic regalia performing Headmaster, while the whole school waited patiently for it all to be over. David was just as warm and congratulatory to the final set of colours awardees as the first, smile never fading through the whole elaborately dull process of reading out the names, handing out the precious little ribbons to Chetwood’s army of young athletes, applause and handshakes all round. That segment alone took forty minutes, and then it was the music scholars’ turn. Walden sat at the front in her doctoral robes, red and black, silk lining and tassled bonnet. Her hands always ached from clapping by the time final assembly was done.

At last they sang the school hymn, and a round of “Jingle Bells” for good measure—full-throated from the middle school, noticeably quiet and muttery from Years Ten to Twelve, Year Thirteen going for it with sentimental gusto. This was the time of year it started to hit them: Yes, it’s nearly over. You’re growing up. You’re leaving soon. This is the last time.

And the Autumn Term was done. Parents’ cars lined up all down the long avenue between the bare lime trees, and halfway along the road to the village. Overstuffed suitcases were heaped into the staff lift in Scrubs, or in some cases lugged unsafely down the stairs by their impatient young owners. Todd chugged back and forth to the car park with trunks and bags loaded into the green quad-bike trailer, and a trail of teenagers followed like ducklings.

Walden as senior staff was part of the car park team, chivvying children towards—hopefully—the correct vehicles, trying to keep them on track and out of the way of disaster. A mysterious alchemy turned every parent in England into the world’s worst driver as soon as they found themselves in a school car park. It was almost as if they wanted to hit a stray Year Eight. Todd’s security team were much in evidence in their high-vis jackets, waving and shouting at the massed cars. Since it was December 17, everyone came prepared with their branded school umbrellas. When the heavens opened, red-and-white shield logos blossomed over staff heads like a field of flowers.

Freedom. Blissful freedom. One crisis—a parent who didn’t turn up, uncontactable, eventually turning out to be stuck in traffic with phone not charged; all perfectly normal. Walden waved the last tearful girl into her mother’s car with a smile and went back, full of relief, to the end-of-term prosecco and mince pies laid on in the staffroom.

“Nice that the school budgets for this,” said Mark at her elbow when she turned away from a friendly gossip with a group of PE teachers she hardly ever got the chance to speak to—their department was based at the opposite end of the site, a long way from Walden’s usual haunts. Mark had a glass of prosecco in one hand and two mince pies in the other.

“The staff social association funds it, actually,” Walden said. “Did you pay your subs?”

Mark laughed. “I’m a freeloader. Are you going to the party tonight?”

Walden was too senior to skip office parties. Besides, it would probably be fun once she got there. Teachers at the end of term were very ready to let loose. She’d booked her train ticket weeks ago. “Of course. Are you?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Mark said. He scooped two fresh glasses of prosecco off the nearby trolley, pressed one into Walden’s hand, and grinned at her.

So, yes, she knew. She was thirty-eight, for goodness’ sakes. She wasn’t a complete fool. A man like Mark did not repeatedly seek you out in both work and social situations, invite himself into your flat for late-night drinks on a flimsy excuse, and press you on whether you were going to be in London that night, without a definite ulterior motive. And it was a little flattering.

All right, honestly, it was very flattering.

Mark obviously wasn’t boyfriend material—Walden felt ridiculous just thinking the word ‘boyfriend’; she was much too old for boyfriends—but he was charming and handsome and a rather good magician, and altogether, honestly, a more impressive pull than she would have thought herself capable of. The same thing had been true of Laura Kenning. Like bloody buses, she thought as she did her makeup in her wood-panelled bedroom after the staff drinks were over. Nothing for years and then two come along at once.

She had to laugh. She’d gone for a sleeveless black dress for the party, mostly because it was the only party outfit she owned that still looked nice and wasn’t obviously twenty years old. She had in fact acquired the dress twenty years ago, but it had been second-hand then, and now it was interestingly vintage. She automatically shrugged a smart black cardigan over the top to hide her tattoos, because this was a work event. She hesitated over jewellery—her normal work studs were perfectly nice earrings, did she really need to—?

Stop being Dr Walden for one night and try turning back into a human being, whispered a voice in her heart. It was not the Phoenix, but someone nearly as dangerous: the girl who’d bought this dress, eighteen-year-old Saffy Walden, a bleach-blonde adolescent waif, all intellectual arrogance and pretensions of punk. She’d been about as punk rock as an upmarket gastropub—she’d been to boarding school, she studied at Oxford, her parents lived in Windsor —but she’d had a lot of fun. Walden crouched to reach decisively into the back of her bottom dresser drawer, and brought out tangled fistfuls of jewellery she never wore now. Most of it was awful plasticky tat, what a student could afford, but there were a few good pieces. Walden picked out a chunky necklace that Roz had given to her, glamorous rather than tasteful, and a set of big opal earrings. She went back to her makeup bag and decisively upped the amount of eyeliner; she’d developed a perfect, steady hand in the mid-2000s, and it hadn’t abandoned her yet. Then she frowned at her suddenly unfamiliar reflection. The Saffy in the mirror looked both older and younger than Walden felt. Had it really been so long?

“Fuck it,” she muttered aloud, and took off the smart black cardigan. The Phoenix curled and flexed its way up her right arm as she watched, and its wicked golden head watched her reflection too, hooked beak nearly at her shoulder. Was she too obviously hoping for more out of her night than an ordinary work social? Was she embarrassing herself? Was she overthinking this?

She was absolutely overthinking this.

Yes, she usually kept her spellwriting tattoos hidden, out of deference to the school’s image, the traditional and conservative idyllic-country-house feeling that was as much a part of Chetwood’s branding as the shield logo. But they weren’t secret. Plenty of Walden’s colleagues had seen Walden’s bare and colourful arms on the night Old Faithful made its move. And those inked spells were a part of who she was. They represented years of work, work she was proud of, work very few people could do, work that Mark at least thought was spectacular. She wasn’t going to be judged. People ought to be impressed, if they knew anything about magic—and if they didn’t know anything, that was their problem. Thirty-eight might be too old for boyfriends, but it was also too old to worry yourself to death about what other people thought about you.

Walden left the cardigan across the foot of her bed, swung on her coat and her nicest scarf, and headed out into the cold December night to catch the London train.