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chapter twenty-five

CAREERS

A complete surprise in the second week of January took the Nikki Conway question cleanly out of Walden’s head. She logged on to Facebook for the first time in several months and found a message from Rosalind Chan, sent back in December, friendly and cheerful: she was going to be in London for a conference in mid-January and wouldn’t it be great to get brunch?

The conference was next week and Roz was probably booked solid already, but Walden considered Roz—glamorous, international, successful, and exquisitely magical Roz—and knew that she had to make an attempt. She sent a message back: she really couldn’t get away from school in term time, but perhaps Roz would like to visit Chetwood and give a careers talk to the—she racked her brains for the American phrasing—juniors and seniors? And Walden could show her around, take her to the pub, have a nice catch-up… what did Roz think?

Almost instant reply, though it had to be the middle of the night in California: Roz would love to, and here was her schedule.

Walden was rather smug as she emailed the Careers Department about her coup. Among other things, a visiting speaker was an excellent use of the graveyard slot on Saturday afternoons.

“It is so cold,” said Roz when Walden met her at the train station. She was huddled in a fleece-lined coat and her American accent sang out bright and sweet and weirdly loud in the echoing hollows of Victorian brickwork. “No one told me it would be this cold!”

“We’re further north than Vancouver,” said Walden, which was one of those transatlantic fun facts you just picked up somewhere. “We don’t get that much snow, though. Coastal climate.”

“I know about coastal climates, Saffy,” said Roz. “You look fantastic, look at you!”

Walden was fairly sure she didn’t look all that fantastic, especially not next to Roz’s beautiful golden silk scarf and perfect razorblade-straight bobbed hair, but she submitted to air kisses—when had Roz become the kind of person who did air kisses?—and escorted her guest to Chetwood village’s single waiting taxi.

From there the afternoon turned into a weird balancing act, professional Dr Walden on her home ground versus the Saffy of old. Roz belonged to a very different part of Walden’s life—the furthest from home she had ever been, a time when she’d lived and breathed pure magic nearly every waking moment, and when she had managed to pass herself off as a glamorous foreigner. Looking back, that had said more about the power of an English accent than any actual glamour on the part of early-twenties Saffy. But that was the version of her Roz knew; and she was aware of sidelong assessing glances, of how different Dr Walden the schoolteacher must seem to the person she’d been before.

And oh, California: graduate magical research, funding, genuine working relationships with people whose work Saffy had cited over and over as an undergrad and during her MThau. Hazy golden light over the Pacific, the total social freedom of the outsider, and magic, magic, magic . Roz had been the crowning glory of those years: beautiful, brilliant, challenging, all that intellect and ambition—an equal, as no one since Charlie had really felt like an equal.

It was more than a decade ago. Walden felt only nostalgic fondness for Roz now, tempered by the knowledge that neither of them had behaved very well during the long slow-motion breakup that had culminated in Walden fleeing back to the UK without telling her girlfriend the plan.

It was very strange to see Roz at Chetwood School. In the weak January light she made the whole place look small and grey and unconvincing, and Walden’s best Open Day patter somehow only succeeded in turning her world and her life into a minor tourist attraction. Roz exclaimed over the fourteenth-century chapel and colonnade, marvelled at the grounds, looked up with admiration at School House’s silly Victorian tower. “It’s just so cute, ” she said with conviction. “I can’t believe how cute this is. I can’t believe you live here.”

“Thank you,” said Walden, and handed Roz off with some relief to Philomela Jones, who looked monstrously pleased to have someone new to tell all about Lady Margaret Beaufort. Meanwhile she went to check with ICT that everything was properly set up for the talk over in the new building.

She had her fingers crossed before it started. Roz had been only an indifferent teacher, had resented lecturing because it took her out of the lab. Years Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen were packed onto every inch of space on the tiered seating in the school’s only lecture theatre, with some unfortunate Year Elevens even forced to sit on the floor. Lunch had been a while ago. A big, sleepy, potentially tricky crowd.

“Who are the ones in the red sweaters?” said Roz, when Philomela dropped her off, wearing the slightly startled look of a person who had been on the receiving end of aggressive American charm.

“The red jumpers? Oh, that’s Year Eleven. Er, sophomores,” Walden said. “I think. They still have to wear uniform.”

“All right,” said Roz. “Wish me luck.” And then, completely bypassing the formal introduction Walden had meant to give her, she scooped the microphone off the lectern and said to the crowded lecture theatre, “Hi! Can you hear me?”

Walden shouldn’t have worried. Of course Roz hadn’t stood still for a decade. She was no longer the newly minted Dr Chan, all prickles and ambition and tunnel vision. Somewhere along the line she’d picked up public speaking. It was a perfectly learnable skill, and one thing Roz had always done spectacularly well was learning. She had most of the mob of teenagers eating out of her hand after about five minutes. They were naturally inclined to find her interesting. After all, she was a living answer to the utility question: What can you do with magic? And she also answered the other question, usually unspoken but always hovering over this crowd: What is magic going to do for me?

Roz told them: your magical education can make you interesting, funny, successful, and visibly wealthy. Walden saw the students near the front noticing her pristine trainers. She talked about the work. Her vivid delight in pure magic had not faded, and it gave Walden a little pang, remembering. And she spoke eloquently about being a professional magician as an immigrant, as a person from a poor family, as an out and proud lesbian. Really, she had ‘role model’ written all over her.

Walden was genuinely very glad she’d managed to get hold of Roz for this. A real person, an actual adult with an actual job, could be orders of magnitude more inspiring than any commonplace teacher. She stood at the front and scanned the crowd for misbehaviour, but she only had to hold the gaze of a couple of whispering girls, and once walk over to a bored Year Twelve and stand pointedly next to him for a few moments. Eventually, he stopped fidgeting with the phone he should not have had in his pocket.

A storm of applause at the end, and—wonder of wonders—when Roz asked Any questions? some children actually put their hands up. The Head of Careers ran interference and rephrased some of the more incoherent questions, and Walden listened with satisfaction. In the middle of the crowd she picked out Nikki and Aneeta, sitting together, plainly attentive. Nikki was leaning forward slightly in her seat. Walden tried to think hard in her direction: Here is someone you could be. Come on. Think it through. Don’t throw away your chance.

“Wow,” said Roz in the pub afterwards. “That was scary!”

“You were brilliant,” Walden assured her. “Really, I mean it, you were inspiring.”

“I can’t believe you do that every day.”

“Not usually with a group that size. You were fantastic, I mean it.”

Roz was applying herself with goodwill to the Red Lion’s only vegetarian offering, an entire roasted cauliflower. The goodwill was probably not deserved. She glanced up at the compliment—had Walden been too effusive? Did she sound like she didn’t mean it?

“You’re overthinking,” Roz said, knowing.

Walden had to laugh. “Of course. Whoops. I suppose I haven’t changed that much.”

“Mmm,” said Roz. “I feel like I should say sorry, you know. For how we left things.”

“Oh, come on,” said Saffy, deeply embarrassed, “I was the one who—”

“—dumped me by text from the airport?”

Saffy said, “Er.”

When you put it like that, it did sound bad.

Roz laughed at her expression. “Hey, come on, I was there. I know why you were too scared to do it face-to-face. Lucy calls me her steamroller.”

“I wasn’t scared, ” said Saffy, but actually, conflict with Roz—forthright, honest, unafraid to raise her voice, unafraid to point out Saffy’s shortcomings—had always been quite frightening. Saffy had been brought up politely passive-aggressive and never knew what to say to someone who actually talked about their feelings. Instead of getting into the weeds of that—ancient history, anyway—she said, “Tell me about Lucy! You must have been together for…”

“Seven years now,” said Roz, breaking into her most brilliant smile, showing off very even white teeth. “Where did I put my phone?”

Saffy admired Lucy—an Amazonian white woman with a magnificent bosom and a huge pile of blonde curls, pictured hiking, playing the cello, posing with Roz’s slightly nervous-looking parents, and cooking schnitzel in the airy kitchen of a beautiful century-old San Francisco rowhouse: a real antique by California standards, though transposed to Chetwood it would have been one of the newer buildings on site. They spent a while on the house. “It was a stretch,” Roz said, “and we could never afford anything like it now,” apparently under the impression that Saffy had kept track of the Bay Area real estate market in the decade-plus since she left. “But the dogs love it!”

The house pictures did inspire a fair amount of unworthy envy in Saffy’s heart. She’d made her choices, but it was hard not to reflect that she could have been the person with a fulfilling career in cutting-edge magical research, unlimited funding, plenty of lab time, access on request to that incredible mega-incursion in Arizona—and also a house on a hill with views across the bay, two charmingly ugly little dogs, a beautiful musician wife. “Call it the Dr Rosalind Chan grant for the arts,” Roz said, pausing on a photo of Lucy in a black evening gown under a spotlight, the beautiful warm wood of the antique cello glowing in her arms as she played.

“No regrets?”

“None,” said Roz. “You?”

Saffy inquired internally into the unworthy envy, found it basically shallow, and answered, “None. But—”

Roz said, “Are you asking me, how do I sleep at night?”

Saffy said nothing. She’d once felt absolutely sure that Roz was a better person than her—not a better magician, but more switched-on, more political, more passionate, more sincere. But the truth was that there were very few practical uses for summoning something as deadly and powerful as a higher demon, and only one that paid. No doubt the world needed military stuff. No doubt someone had to do it. But Saffy had looked at what all her magical knowledge and power were leading her towards, and walked away.

“I sleep like a baby,” said Roz, “just like all the white guys I work with. You know, Saffy, in a world where only assholes get to be rich and powerful, only assholes get to make the rules. I pay for my parents’ home nurses, I pay for my wife to live, I research the charities I donate to, and I don’t regret anything. I made my compromises. We all do.”

“That’s true,” Saffy said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Why not? It’s a fair question,” Roz said. “I’m not ashamed. And I couldn’t do what you do anyway.” She paused, took another bite of roasted cauliflower, and added, “Listen, do you remember, I told you once you were…”

“‘An insanely privileged nice white liberal lady,’” said Saffy. “Yes, I remember. Vividly. You were always very direct about it. And right, of course.”

“Oh, I’m always right,” said Roz. “But the thing is—making no compromises, that’s a privilege. A big one. I hope my kids get to have it.” The beautiful American smile again. “Did I mention? We’re going to have kids. Though it’s hilarious how much sperm costs.”

Tipsy, later, in Saffy’s flat—Roz was staying in the spare room, they’d broken out the bottle of gin—they got onto the subject of Saffy’s personal life. “Oh wow, ” said Roz, to the old Instagram photo of Laura Kenning with her motorbike.

“No chance now,” Saffy said, “I managed to wildly offend her by, well,” and she admitted with a combination of shame and pride to the Mark thing. Roz announced that because she believed deeply in equality she had to see a photo of him too, to compare.

“Nope,” she said after they’d managed to scare something up—on LinkedIn, of all places; Mark seemed to have no personal social media. “I don’t see it. I’m too gay. I think you should have gone with motorbike girl. Go on, explain the appeal.”

“There’s a cultural element.”

“What does that mean?”

Saffy paused. “If I told you, went to Yale, cousin is a senator, plays squash…”

“Oh, I see, ” said Roz. “Status symbol boyfriend.”

“No! Well, maybe. But not boyfriend. ”

“Why not?”

“There may be some significant cultural differences across the pond,” said Saffy primly, “but I know for a fact that you also have wankers.”

“Then I still don’t get it,” Roz said. “Also, honestly—straight guy, doing well for himself, over forty, not ace… but no wife, no ex-wife, not even an old girlfriend he wants to complain about? At our age people usually come peer-reviewed. There’s got to be something seriously wrong with him.”

Probably there was something seriously wrong with Mark, but Walden’s arrangement with him wasn’t an emotional entanglement. She didn’t have to care. She saw Roz off at the train station the next morning, and took a moment on her walk back up to school to look up the approximate value of a century-old rowhouse on a hill in San Francisco. She thought it was very probable that this was exactly what Roz had intended her to do. Surely she hadn’t been this interested in money when they were grad students?

To be fair, neither of them had really had any back then.

The house was worth an eye-watering amount. And when Walden got back to school, she was waylaid on her way to the staffroom by the Bursar, looking gleeful. Chetwood had just received a donation of twenty thousand US dollars, earmarked for the looming repair of the chapel roof. “Even after the exchange rate takes a bite out of it,” he said, “that’s not small change. Please thank your friend for us. Invite her again. Do you think we could get her at the Governors’ annual dinner? The alumni ball?”

Walden escaped from him, went into her office, and wrote an appropriately delighted and grateful Facebook message, a personal accompaniment to the equally delighted and grateful email Roz was going to get from the Headmaster. She had an obscure sense of having lost this round. The donation felt like a jab, like the last word in an argument Walden hadn’t meant to start.

While she sat at her laptop and stared into space, something Mark had said drifted into her thoughts. Most people with principles are hypocrites on some level: a very comforting bit of cynicism. And because she was thinking of Mark, a comparison occurred to her, not Mark versus Laura but Mark versus Roz . Walden’s own historical taste in these things… something about ambition, about selfishness, about power… even Charlie, come to think of it…

All of which made Laura Kenning, who had genuinely sacrificed the direction of her career for her principles, into an outlier. So it really would never have worked. Walden didn’t know why she still thought about Laura at all.