stain on her cotton shirt gave her a kind of dishevelled glamour. Had she just left the unmade bed I could see in the inner office? Already I wondered if she and Dr. Sutherland were lovers. Only when she checked the details of my birth in China did she properly notice me for the first time. âShanghai? Were you there during the war?â âI was interned by the Japs. Do you know Peggy Gardner?â âOf courseâweâre all in awe of her.â âShe was in the same camp.â âPeggy? How strange. Why doesnât she talk about it?â âNothing very much happened.â âI canât believe that. How long were you and Peggy there?â âThree years. I never think about it.â âPerhaps you should.â Using an American ballpoint pen shaped like a silver rocketship, she checked off my entries, eyebrows raised as her fingers flicked through the beads. âThen you came to England and went to the Leys SchoolâI can imagine how you felt about that.â âIt was fine. Just like the camp, only the food was worse.â âGod, I know, school food. I refuse to eat ours. I practically led a riot last week.â She lowered her voice. âI only come here for Richardâs chocolates. He calls me his Hershey bar girl.â âWhy do you work for him?â She picked at the stain on her tunic, showing off her breast for me. âI used to hang around here after schoolâitâs easily the most interesting department. I go to a lot of lecturesâLeavis, Ryle, Leach. Richardâs are the best. One day he gave me a lift in his car.â She smiled at the memory. âYouâre going to read psychology here?â âNo fear! Iâve spent enough time in Cambridge. My fatherâs the bursar at Fitzwilliam Hall. I want to be a cocktail waitress in New York, or live on a desert island with three strange men. Anything to get out of here.â âI have a motorbike. Why donât you?â âI will!â Aware that I might be sceptical, she said with some pride: âI tried to join the RAF. Richardâs taken me up in his Tiger Moth and says I have a real flair for flying. The RAF had the nerve to turn me down, something about the lack of toilet facilities in the V-bomber force. Jesus, if I can fly a plane I can learn to pee in a milk bottle.â âWell ⦠Professor Harris says anatomy is the basis of everything.â âHeâs right. So why are you doing medicine?â âIâve forgotten already. I thought that I wanted to be a psychiatrist.â âBut why? What do you need to cure? Something to do with the war?â I hesitated, unsettled by this bright schoolgirl and her shrewd questions. âThat might be true. I havenât found out yet.â âWell, you will.â She spoke with a robust confidence in me. âAnd now youâre cutting up your first corpse. Treat him with respect.â âOf course. In fact, itâs a woman.â âA woman?â She whistled through a chipped tooth. âYouâre my first necrophile.â âIn a way, thatâs not far from the truth.â âGo on. This is being secretly recorded.â âNothing. You can get very close. It turns into a sort of weird marriage.â âHold on! Professor Harris is going to be bailing you out of the local clink.â She leaned back and put her feet on the desk, revealing her long legs and the white skin of her thighs through the holes in her black school stockings. âSo?â I asked. âInstead of the dead, why donât you try the living?â *   *   * In her teasing way, this intelligent schoolgirl had seen through my undergraduate banter and realised that I was still preoccupied by wartime events that now seemed to be reimposing themselves on the calm Cambridgeshire landscape. The students poled their punts