Curtain Call at the Lantern

St Aldhelm's Academy smelt of floor polish and boiled cabbage, and it was immaculately quiet. Bells rang in the distance. Boys in identical blazers moved through the corridors in single file, each timing a step as if to a metronome only they could hear.

You'd taught in places like this. The formal curriculum was the thing on the timetable: history, Latin, mathematics. The hidden curriculum was the real subject: how to queue, how to defer, how to take an order and give one. The bell that told you where to be. The uniform that told you who you were. It prepared boys for a workplace where the chain of command was as invisible and as absolute as the one in the corridors.

Alaric Pryce received you in an office panelled like a coffin lid. "I have eleven minutes, Miss Voss."

"Then I'll be quick." You had the sense he would have said it whether or not he had eleven minutes.