Now that we were in the second term of the final year of our degrees it was high time that I started work on my dissertation. I caught Mrs S heading into the staff room and confessed to her that I didn’t have a topic.

This, apparently, was ‘No problem at all’, and she told me not to worry. I considered her advice very irresponsible: the deadline was fast approaching, and it was probably now impossible for me to research, write and submit anything of value in time.

Then I paid HB a visit. She was lying flat on the floor, very straight and still, like a mummified body. GG was watching over her.

We all felt terribly sorry for HB. She had suffered an accident on the ice rink when the blade of another skater’s boot had sliced off her nose. It would be some time before she would recover, and highly unlikely that she would take her finals with us.