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I think, not for the first time, that I’ve built myself rather a lovely little life here. Law exams, a coffee shop, a witch who won’t admit he’s soft, a shadow who won’t admit he cares.

I wouldn’t trade a single bit of it.

Chapter 3

Unfortunate Trousers

Group projects are, in my professional opinion as someone who has now survived four of them, a wonderful way to find out exactly which of your classmates think you’re beneath them.

This one is for Commercial Law, laptops open, a shared document slowly filling up with my least favourite font. I’m optimistic going in. I’m always optimistic going in. It’s afterwards that occasionally proves educational.

“Right,” says Sebastian, who has appointed himself group leader without anyone actually voting on it, “I think it makes sense if I take the introduction and conclusion, since I’ve got the clearest sense of where this needs to land.”

There are four of us around the table, and I’ve learned enough about group projects by now to know exactly how the next hour is going to go when someone appoints themselves leader before the meeting’s even properly started.

Sebastian went to the sort of school with a Latin motto and a rowing team, and he mentions both within the first five minutes of every conversation. He also brings up his father’s firm, and the summer he spent shadowing a QC who apparently changed his whole outlook on advocacy. Two of his friends from the same school, Freddie and a boy who I’m fairly sure is called Hugo but might be Rufus, sit either side of him. They look like they’ve been specifically deployed to laugh at things Sebastian says before he’s finished saying them. I’ve noticed this dynamic before, in seminars, in the library. Always the same three. Always Sebastian in the middle doing the talking, while the other two provide the sound effects.

“Brian can do the case summaries,” Sebastian says, not looking at me. “Shouldn’t need too much analysis. Just the basics.”

“It’s Bunny, actually,” I say pleasantly. “Everyone calls me Bunny.”

“Right, Brian, case summaries,” Sebastian says.

I let it go. People mishear things. It happens.

“Bunny’s such a funny name for a grown man,” Freddie says, grinning at Sebastian for approval, which he gets, a small satisfied smirk that tells me exactly what kind of afternoon this is going to be.

“Actually,” I say, still pleasant, still perfectly cheerful, “it’s a rather wonderful name. Brian’s not really who I am anymore.”

“Sure, Brian,” Sebastian says, and Hugo, who might be Rufus, laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard all week.

The room grows a little chilly. Just enough to raise the hairs on my arms.

I shake my head, hiding the gesture by rubbing the back of my neck and pretending I have a crick.

I could push the name thing with Sebastian and his loyal followers. I could make a proper thing of it, insist. But I’ve found that insisting rarely gets you anywhere with people like him, it just gives them more to enjoy, so instead I smile and start typing up the case list, because the work still needs doing whatever anyone wants to call me while I do it.

Sebastian doesn’t let it go, though. He’s the sort of person who finds a soft spot and keeps pressing it. Gently at first, testing, the way you’d test a bruise just to see how much it still hurts. Always with that same faint smile, the one that suggests he thinks he’s being clever as well as cruel.

“Someone said you were homeschooled,” he says, a little while later, not even bothering to make it sound casual. “Grew up in some sort of cult. Out in the countryside somewhere.”

“Something like that,” I say, still typing.

“What was that even like?” Sebastian asks.

“Lovely, actually,” I say, and I mean it, because it was, mostly. “Big rambling farmhouse. Everyone grew their own veg. Terrible singing round the fire most evenings, the kind of singing where nobody’s actually good but everyone commits fully anyway.”

“Sounds mental,” Freddie says, delighted.

“It had its moments.” I think of Big Brian teaching me to whittle, badly, and the goats, and Sunday mornings that smelled of wood smoke and porridge, and something in my chest goes warm and complicated the way it always does when I think about home properly. It wasn’t the life most people imagine when they hear the word cult, all sinister robes and locked gates. It was gentler than that, messier than that, full of people who genuinely believed the world could be kinder if you just tried hard enough at it. “Mostly it was just a lot of well meaning hippies trying to build something kinder than the world outside. Some of it worked. Some of it didn’t.”

“Bet there was loads of weird sex stuff,” Sebastian says, leaning back in his chair, enjoying himself now, an audience of two ready to laugh at whatever comes next. “Cults always have weird sex stuff. I read about one on the internet where everyone had to...”

“There really wasn’t,” I say, cutting him off lightly, still smiling. “Mostly gardening and hymn practice and someone always forgetting to lock the chicken coop. Very dull, really. You’d have hated it. No rowing.”

Freddie laughs properly at that, which clearly wasn’t the plan, and Sebastian’s smile goes thin and a little annoyed, the particular annoyance of someone who expected a flinch and got a joke instead.

“Must have really messed you up, though,” he presses, not willing to let the moment go entirely. “Growing up somewhere like that. No wonder you’re a bit odd.”