Page 34 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

Unsure where he’s going with this, I shake my head.

“Indeed. I am no monster, the way certain members of the press paint me. They have the temerity to insist that once people come into power, that they are no longer activists. As though we become blinded by absolute power. If anything, we are more dogged: we are defiant about seeing change occur within our lifetimes and at last have the means to make it happen.”

My eyes linger on the dossier beside him. There the means seemed to have been two boys locked inside Lochkelvin until the dossier was complete.

“You must be proud of Lochkelvin,” I say carefully, “for the students there to be so politically motivated.”

Yeah. Yeah, that’s one way of sayingfucking psychotic.

“Indeed.” He tilts a fresh glass in my direction. “Lochkelvin is the only place on earth where one can regularly meet chief executives, leaders of industry, the blue-blooded and political rulers — usually in one room, by attending their children’s school events.” He takes another sip and asks suddenly, “Do you know why Lochkelvin uses blackboards and chalk?”

Puzzled by this conversational detour, I shake my head.

“Because why mess with perfection? Why introduce newfangled technologies that’ll become obsolete in a few years, when blackboard and chalk are how generations of Lochkelvin students have been educated in the past? People nowadays over-rely on gimmicks when the information remains the same.” He stretches out his long legs, turning his whisky glass in his hands. “You know there is a genuine problem with intellectual laziness nowadays? Short attention spans brought on by what is, frankly, experimental technology. People’s brains are rotting — it’s fascinating stuff. You have to ask yourself: do you look at primary sources, research papers, policy consultations, legal journals… or do you just stick to reading headlines inThe Guardian? Naturally, I expect better from Lochkelvin students.”

I get the sense from our discussions that Oscar Munro is quite the ranter. He could rant about anything, from the failures of his son’s generation to the hallmarks of a quality scotch.

I’m still aware that I came here intending to claim that dossier for myself. But it hasn’t left Oscar Munro’s side once, and there’s no way I can get to it when we’re both seated opposite each other.

Captain Porthos wanders from his rug by the fire to the end of the room, and, thinking quickly, I follow.

There’s a large latticed window at the back of the room, and from between the crisscrossed panes I overlook the dark Lochkelvin grounds. The amount of lush, verdant land here is staggering, and somewhere far beyond the woods and the hills, somewhere heading straight down south, beside the confluence of northerly streams and lochs, is the school.

It strikes me as typical that the school is more accessible than Oscar Munro’s secluded estate. He may as well be using children as a shield.

“There’s space at the end,” I say when the only sound around us is the pad of Captain Porthos’s scuttling paws on the wooden floor. I gesture at the bare wall at the back of the Death Room, and Oscar Munro stands grudgingly from his throne. “Are you saving it for something?”

He approaches me slowly, and I try to keep my breath under control as my heart begins to stutter. The dossier is free, away from his prying eyes… But even if I did manage to swipe it from underneath Oscar Munro’s noble nose, there’s still the question that I’d be suspect number one.

Maybe it’s a risk worth taking.

Steal the dossier. Throw it in the fire. Save Britain from civil war. Await whatever punishment Oscar Munro sees fit.

Make Finlay happy.

“Indeed, it requires something special. Unfortunately, I appear to have run out of political enemies to add to my menagerie. But perhaps a new piece is in order.”

“Maybe you could break with tradition and add one of the Degas dancers here instead,” I suggest with a smile, trying to bring some light into the room. “I think it’d prove a nice contrast.”

His eyes slide to mine, and embedded in his dark silver irises is something that unnerves me. A knowingness. An omniscient quality, as he turns to me and points out in a sly tone, “Youare a dancer.”

I stare at him, uncomprehending.

“You were a truly excellent dancer the night I watched you.” I can’t help but shiver at his words, at the idea of beingwatched— a word so bold, so active — by Oscar Munro. He doesn’t move his gaze from mine as he adds, “Perhapsyouwould look good against the wall.”

My mouth turns dry and my brain freezes.

Is Oscar Munro… Is he…

No.

Maybe it’s an innocuous comment, a clumsy compliment. But there’s a pulsating smile at the corner of his mouth, and I wonder if it’s deliberate, if he’s phrased it in such a way that he could so easily claim his words had been misconstrued. Plausible deniability.

Perhaps you would look good against the wall.

Againstthe wall, notonthe wall, in much the same way as his son had shoved me against the wall to press hot, insistent kisses against my lips.

As if in a whirl of self-preservation, my mind suddenly belches out fragments of all the things I even know about Rory’s father: of his woebegone widowerTattleinterview, of the tabloids deriding him as a sleazy womanizer. Now that he’s rearing toward me like a runaway train, I don’t know what to think. I’m blinded, dazzled, by the light of him.

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