as normal. She was perfectly content and cozy at home, working away. And while I occasionally scratched at the window and looked longingly outside, I appreciated the new rules for the one benefit they accidentally conferred—the curfew was a great equalizer. The entire social dynamic had altered. There was no question of who was going to what party or what club or pub. We were all inmates of Wexford. During those three weeks, it became my home.
Jazza and I developed our rituals. I’d put the Cheez Whiz on the radiator right before dinner. I developed this little trick by accident, but it worked amazingly well. Around nine at night, it would be perfect, warm and runny. Every night, Jazza and I had a ritual of tea and biscuits and rice crisps with Cheez Whiz.
I had lucked out on the roommate front. Jazza, with her wide eyes, her adorable caution, her relentless determination to do the nice thing. Jazza missed her dogs and taking long, hot baths, and she promised to take me home with her to where she lived, out in the wilds of Cornwall. She liked to go to bed at ten thirty and read Jane Austen with a cup of tea. She didn’t care if I sat up, screwing around on the Internet or desperately cramming English literature into my brain or fumbling my way through French essays until three in the morning. In fact, those new rules probably saved my academic life as well. There was nothing to do but study. On Friday and Saturday, we’d get mildly drunk on mugs full of cheap red wine (supplied by Gaenor and Angela, who managed to stash theirs so cleverly that no one could find it) and then run in circles around the building.
That’s how September went. By the end of it, everyone on my floor knew about Cousin Diane, Uncle Bick, Billy Mack. They had admired the pictures of my grandma in her negligee. I learned that Gaenor was deaf in one ear, that Eloise had once been attacked on the street in Paris, Angela had a skin condition that made her itchy all the time, Chloe down the hall wasn’t a horrible snob—her father had recently died. When a little tipsy, Jazza did complicated dance routines with props.
People got more and more bitter about these rules as we approached the twenty-ninth. In response to the police request that everyone stay either at home or in a group, it was now a city-wide party. Pubs were offering two-for-one drinks. Betting shops had odds on where bodies would be found. Regular programming on BBC One had been replaced by all-night news coverage, and the other stations were running every kind of Ripper or murder mystery show they had. People were throwing lock-in parties in their houses to watch. The Double Event night was bigger than New Year’s and we were not going to be a part of it.
On the morning of the twenty-ninth, there was an uncertain sky on the edge of rain. I trudged over to the refectory, limping a bit because of a brief romance my thigh had with a flying hockey ball during one of the rare moments I wasn’t guarding the goal in my head-to-toe padding. I guess I wasn’t overly concerned about the Ripper. In my mind, Jack the Ripper was a ridiculous creature that always lived in London. On that day, though, I saw the first signs of people really flaking out. I heard someone say that she didn’t even want to go outside. Two people left school entirely for a few days. I saw one of them pulling her bag along the cobblestones.
“People are being serious,” I said to Jazza.
“There’s a serial killer out there,” she said. “Of course people are serious.”
“Yeah, but what are the chances?”
“I’ll bet all the victims thought that.”
“But still, what are the chances?”
“Well, I imagine they are several million to one.”
“Not that high,” Jerome said, coming up behind us. “You’re only dealing with a small part of London. And while there might be a million or more people in that area, the Ripper is probably focusing on women, because all of the original victims were women. So halve that—”
“You really need another hobby,” Jazza said, opening the door to the refectory.
“I have plenty of hobbies. Anyway, the Ripper never showed any interest in kids or teenagers, so I don’t think we have anything to worry about. Does that make you feel better?”
“Not particularly,” Jazza said.
“Well, I tried.”
Jerome stepped aside to let me go in first. We got in line and loaded our plates. We had barely started eating when Mount Everest rumbled in with Claudia and Derek, the housemaster of Aldshot, in tow.
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