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darling, of course you’ve had to apply. That is all taken care of, and your

    application has almost certainly been accepted.’
    ‘It can’t have been. I haven’t made it.’
    ‘But I have,’ said Vera sweetly. ‘On your behalf.’
    ‘You can’t go round making applications on other people’s behalf. You’ve got to get

    their consent and anyway you don’t even know what I’ve published or my curriculum vitae.

    Or what my present studies are.’
    ‘Of course I do. I got it from your Faculty secretary. She was extremely

    helpful.’
    ‘What?’ squawked Purefoy, now thoroughly alarmed and angry. ‘She had absolutely no

    right to give confidential information away like that. I’ve a good mind–’
    A very good mind,’ Vera interrupted. ‘In fact an excellent one, which is why you are

    going to Porterhouse.’
    ‘I’m most definitely not,’ said Purefoy. ‘I want to know why Mrs Pitch gave you details

    of my curriculum vitae You can’t go round revealing–’
    ‘Oh, do hush up. She didn’t do anything of the sort. I’m your cousin, remember, and I

    know just about everything about you. Besides, it’s all on the Kloone University

    computer and I know your password so I went straight in and had it all printed out.’
    ‘My password? You don’t know it. You can’t have got it from Mrs Pitch either because she

    doesn’t know it.’
    ‘I’m certain she doesn’t, but I most certainly do.’
    ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Purefoy demanded.
    Vera giggled. ‘Purefoy, dear, you’re so transparent. “Certainty” is your password. I

    knew it had to be something like that. You’re obsessed with it.’
    Purefoy Osbert groaned. Vera had always been smarter than he was. ‘In that case I’m

    going to change it,’ he said. ‘And I am definitely not going anywhere near Porterhouse

    College. It’s got a dreadful reputation for snobbery and all sorts of other things.’
    ‘Which is why you have been given a Fellowship there To change things for the better,’

    said Vera. ‘They need some serious scholarship, and you are going to provide it. Your

    salary will be more than three times what you’re getting at the moment and you will be free

    to do your own research work with no obligation to do any teaching.’
    Purefoy Osbert’s silence was significant. Only that day he had had to attend an

    extremely boring Finance Committee meeting at which the possibility of financial

    cuts had been discussed with the mention of a freeze on salaries, and that had been followed

    by a seminar on Bentham with several students who were convinced that prisons built like

    Dartmoor on the panopticon principle were far more suitable for murderers and

    sex-offenders than the more modern open prisons Purefoy advocated. Some of them had

    even argued that child molesters ought to be castrated and murderers executed. Purefoy

    had found the seminar most distressing, particularly the way the more prejudiced

    students had refused to accept the facts he had given them. And now suddenly he was

    being offered a Fellowship that involved no teaching and with a salary that would surely

    satisfy Mrs Ndhlovo.
    ‘Do you really mean that?’ he asked cautiously. ‘This isn’t some sort of joke?’
    ‘Have you ever known me to lie to you, Purefoy? Have you?’
    Purefoy Osbert hesitated again. ‘No, I don’t suppose I have. All the same…you’re

    talking about a salary–’
    ‘Of nearly sixty thousand pounds a year, which is far more than any professor gets. Now

    give me the number of your fax machine and I’ll send you a copy of the letter you will be

    receiving either tomorrow or the next day from your sponsor’s solicitors, Lapline &

    Goodenough.’
    ‘But that is the firm you work for,’ said Purefoy.
    ‘Which is how I happen to know you’re being offered the Fellowship,’ said Vera and,

    having taken his fax number, rang off.
    Ten minutes later a bewildered Purefoy Osbert sat reading the