The Gone-Away World

by Nick Harkaway

We came around a curve, and there it was, tucked up on its little hill and dark and empty as your dog’s kennel after you take him to the vet and say goodbye.

Mr Soames, whose father’s father’s father founded the school, died some time back of a marsh fever, and the tacit consensus among the parents is that it was with a considerable sense of relief. Mr Brabasen even suggested that Mr Soames’s sole intention in his frequent and prolonged fishing trips to the darkest and most pungent area of the Cricklewood Fens was to infect himself with said disease, a virulent virus which in 80 per cent of cases claimed either the victim’s hearing or his life, either sad outcome being, in Mr Brabasen’s opinion, reason enough for Mr Soames to seek it out.