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sat quietly by while they snapped and moaned. Apart from that elegant bit of socialising I stayed in my room reading and doing some essay work, but after a while I allowed my mind to wander back to the events of the previous day, particularly the killing of the dog. I remember feeling a tingle of excitement as I recalled the image of the creature’s shiny red skull and its dead sightless eyes staring up at me. It’s odd that I felt no guilt or regret about our actions. In fact quite the reverse. The whole thing had made me feel alive and vibrant, interacting with the world for once in a vital fashion, instead of just being a spectator. And I had Laurence to thank for that.
    I couldn’t wait to get to college on Monday morning to find out if there was any news regarding Old Mother Black and her missing pooch. I encountered Laurence in the common room before morning assembly, his face split with an enormous smile.
    ‘Have you heard the news?’ he said, barely able to contain his glee. ‘Old Mother Black will not be in today. Apparently she’s… sick.’
    I raised my eyebrows. ‘Poor old thing. Wonder what can be the matter.’
    ‘Let’s hope it’s something serious.’
    ‘Let’s hope for that, certainly.’
    Old Mother Black did not return to college. Ever. The distress she felt at the loss of her dog, its inexplicable disappearance, brought about a nervous breakdown and so the old dear retired due to ill health. We had, as Laurence had predicted, made our mark on the world.
    We didn’t talk about the matter in any depth until some months later. Ensconced as usual in Alf’s one Friday afternoon, we came to it again. There is something about a large, quiet decrepit pub in those funereal post lunchtime hours with muted daylight just squeezing in through the grimy stained glass windows, and the place peopled with only a few punters, pensioners with dominoes and the odd out of work alkie, which gives it an air of the confessional. We had been discussing Old Mother Black’s replacement, a fit piece of stuff in her early thirties, and congratulating ourselves that it was through our efforts that we now had the pleasure of Miss Cornwall, with her tight jumpers, buttock hugging pencil skirts and flashing brown eyes, for our history studies.
    Laurence leaned back in his seat apparently staring at the smoke-tarred ceiling with a beatific smile upon his face. ‘Poor Old Mother Black. We really did for her didn’t we?’
    ‘And that bloody dog of hers. We did for them both.’
    We chuckled.
    ‘You are quite right, mon ami ,’ continued Laurence. ‘We made the difference. We altered the course of history – only a teeny weeny bit, I grant you, but nevertheless… Through our little efforts we managed to change things. Surely that’s what we’re here for. That’s what makes life bearable, to shape things to our own ends… and in particular to affect the lives of others. We’re not like those dumbbells at college who just let life happen to them. We make it happen to us.’
    I grinned and made a kind of roaring noise emulating the sound of an appreciative crowd. ‘ Sieg Heil , sieg Heil ,’ I added with a grin.
    Laurence flashed me an angry glance. ‘I’m not bloody joking, Russ. What we did was the best thing we’ve ever done in our fucking miserable lives. There’s a dog out there rotting in its grave and a stupid, insipid old woman dribbling into her cocoa because of us – because of what we did. That’s power. It gives life a purpose.’
    I stopped grinning. I hadn’t thought of what we had done in this way. I hadn’t really thought about it in any way. It had been a kind of exciting diversion from the dull routine – a bit of lark – but now I began to see what Laurence meant. It had allowed us to become the puppet masters. Through our actions we could control or at least affect destinies. We pulled the bloody strings for a change! As always Laurence was the perceptive one, the one who showed