False Tongues Read Online Free PDF Page B

and located her name, then made a great song and dance of getting the key off the appropriate hook and giving it to her.
    â€˜B23. Can you find it, or do you need a map?’
    B23. ‘I can find it,’ she said.
    She could find it in her sleep: her old room.
    Callie dragged her case through the porters’ lodge and out into the courtyard, its wheels rumbling noisily over the ancient, uneven pavement, echoing in the silence of the night. Fortunately it wasn’t a long way to B staircase, which was in the front range of the college, the side of the rectangle closest to the road. But then she had to wrestle with the heavy oak door and get her suitcase up two flights of stairs. By the time she slid the key into the familiar lock of the room, Callie was ready to collapse with exhaustion.
    Without any conscious thought on her part, her fingers found the light switch by the door.
    Her room. The old stone fireplace, decorative but non-functional. The big oak desk with the wonky old chair and the book shelves above. The comfy, tattered arm chair. The basin in the corner. The battered chest of drawers, one knob missing; the imposing wardrobe which looked as if it had come out of some country house and would provide entrance to Narnia. The incongruously modern bedside table, with its cheap laminate top. The bed.
    The bed was the one thing that looked different. Callie had used her own flowered duvet cover, her own thick down duvet. Now it had a more institutional appearance, with a thin synthetic duvet encased in a dark-coloured, geometrically patterned cover. It didn’t look very inviting, but at this point Callie didn’t care.
    She opened her case and found her sleep shirt. Then she quickly shed her clothes, tossing them on the arm chair, and pulled the shirt over her head.
    She’d used the loo at the station, while waiting for the taxi, so she didn’t have to make a trip down the corridor. Too weary even to clean her teeth or wash her face, Callie switched off the light, slid under the duvet, closed her eyes and fell asleep almost instantly.
    A few minutes later—five? ten?—she was jolted back to consciousness by an insistent tapping. She pried her eyes open; the noise seemed to be coming from her door. ‘What is it?’ she called out, her heart pounding.
    The door flew open; she’d forgot to lock it.
    A halo of blond curls was back-lit from the corridor for just a moment before Tamsin Howells slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. She put her hands on her hips. ‘Callie Anson,’ she said severely, ‘where on earth have you been ?’

Chapter Three
    Waking in her bed on Monday morning, Margaret Phillips, the Principal of Archbishop Temple House, reached for her husband Hal.
    Hal wasn’t there. As a matter of fact he had never shared this bed with her, but at least twice a week she dreamed about him, vividly, and woke expecting to find him with her. Margaret sometimes wondered when those dreams would stop. Probably never—or not until she stopped dreaming altogether, when they shut her in a box…
    The trouble was that she’d never stopped loving him—though she recognised all too well that sometimes love wasn’t enough.
    Sighing, Margaret turned over, looked at the clock and thought about getting up. It was Easter Monday, a holiday for most, yet that didn’t mean it was a day off for her. Most of the students had gone home for the Easter holidays, but their places had been taken by the returning deacons. The daily services in the college chapel would be held as usual, and Margaret would want to be there, whether she was taking the services herself or not.
    This was Margaret’s second academic year as Principal, which meant that it was also her second Deacons’ Week. But this one was different, she’d already realised. Last year the returning deacons had been strangers to her, a legacy from the last Principal. This