wrong marriage and in the wrong life. He took his fish forgers across to a table in the corner and ate by himself. Around him other members of staff sat discussing A-level prospects and who was going to sit on the course board next term. They taught Maths or Economics or English, subjects that counted and where promotion was easy. Liberal Studies didn’t count and promotion was out of the question. It was as simple as that. Wilt finished his lunch and went up to the reference library to look up insulin in the Pharmacopoeia. He had an idea it was the one untraceable poison.
At five to two, none the wiser, he went down to Room 752 to extend the sensibilities of fifteen apprentice butchers, designated on the timetable as Meat One. As usual they were late and drunk.
‘We’ve been drinking Bill’s health,’ they told him when they drifted in at ten past two.
‘Really?’ said Wilt, handing out copies of The Lord of the Flies. ‘And how is he?’
‘Bloody awful,’ said a large youth with ‘Stuff Off painted across the back of his leather jacket. ‘He’s puking his guts out. It’s his birthday and he had four Vodkas and a Babycham…’
‘We’d got to the part where Piggy is in the forest,’ said Wilt, heading them off a discussion of what Bill had drunk for his birthday. He reached for aboard duster and rubbed a drawing of a Dutch Cap off the blackboard.
‘That’s Mr Sedgwick’s trademark,’ said one of the butchers, ‘he’s always going on about contraceptives and things. He’s got a thing about them.’
‘A thing about them?’ said Wilt loyally.
‘You know, birth control. Well, he used to be a Catholic, didn’t be? And now he’s not, he’s making up for lost time,’ said a small pale-faced youth unwrapping a Mars Bar.
‘Someone should tell him about the pill,’ said another youth lifting his head somnolently from the desk. ‘You can’t feel a thing with a Frenchie. You get more thrill with the pill.’
‘I suppose you do,’ said Wilt, ‘but I understood there were side-effects.’
‘Depends which side you want it,’ said a lad with sideburns.
Wilt turned back to The Lord of the Flies reluctantly. He had read the thing two hundred times already.
Now Piggy goes into the forest…’ he began, only to be stopped by another butcher, who evidently shared his distaste for the misfortunes of Piggy.
‘You only get bad effects with the pill if you use ones that are high in oestrogen.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ said Wilt. ‘Oestrogen? You seem to know a lot about it.’
‘Old girl down our street got a bloodclot in her leg…’
‘Silly old clot,’ said the Mars Bar.
‘Listen,’ said Wilt. ‘Either we hear what Peter has to tell us about the effects of the pill or we get on and read about Piggy.
‘Fuck Piggy,’ said the sideburns.
‘Right,’ said Wilt heartily, ‘then keep quiet.’
‘Well,’ said Peter, ‘this old girl, well she wasn’t all that old, maybe thirty, she was on the pill and she got this bloodclot and the doctor told my auntie it was the oestrogen and she’d better take a different sort of pill just in case and the old girl down the street, her old man had to go and have a vasectomy so’s she wouldn’t have another bloodclot.’
‘Buggered if anyone’s going to get me to have a vasectomy,’ said the Mars Bar, ‘I want to know I’m all there.’
‘We all have ambitions,’ said Wilt.
‘Nobody’s going to hack away at my knackers with a bloody great knife,’ said the
