The College had let them out to visiting physicists. She realized, with a growing sense of dread, that there was no place for her to stay. She dropped her bags at the porter’s lodge and ran into Hall, hoping to find Mrs. Dancer there. When she saw her familiar face, she started to squall, as though she’d found her long-lost mother. “Mrs. Dancer! Mrs. Dancer!” She was going into the kitchen, but Lily raced after her, scrambling past huge spluttering vats and urns and fryers. “Hum?” She picked her head up high, listening. “Who is calling me?” “It’s me, Lily!” She touched the cuff of her starched white sleeves. Mrs. Dancer looked at the girl kindly. “Leelah, dere is no College now. Why are you here now, Leelah?” “Something happened, and now I don’t know where I can go.” “You sit over dere now. I finish up.” Lily sat in the back of the gloomy, medieval Hall, at the end of a bench that must have been a mile long. It stretched right up to the High Table, where the dons sat at suppertime, decked out in their flowing black robes.
