Free The Insect Farm by Stuart Prebble Page B

take care of the queen?”
    “Yes,” he said, “that seems to be the purpose of their lives. To look after the queen.”
    “A feeling I know well,” I said. Roger looked sideways at me, not quite understanding what I was talking about. After a moment that seemed not to matter, and next time I glanced at him he was absorbed once more in his project, apparently unaware that I was even present alongside him.

Chapter Eight
    Two weeks later Harriet and I were back in Newcastle for the new term. It was 3 a.m. and she and I were asleep in my single bed when I became aware of a soft but determined knock on the door. The previous night there had been a discotheque in the halls of residence and we had gone to bed late, our sleep deepened by an excess of alcohol. Only gradually did the sound permeate my consciousness. I mumbled something which would have been incomprehensible even had anyone else been awake to hear it, and swung my legs out of bed, searching for my underpants among the detritus of student life. I’m not sure if I even dozed off again in the process, because half a minute later I heard the same knocking, as if to nudge me.
    When whatever will be the modern equivalent of the Gestapo eventually comes for me, 3 a.m. would be the best time to do it. I felt totally disorientated, with no more idea of what could be causing this interruption than I had any sense of my surroundings or time of day. “Just a second. Just a second. I’ll be there,” I called out, pulling on the T-shirt I had discarded a few hours earlier.
    Eventually I was able to pull open the door a few inches, and I squinted into the corridor, which was barely illuminatedby emergency night lights. I found myself trying to focus on the face of Mr Stroud, who was the hall warden. Behind him I could see the uniformed shape of Wilf, the hall porter who did double shifts as the nightwatchman.
    “Sorry to disturb you, Jonathan,” said the warden. “Are you alone?”
    I wasn’t immediately clear about the reason for asking and considered lying, but even in my confused state, I soon realized that this would be a pointless deception. “No, Warden, I have my girlfriend with me. We were just—”
    “That doesn’t matter.” I was clearly on the wrong track. “Would you mind just popping on your dressing gown and coming down to the Lodge for a moment? I need a quick word with you.”
    Something about his manner prevented me from saying “at three in the morning?”, because my brain was gradually beginning to sharpen up, and even I could work out that he would know what time it was.
    “Sure thing, give me a couple of minutes. But what is it about?”
    “Just pop a few clothes on and come down,” he said. “Better to speak downstairs.”
    Harriet was resting on her elbows when I came back into the room and I should be ashamed to admit that it crossed my mind how that position made her breasts stick up in a way which made me want to climb back into bed with her.
    “What’s happening?”
    I told her that I had no idea, but that the warden needed to have a word with me downstairs in his residence. Even slower to become alert than I was, Harriet asked the question I had resisted.
    “At three a.m.?”
    “Evidently.”
    “I can’t be about me being here, can it?”
    “No, I don’t think so.” Even then, it still hadn’t really occurred to me that this was something serious. “I’ll come straight back up when I’ve spoken to him.”
    I walked through the silent corridors, my mind searching for the possible explanation but failing to reach any conclusions. The door to the warden’s residence was ajar when I got there, but I tapped on it anyway. “Come on in, Jonathan,” I heard him say. I had been in his sitting room months before, at a reception for Freshers. It was altogether like an upgraded version of the junior common room, except that there were books everywhere. The pictures on the walls looked as though they had been bought at the local