Chapter 4
Richard Darlington: A Date for the First Court Hearing Has Been Set!
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Ethan
“In the following week, we will be looking more closely at the modelling of financial risks. Make sure you’re familiar with modelling approaches.
I don’t have time to explain the basics to you again,” Professor Sattler admonished, hoping to elicit a reaction from the students.
But the hall remained silent; his lecture had sent most of us into a deep sleep.
His next magical words woke everyone up.
“That’s all for today. You may go. Except you, Mr. Darlington. I’d like a word with you.”
Fuck.
Dave, who sat next to me, gave me a look that said, Sorry, mate, you’re on your own, before bolting, as though afraid he’d be kept back too if he dawdled.
I shoved the iPad I’d been taking notes on into my rucksack and made my way down the auditorium steps while everyone else fled for the exit.
I stopped in front of Professor Sattler’s desk.
An older gentleman, he could probably already smell the sweet scent of his impending retirement.
The years had turned his brown hair grey, and he’d shaved off the beard he’d worn in previous terms, likely because he’d caught wind of students calling him “Boring Santa” behind his back—a nickname I myself had coined at the start of my first year at Imperial College.
He no longer looked like Santa, but he was still just as boring.
With my hands in my pockets, I waited for Professor Sattler to acknowledge me.
He calmly packed his bag without sparing me a glance.
It was a familiar power move. Professor Sattler couldn’t stand me and had had it in for me since my first term, when I had vomited on his car.
In my defence, it had been the Monday after my birthday, and I hadn’t known it was his car.
The wave of nausea had hit me out of the blue—what was I supposed to do?
“Mr. Darlington,” Professor Sattler said, once he’d kept me waiting long enough. He gave me a frosty look. “I assume you know why I asked you to stay behind.”
“Not really.”
Professor Sattler’s eyes narrowed. He looked at me as if I were a stain on his favourite tweed jacket.
In truth, I had no idea what he wanted from me.
I hadn’t caused trouble during his lecture.
I’d even made an effort to listen. I’d handed the last paper in on time, so that couldn’t have been it either.
“It’s about your last paper.”
Or maybe it could.
“What about it?”
“It was good. Very good, in fact.”
“Is that a problem?”
Professor Sattler pulled my paper out of his briefcase.
Despite his praise, it was heavily marked in red pen.
“I’ve spoken to a few of the other professors and looked through some of your earlier work, Mr. Darlington.
It won’t surprise you to hear that your academic performance has left much to be desired since the start of your time here.
Rarely have I seen a student with so many bad grades and fails as you. ”
Unfortunately, he was right. Education hadn’t been my number one priority for the last year and a half.
If I was honest, it had maybe ranked only fourth or even fifth.
But since my conversation with Henry at the start of the year, I had been trying to do better, to be less destructive with my life.
It had earned me a few better grades on my January exams, which Professor Sattler had no doubt chosen to ignore.
“What are you suggesting?” I asked.
“You didn’t write this paper yourself,” he replied matter-of-factly, as if it were a scientifically proven fact. “I hardly need to remind you that Imperial College has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to plagiarism. Submitting work that isn’t your own could cost you your place here.”
“Do you have any proof to back your accusation?”
He jabbed a finger at the paper. “This is all the proof I need.”
“I wrote that paper.”
“Lying won’t get you anywhere, Ethan,” he said in a tone so condescending it could have rivalled my dad’s. “We both know you didn’t write this. The author uses words you wouldn’t even know how to spell. Ambiguity, for example.”
“A-m-b-i-g-u-i-t-y,” I spelled without hesitation.
Professor Sattler’s expression darkened, as if I’d insulted his mother. “That proves nothing. You opened a dictionary. Well done. If you did so more often, you wouldn’t need to get other people to write your papers.”
I pressed my lips together. Professor Sattler was clearly not about to revise his opinion of me. He’d formed it long ago—probably on the day I’d vomited on his car. To him, I was just another spoiled trust-fund brat, with all the brains of a mayfly.
I could have given him a blow-by-blow account of how I’d researched and developed my thesis, and how I’d driven to the university library in the middle of the night to fetch a book that wasn’t available online.
He still wouldn’t have believed me. He’d simply have found new ammunition to shore up the picture he already had of me.
And I couldn’t really blame him. At the end of the day, I was exactly who he thought I was: a spoiled trust-fund brat who hadn’t exactly dazzled with his academic achievements.
“What happens next?” I asked instead of protesting.
Professor Sattler’s mouth twitched smugly.
In his eyes, my question was as good as an admission of guilt.
“You have two options, and only because I’m generous,” he replied patronisingly.
“Option one: I report the incident to the examination board, who will review your work and, in all likelihood, reach the same conclusion as me—you can’t possibly have written it yourself.
It would mark the end of your academic career at Imperial College. ”
“And the second option?”
“You hand in a new paper on a different topic, written yourself, by next Monday. Your decision.”
Part of me wanted to drag Professor Sattler to face the examination board, just to see the fury on his face when they took my side. But although I truly had written the paper myself, there was still a small chance that the board would side with Professor Sattler.
I had no problem with being expelled from Imperial College, but if it came to that, it would only be a matter of time before the media caught wind, and the last thing my family needed was more negative headlines.
Thanks to my dad, we already had plenty of those.
I would have cared less if my dad had been the only one affected by it, but Henry was caught up in it too, and he didn’t deserve that.
Not after everything he’d gone through in the last few months.
“I’ll write a new paper.”
“Wise choice. I’ll send you an email this afternoon with a new topic. I expect at least fifteen pages, and you’d better not fob me off with someone else’s work again.”
I gritted my teeth and nodded. There was nothing more to say.
Professor Sattler and I stared at each other for a few seconds, until I could no longer bear the sight of his arrogant face. Then I turned away and jogged up the auditorium stairs.
Heavy, dark clouds hung in the sky when I left the South Kensington campus. The people around me were hurrying to find shelter before the heavens opened. I looked around for Wallace but couldn’t see my driver anywhere. My gaze fell instead on a familiar figure leaning against a wine-red Maserati.
“James?”
“Finally! I thought you’d never show up!” he called, as if I’d kept him waiting on purpose. I hadn’t even known he was in town. James was studying at Cambridge and only came to London on weekends, if at all.
I greeted him with a hug. He returned it warmly, giving me a firm clap on my back. “My professor wanted to talk to me.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Not anymore. I took care of it,” I replied with an indifferent shrug, although it infuriated me to have to write the paper again—and do a worse job of it this time, to make it seem more believable that I’d written it. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see my best friend. What else? Get in!”
“Wallace was supposed to pick me up,” I said, glancing around for my driver, who was still nowhere to be seen.
“I gave him fifty quid and sent him away,” James said, circling his car to get in.
I dropped into the passenger seat. Although the Maserati was already a year old, the interior still smelled of new leather. James had probably hidden an air freshener somewhere that exuded that new-car smell.
The engine sprang to life with a gentle purr. James eased the car smoothly out of the parking space to glide into the hectic afternoon traffic just as the first raindrops began to fall.
“Shouldn’t you be in Cambridge?”
James turned on the windscreen wipers as we approached Cromwell Road. “I decided spontaneously to take a few days off. It’s my grandma’s birthday tomorrow. And besides, I’ve missed London.”
“You could come and visit more often,” I suggested.
I missed having James around. Before going off to different universities, James and I had shared a room at boarding school.
We’d spent all our time together, and we knew everything about each other.
He was more of a brother to me than my actual brothers.
He sighed. “I know. But the parties are so good.”
“You can’t have both.”
“Next weekend I can,” he said proudly. “There’s a new club opening in Soho on Saturday. My dad knows the owner, and he got us on the VIP guest list. Apparently Deadmau5 is playing. It’s going to be wild. You’ll come, right?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know . . .”
“Come on!”
“I’m trying to take things easy right now,” I responded as James slowed to a stop at a red light. He turned and stared at me with his big brown eyes, as if he were a child and I’d just told him Santa Claus didn’t exist. I caved. “Will Charles be there?”