Saturday 8 October

Another sleepless night. Didn't help that we have Saturday morning lectures—Maths and Physics again. They certainly know how to keep you busy here in Cambridge. Once again, struggled to concentrate like crazy and ended up falling asleep altogether in the Physics lecture. Had to borrow Mei Ling's lecture notes again.

Fiona had moved out by the time I got back. The maintenance men arrived at 2pm to move my belongings as scheduled and I was settled in by three. My new room is better than the previous one—it faces due east and gets some sunshine in the morning, whereas the old one had a brick wall next to it and another part of the building straight ahead of it, blocking it off from anything resembling a decent view.

Once they were settled, I decided to introduce myself to my new neighbours. Knocked on the door opposite.

Much to my surprise, it was answered by Fiona!

Turns out that our fathers had both spoken to our respective Tutors, neither of whom knew anything about the other, so they'd just asked the Tutor for Rooms to arrange the moves without discussing the reason for them. He had then delegated the task to the Domestic Supervisor, who had moved us both into the Painters' Rooms—two rooms that the College keeps free every year so that they can move students into them temporarily for a week while they redecorate their own rooms—and this year, they're right next door to each other. The result is that we've now both been moved into rooms that are much brighter than the old ones, and that have just been redecorated, and we're still both next door to each other as we were before!

She gave me a massive hug. I don't normally like being hugged, but this was different somehow. Hugged her back. We laughed and cried for about ten minutes solid.

I said, "I can't wait to see the look on my dad's face when he finds out that his meddling in my student life has backfired on him."

She said, "I'm not going to tell my father, and I'd suggest that you don't tell yours either. They're both far enough away that they aren't likely to find out for several weeks, and by that time it won't be worth their while interfering any further. Besides, it's none of their business anyway."

Good point, but I do have auntie Dinah who lives locally, and great uncle Bill and great auntie Allie are coming up to visit tomorrow. But then again neither of them know what Fiona looks like. She could be the Queen of Sheba for all they know.

Fiona introduced me to our new neighbours. The guy next door to me is a second year Physics student called Lucas Petrov. He's half Russian and half English and he was brought up in London. Just across the corridor from him, next to Fiona, is a geography student called Jenny Kirrin. Her father works in the City for a company called Lupiter Funkstein and her great uncle worked as a scientist at Bletchley Park with Alan Turing during the Second World War. They seem nice enough, hopefully we'll get on as well with them. Oliver and Mei Ling came over in the evening and we all ordered a Chinese takeaway.

Sunday 9 October

Great uncle Bill and great auntie Allie arrived at one o'clock as agreed, along with auntie Dinah.

They're both looking well for their ages—great uncle Bill is seventy and great auntie Allie is sixty-eight. Turns out that they know Lucas, my new next door neighbour, as well! His father, Anatoly Petrov, used to work as a field operative with great uncle Bill back in the day, and in fact Anatoly was great uncle Bill's best man at his wedding to great auntie Allie. Apparently he was involved behind the scenes in many of Dad's teenage adventures. Wonder if the one in the Hebrides was one of them.

They took both of us to a restaurant in town.

Great auntie Allie said she thinks I sound very Scottish.

I said that's strange because back up in Scotland everybody keeps telling me I sound very English.

Lucas said he thought I sound American.

Great uncle Bill (who comes from Kilmarnock) said it's not really surprising given that I was brought up in St Andrews by English parents. It's the most international town in Scotland after all, thanks to the university and the golf course.

Auntie Dinah said to me, "You're studying Physics, aren't you, Samuel? Your sister Carla was telling me something rather crazy last weekend. You know the scene in Harry Potter where they walk through the wall to get to Platform 9 3/4? Apparently according to quantum mechanics, that is a real thing."

It should come as no surprise that Carla is a massive fan of Harry Potter. And she gets massively excited about quantum mechanics. She thinks it proves everything from ghosts to homeopathy to telepathy. It's just a shame that she doesn't get quite as excited about the advanced mathematics that you need in order to understand it properly.

Said so.

Lucas said, "It sounds like your sister would get on well with Brian Josephson. He won a Nobel Prize for his work in superconductivity in the sixties and he's been researching transcendental meditation and the paranormal ever since. Most of his colleagues think he's crazy. But she's probably thinking of quantum tunnelling. It is a real thing—you'll learn about it in lectures next term."

I said that I'd heard of quantum tunnelling, but I'd always thought that the bit about walking through walls was science fiction.

He said, "Pretty much so. Quantum mechanics works on the basis of probabilities. Tunnelling is likely and quite common on very small scales—about the size of an atom or a molecule—but once you get up to the size of a human being, it becomes so statistically unlikely that even if the visible universe were filled with Harry Potters walking at station walls, it still wouldn't have happened yet even after thirteen billion years."

Great auntie Allie said, "I'm glad I don't have to think about things like that. All this talk about quantum whatever makes my head spin."

Lucas said, "Yes, it makes physicists' heads spin as well. I think it was Niels Bohr who said that if you can think about quantum mechanics without getting dizzy, then you haven't understood it properly."

I started thinking about things that are making my head spin at that point. I'm having a bit of an existential crisis at the thought that some of these tales of adventure of Dad's, that I'd always thought were made up to keep us entertained as kids or to give us pep talks when we're spending too much time at the computer, could actually have been real after all. But then there's the question of what on earth they came across in that mountain in Wales, and whether there really is a place called Tauri-Hessia after all. (Must look it up on the map.) But then if his tales of adventure turn out to be real, what else could turn out to be real that I'd always dismissed as hokey? Homeopathy? Astrology? Crystal healing? The Loch Ness Monster? Transcendental meditation? After all, there is this Brian Josephson guy in the Cavendish who is into all sorts of stuff like that. Should I have done what Carla said last weekend and rearranged my room after all? Perhaps it was her bad feng shui that got Dad to ask for me to be moved? Then I thought that I must be turning into Carla by a process of slow evolution if I'm thinking things like that. What if I go home at Christmas and find that she's somehow turned into me and all of a sudden I'm the sixteen year old New Age granola girl while she's the scientific sceptic at Cambridge University? I thought about that film where a boy and a girl end up swapping places with each other. What if that actually happened to me and Carla?

Was brought back to reality by auntie Dinah waving her hand in front of me and saying, "Earth to Samuel, Earth to Samuel, come in Samuel." Sigh. I'd done it yet again. I'd let my mind wander and completely lost track of the conversation. Happens far too often.

Lucas said, "I think he must be in love."

Auntie Dinah said, "No, he's normally like that. You've never been all that talkative, have you Samuel? What goes on in that turbo-charged brain of yours beneath that mop of red hair is one of those great unfathomable mysteries of the universe."

Great auntie Allie said, "It's probably a bit of both. Samuel, tell us all about this gorgeous young lady that you've met."

Felt myself getting even more embarrassed at this point. Why does everyone seem so intent on matchmaking me with Fiona? We're just good friends.

Said so.

Great uncle Bill said, "I think it's because of your father's dealings with her father. The two of them aren't on speaking terms with each other. They communicate entirely through their respective solicitors."

I said, "Yes, so I gather. Some stramash or other in the Hebrides involving you, him, her father and a gang of gun runners. Seriously, how long ago was that, why are they still fighting over it today, and why can't they just leave me and Fiona out of it? After all, neither of us were even born back then."

Great auntie Allie said, "I think it's just that one thing led to another. The two of them met again when your dad was interviewing for a PhD studentship in Lancaster. He was supposed to be interviewed by an old friend of mine, Dr Johns, but Dr Johns had a stroke the day before the interview so his second in command ended up having to do it—and his second in command turned out to be none other than Horace Tipperlong, who recognised him, remembered the incident, and rejected him on the spot. Dr Johns was absolutely furious when he got back to work a year later and found out, but by that point your dad had already been snapped up by your uncle Philip's former adviser of studies in St Andrews."

Auntie Dinah said, "Not only that, but your dad, being the opportunist that he is, had applied for a million dollar, five year grant for the group in St Andrews to start up its own Great Auk de-extinction project. A grant that was originally supposed to go to the group in Lancaster. But then Horace Tipperlong managed to get himself onto the editorial board of a leading ornithological journal, and he started systematically rejecting every submission that had your father's name on it. Then your father was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Atlantic Avian Biology and started doing exactly the same. Now the two of them are both suing each other over the heads of it."

Crivvens. Sounds like a right mess, but it doesn't explain why they can't leave me and Fiona out of it.

Great auntie Allie said, "It's because your dad is worried in case you undermine him by getting too friendly with Fiona. How do you know she's not just trying to win your confidence in order to get you to drop your guard and reveal information that her dad can use against your dad?"

Hmmm, I hadn't thought about that. But didn't he make the same assumption about Horace himself in the first place? I'm sure one of them said something about that at some point. And isn't that how this whole stooshie got started in the first place—by them believing wild conspiracy theories like that?

Auntie Dinah said, "Well yes, we did think the enemy might send someone along pretending to be a dippy ornithologist or something to try and win our confidence. Don't forget we'd been stranded on that island for two days and they'd already come back again trying to flush us out. We had no idea who or what we were up against."

Pointed out that I'm not stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere, and whatever criminal gangs there may be prowling around Cambridge, I'm not aware of any that are trying to flush me out.

Great auntie Allie said, "No, but falling in love will get you to drop your guard faster than an anvil falling down a lift shaft. Just be careful, Samuel."

I appreciate her concern, but I'm still inclined to call "conspiracy theory" on that one. After all, the whole idea of a criminal gang sending along someone pretending to be a dippy ornithologist is a conspiracy theory itself, and one that quite unsurprisingly turned out to be wrong anyway. Besides, if Horace Tipperlong is as dippy as they're all making him out to be, the idea of him trying to get his daughter to flirt with me wouldn't even cross his mind.