Unseen Academicals

headed, in the drizzling rain, back to her safe haven of the Night Kitchen. Halfway there an all but forgotten pressure in her bodice reminded her of her duty and she dared go into the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork.
    Trembling with fear and defiance, she walked up to a clerk at his desk, slapped fifty warm dollars in front of him and said, ‘I want to start a bank account, all right?’ She left five minutes later with a shiny account book and the delightful recollection that a posh-looking man at a posh-looking desk in a posh-looking building had called her madam, and enjoyed the sensation until it ran into the reality that madam had better roll up her sleeves and get to work.
    There was a lot to do. She made pies at least a day ahead so that they could mature, and Mister Nutt’s appetite last night had put quite a large dent in her pantry. But at least there wouldn’t be much demand for pies tomorrow night. Even the wizards didn’t call for a pie after a banquet.
    Ah, yes, the banquet, she thought, as the rain started to soak into her coat. The banquet. She would have to see about the banquet. Sometimes if you wanted to go to the ball you had to be your own fairy godmother.
    There were several obstacles requiring the touch of a magic wand: Mrs Whitlow did indeed operate a certain kind of apartheid between the Night and Day Kitchens, as if one flight of stairs actually changed who you were. The next difficulty was that Glenda did not have, according to the traditions of the university, the right kind of figure to serve at table, at least when there were visitors, and, lastly, Glenda did not have the temperament for serving at table. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to smile; she was quite capable of smiling, if you gave her enough warning, but she positively hated having to smile at people who actually merited, instead, a flick around the earhole with a napkin. She hated taking away plates of unfinished food. She always had to suppress a tendency to say things like ‘Why did you put it on your plate if you didn’t intend to finish it?’ and ‘Look, you’ve left more than half of it and it cost a dollar a pound,’ and ‘Of course it’s cold, but that’s because you’ve been playing footsie with the young lady opposite and haven’t been concentrating on your dinner,’ and when all else failed ‘There’s little children in Klatch you know…’–it was a phrase of her mother’s, but she’d obviously missed some significant part of it.
    She hated waste, she thought to herself as she walked along the stone corridor towards the Night Kitchen. There never needed to be any if you knew your way around a kitchen and if your diners had the decency to take your food seriously. She was rambling to herself. She knew that. Occasionally she would pull the front page of the Times out of her bag and take a look at it again. It had all really happened and there was the proof. But, it was a funny thing: every day something happened that was important enough to be on the front page of the newspaper. She’d never bought it and seen a little sign that said ‘Not much happened yesterday, sorry about that’. And tomorrow, wonderful though that picture was, it would be wrapping up fish and chips and everyone would have forgotten about it. That would be a load off her mind.
    There was a polite cough. She recognized it as belonging to Nutt, who had the politest cough there could possibly be. ‘Yes, Mister Nutt?’
    ‘Mister Trev has sent me with this letter for Miss Juliet, Miss Glenda,’ said Nutt, who had apparently been waiting by the steps. He held it out as if it were some double-edged sword.
    ‘She’s not come in yet, I’m afraid,’ said Glenda as Nutt followed her up the steps, ‘but I’ll put it on the shelf over here where she’ll be bound to see it.’ She looked at Nutt and saw his eyes firmly fixed on the pie racks. ‘Oh, and I do seem to have made one apple pie more than called for. I wonder if you could assist me by removing it from the premises?’
    He gave her a grateful smile, took the pie and hurried away.
    Alone again, Glenda looked at the envelope. It was the cheapest sort, the kind that looked as if it had been made from recycled lavatory paper. And somehow, it seemed to have got a bit bigger.
    Inexplicably, she found herself recalling that the gum on those envelopes was so bad that when it came to sealing them it was probably better to just have a very bad cold. Anyone could simply