Until today that was. Until Evelyn Salik, the young black-haired girl in the middle row just read out “Pauti” from the picture of a 3700-year-old tablet in front of the whole class.

  Claudia placed the laser pointer down upon her desk and stared intently at Evelyn. The girl made a grunting noise, looked flustered and appeared to fumble something in her hands. Claudia decided to go with humour.

  “Miss Salik appears to have deciphered Linear A for us all in...”, Claudia glanced quickly at her watch, “a little over half an hour! Would you like to fill the rest of us in?”

  “Oh. Sorry, I was just messaging a friend”, Evelyn explained quickly, placing a mobile phone on the desk in front of her, “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

  There were sniggers from some of the other students as they saw hilarity in one of their number being embarrassed in front of them. Claudia smiled, “I would prefer you devote your attention to my teaching in future Miss Salik”, picked the laser pointer up, and turning back towards the large white screen, continued teaching.

  Her students might not have noticed but it would certainly not turn out to be one of her better performances. She had become agitated and kept losing concentration on the subject at hand; constantly adjusting the gold pin holding her hair in place.

  Her mind kept going back to the moment Evelyn had said that single word: “Pauti”, pronounced perfectly. Had she really misheard the girl making a grunting sound or coughing? It wasn’t the first word that appeared on the tablet, but it wasn’t an insignificant word either: a simple noun. A noun used for a small robe, such as a child may wear, scribed on the tablet listing the inventory of a high-ranking merchant’s stores.

  For the remaining twenty minutes, Claudia kept making brief glances at Evelyn. Was she imagining it, or was the girl also staring at her a little too intently, and too often as well? What did she really know about this girl? She had enrolled at the same time as the others, recalled Claudia, and in the short time the course had been running, the assignments she’d submitted could, at best, be described as ‘average’.

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  Might her work have been too average, wondered Claudia? Her first thought was that she may have encountered the girl previously, under a different name. But that seemed unlikely. She had been very careful to conceal herself over the years.

  Perhaps it’s time for a new start Claudia thought. Yes, that would work. Time for “Claudia” to meet her demise. Time to make a clean break now, time to run. Stay away from academia for a few years. Yes, she decided. She would start making arrangements tonight. Maybe not go back at all tomorrow. Phone in sick and disappear. She always had a backup plan, an escape route planned, just in case.

  The lecture ended and the students filed out. Evelyn leaves with everyone else, lost somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Good, thought Claudia, as she gathered up her papers, laptop, and bag, before walking hurriedly to her office where she started to empty out some of her more precious belongings.

  She quickly dropped into the Department Office and explained to the secretary that she was feeling unwell and she’d be taking the rest of the afternoon off. She had only a single tutorial, in an hours’ time, and could get a PhD student to cover that for her.

  She walked briskly to the staff car park where her car, and escape route, waited.

  Rounding the corner Claudia sees Evelyn standing there, arms folded, leaning against the car. Claudia froze as the girl stood upright and walked purposefully to meet her, tears running slowly down her cheeks.

  She hadn’t noticed Evelyn’s basket bag before. The girl had probably kept it under the desk all the time, but there it was now, slung over her shoulder. It was corduroy, a yellow colour, and when the late afternoon sun shone through a gap in the pillars onto it, resembled straw.

  Just like a straw basket. A straw basket carried by a small girl, a straw basket containing molluscs.

  Feelings of euphoria swept through Claudia’s mind like waves as the girl calling herself Evelyn smiles and whispers a single word: “Witea.”

  Witea. It was a word that didn’t appear on the tablet Claudia had shown in the lecture, but a word both she and Evelyn knew very well.

  It is the Minoan word for ‘My Mother’.