Even I knew about Desi. October. Desi Collings attended the boys’ boarding school that was paired with Wickshire.

In Amy’s stories, he was a pale, Romantic figure, and their courtship had been of the boarding-school variety: chilly football games and overheated dances, lilac corsages and rides in a vintage Jaguar. Everything a little bit mid-century. Amy dated Desi, quite seriously, for a year. But she began to find him alarming. After Amy cut it off with Desi, he still lingered around the Wickshire campus, a ghostly figure in dark blazers, leaning against wintry, leafless oak trees.