David knows he won't win a war with the governors. It would be an unequal battle, since he's there to do their bidding, his every action bound by a committee with more titles between them than workable ideas.

He knows he can't win. And yet that's never stopped him before, on the occasions that they've disagreed, from arguing passionately for what he believed in. He's always been a man of principle, a man who'll stand up for what's right. Sometimes it's taken the fine art of diplomacy to get them to see his point of view. Often, all it's taken to sway them is a smile and the sheer force of his personality.

Looking back now, he thinks maybe he stood up to them once too often.

The scenic surroundings can't hide the dark underbelly of bureaucracy that lurks beneath Medenham Hall. It's politics, plain and simple, and before now, he's always been on the winning side. The man who can, who ticks all the boxes. A liberal thinker not afraid to lay down the law. A man of colour at the head of a school built on a former slave estate - an irony he appreciates, and is quietly sure the more politically correct of the parents and governors appreciate too.

He's been mentor when it mattered, disciplinarian when it didn't. He's ruled with respect and not with fear, because the first comes naturally and the second never has. He's cultured, cool under pressure, and if he likes to think he's charming it's not through ego, but because it's true. He's proud that he's earned the liking of most of his students, if not their love - he's saved that for some of their mothers, who seem to think fat fees entitle them to perks other than their children receiving the best education money can buy.

He's never been afraid to fight.

This time, though, it's different. He's disagreed with the governors, an obstacle not insurmountable given past experience, but this time they haven't even pretended to engage in discussion about it. They've just flatly swatted him away like he's an inconvenience, like his opinions no longer matter. He's argued about it, complained, remained stoically, sullenly silent - and ultimately given up.

All his fire, all his desire to fight, has completely vanished.

He suspects that they wanted him out anyway. It was there, an unspoken challenge, in those words of Sir Ralph's: "So what do you intend to do - offer your resignation?" The writing was on the wall long before this latest crisis with Ella Dee, well before his protests about the cover-up they're planning over it, and he's sure all he's done is jumped before he was pushed. He's heard the whispers, seen the furrowed brows, been called to account more than once for an unfortunate run of events that has seen two pupils dead, one missing presumed dead, one on the verge of madness and a teacher on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

It's made the press and, given Medenham's prestigious pedigree, not just the local press. It's another blow for private education, another stick for anyone objecting to historic buildings being polluted with over-privileged kids to beat them with. If league tables measured reputation, he's sure they'd have slipped so far down that no amount of good grades would help them claw their way back up.

A future that once looked so bright is now as clouded as the skies above the school have been of late. It should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense that David has no control over the rash of murderers and kidnappers that keep pouncing on his pupils - but try telling that to the governors. He finds some amusement in the way they look on him as if he's God: all-knowing, all-seeing, there to praise when everything is going well, and the first to be blamed when it isn't.

They don't realise that, most of the time, he knows as much about what's going on right under his nose as they do, even if coincidence, serendipity maybe, makes it appear otherwise.

Although he's never come out and said so, he suspects the bad publicity might be an inside job. It can only be, given the kind of quotes that have started appearing in the newspapers. The sources, always anonymous, that keep sticking the knife in with their poisonous concerns: about student safety, about morale. About, when the ship starts sinking, if it might not be a good idea to replace the captain.

But he should be able to steer his ship through this storm. It shouldn't matter what anyone says, or what is written. He should be able to ride it out, because despite the pain of the losses they've suffered, he knows he's not at fault for them. He knows he's the best man for the job.

Or at least, he used to.

So did the governors. But now they think differently, and the support he used to enjoy is being lavished on someone else. There's another man on the scene, one who combines youthful exuberance and wise experience with more flair than David has ever managed. A teacher, a counsellor, a martial arts instructor. An expert on self-harm, an amateur aromatherapist, an unqualified psychiatrist - everything the modern school could ever need, in one neat little dog-collared package.

He thinks it should be no surprise that the governors like Jez Heriot so much, when he's saving them such a lot of money.

It defies logic that one man should be able to fill so many roles, or win over the governors so quickly when most of them are dusty dullards he's spent years storing up favour with. It defies belief that a man who has done nothing but good should be so dislikeable. He doesn't trust him, yet everyone else seems to, and in darker moments that knowledge has made him doubt his own judgement, wonder if maybe he's being paranoid. But he can't deny the way his skin crawls every time Jez lays a reassuring hand on his shoulder, or forget how his eyes creep covetously around his office, whenever he thinks David isn't looking.

He thought he understood his students, was arrogant enough to believe he was in touch with them just because he remembers back to his own youth and realises most of them are more interested in their sex lives than they are in their studies. But he can't connect with them the way Jez can. Even Roxanne Davenport has begun religiously attending ethics classes since Jez has started teaching them, and she hasn't done that since a mysterious hundred percent attendance streak in art class last year.

A better leader would appreciate the qualities that a multi-talented individual like Jez brings to his team. A better man would admire him, not become mired in a bitter tangle of resentment and unfounded hatred.

But David isn't so sure he is the better man. And he's not sure he's really the best man for the job anymore, because once he would have risen to the challenge presented by this upstart newcomer. He would have called Sir Ralph's bluff, demanded a meeting with the governors to find out why years of exemplary service suddenly stood for nothing. He would - more than that, should - have forced them to take their heads out of the sand. But instead, he's bowed his own head and meekly admitted defeat.

There's a fine line between knowing you're beaten and giving up, and he thinks he might have crossed it.

He's told them that it's on a point of principle that he's resigned, that he's too outraged over Ella's treatment to do anything else. It's what he tells himself, even though, deep down, he knows a truly principled man would never accept defeat; would stay and fight for what he believed in, however hopeless it might be. No amount of words can change the fact that he's abandoning Ella, his school - everything he claims to care about - to whatever it is the governors' golden boy has in store for them.

It would be uncharitable of him to suspect that Jez, who claims to have no ambition apart from serving God, has been colluding all along with the governors to get rid of him. That he's positioned himself just so, made himself all things to all men, just so he can take over. It would be nothing but a wild conspiracy theory to suggest he's had something to do with the leaks to the press and, beyond that, all the terrible things that keep happening to prompt them.

Yes, it would be. But still a part of him secretly, wickedly, suspects it.

David wonders if maybe it's not just the fact that Jez is so much better than him, at so many things, that's made him so passive. He wonders if it's because all the losses have finally taken their toll, sapped his spirit to the point where he doesn't want to fight anymore for fear of losing anything else.

Thelma was the first tragedy. Then there was Cassie, whose loss hit him harder than he'd ever expected. He'd seen so much potential in her, in her curiosity, her spirit. They'd had a unique bond, a special kind of relationship that went beyond student and teacher. But then it had just disappeared, and so had she. There had been no farewell, no funeral: no finality. He believes she's dead, even though it seems such an impossible fate for someone so alive.

He knows Felix is dead. He was the one, in the absence of his parents, who formally identified what was left of the body.

And then there was Jo, who seemed to crumple under the weight of successive tragedies until her mind collapsed altogether. He's always valued her dedication and warmth, liked her as a friend and not just his closest colleague. But now he's lost her too, and although it would have been some help to have her fighting his corner, it's not because it might have saved his job that he wishes she was here. He thinks now that maybe he liked her a little more than he ever wanted to admit.

He hasn't heard from her since she went on sabbatical, although he brings up her number on his phone every so often and stares at it, willing it to ring; wanting to ring, but scared to intrude into whatever private hell she's enduring. He thinks perhaps she's taken a holiday, got away from it all.

He hopes she's gone somewhere hot.

Medenham went on without Thelma. Without Cassie. Without Felix. Without Jo. It will go on without Ella. And it will go on without him.

All this David knows. But when he looks back, as he's always going to, wondering if there was something more he could have done, he'll also know that he should have fought harder. For Ella; against Jez; against the governors who deferred to his authority, just because he presented himself as an authority on everything.

But it's too late to do anything about it now. Even if, as he tells Tom, he hasn't quite given up hope that things might work out. He's not too proud to wish for a second chance, and he'll be back in a heartbeat if he ever gets the call.

He desperately wants things to work out. But he's not sure how or why it might happen. Jez might not have had anything to do with his departure - the timing is all his, and there's some comfort in that - but he's jumping for joy about it beneath that affable façade. Once he gets in that seat, David is sure it will take an act of God to shift him. And since God is supposedly on Jez's side, there doesn't seem much point in praying for one.

Out-manoeuvred by a priest. It might even be funny, if there wasn't something about it that disturbs him so much.

As he packs up his things and prepares to leave Medenham, he looks up at the building and sees it as it really is, as it's become. A crumbling relic, home to a community that is dying, piece by piece. Corrupted from the top down, laid to waste by a seductive invader that his instincts tell him is anything but the paragon of good it's posing as.

He sees Jez, not there to wave him off, but to check he's really going.

He sees Roxanne, by his side, unable to hide a smug smile at his departure.

He sees Leon, burdened with a responsibility for Ella that he doesn't want, a responsibility that should have been his.

He sees the ghosts of everything that has been, everything that should have been: if only he'd still felt like fighting for it.

But as David drives away, he looks back at it all, one last time, and sees nothing more than the place where he used to be principal. The position he's given up, or so he likes to pretend, because of his much-vaunted principles.

He wonders if it'll prove an exchange worth making.

END