This is actually Trinity College Cambridge, a scene in the book and in my year at school in the UK
I attended Harrow from 1988-1989, on an English-Speaking Union scholarship, after living in the US all my life. It’s hard to convey, even in a novel, the shock that accompanies a transition like that. I showed up in London, 17 years old, never having been alone on a transatlantic flight, never having lived in a big city like London, never having lived for a long period of time in a foreign country. I thought that I would be cool on the flight over (the first days of Virgin) and ride in the smoking section. I bummed Silk Cuts from my neighbor, who looked like Ron Wood. Fifty people chain smoked the whole flight. As a behind-the-laundromat smoker, I was out of my league, and was stinky and ill when I arrived.
I remember the stewardesses trolling the aisles and asking, “Do you want any juty freeze?” and being, like, “Juty Freeze? Is that some kind of British mint candy?” They meant “duty frees” of course.
That six-hour flight was my passage to a new zone. I tried to get it into the book somehow, but it didn’t make it.
What I remember most about Harrow was the ongoing need for more food and the tourist’s trauma of negotiating in a foreign currency. Could a few eggs really be 60p? Being southern, I had a lot of difficulty conveying to anyone that I really wanted ketchup with my eggs. What was a crumpet? Where would I cook all this? In the moldy kitchenette, by the grey daylight? I had chosen to take only two A level classes, which meant I had more free time than I had ever had—which you would think would have helped me explore the school, my dorm, my kitchenette, successfully, since I was alone in the dorm when others weren’t. It didn’t help. Instinctively, a person judges the “rightness” of their decisions by validation from others. You don’t want to the be the only person in the restaurant. I was always the only person in the restaurant, at Harrow. It was an odd feeling, but after a time, that feeling of loneliness became almost delicious, a luxury, a recollection of being a child and having an unstructured afternoon ahead of you and no supervision. I feel it sometimes now when I travel for business and face the last few hours of a day alone in a hotel room in a strange city.
In a gothic novel, it’s easy—or rather, required—to skip over the happy bits. I had plenty that year. When I go back and flip through my old photos (my hair is so ridiculous my wife insisted that I not share any of them for publicity for this book, fearing permanent damage to my reputation), I realize how much of my time centered on plays. I was in two or three school plays—one was The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster, the inspiration for The White Devil linkage in the novel—and I directed one of our house plays. I learned to oil paint. I became fluent in Middle English. I was in a rock band. I went on many adventures with new friends, once, in summer, to Trinity College Cambridge, the inspiration for the Cambridge linkage in the book. I vomited a lot, just in general: I couldn’t keep up with the way my classmates—and teachers—drank. I met lots of girls. In retrospect all that free time sounds pretty great. But happiness must be expunged from the gothic novel. Only the mold and the grey daylight may remain.