As promised here, I phoned the university legal office to find out whether they'd ever heard of me. They hadn't- I don't appear in their database. The person they referred me to, who they said may be the first to receive complaints of misconduct or copyright infringement, said she had "certainly never been involved" in any investigation into me. Of course, to my paranoid mind that may be a tricky way of saying that there was an investigation but she was never involved in it, but I actively try and dissuade myself from thinking so pessimistically, because otherwise I drive myself nuts and lie awake at night thinking of all the permutations and potential meanings of apparently innocuous things people have said. So I'll assume that what the Investigating Officer told our lawyer was wrong and that I shouldn't be 'expecting a letter' from the legal office now or in the future. Not that I'm worried that anything I've posted here could possibly constitute misconduct or copyright infringement, but obviously I would want to fight to the death any such allegation.

I really hate making phonecalls, even innocuous ones, but it's certainly even more nerve wracking to phone a complete stranger in a position of authority and say words to the effect of "Hi, I'm sarah. Someone says I'm a criminal and you're investigating whether I have done things that might get me kicked out of uni. Have you heard anything about it?". I mean, it's never nice to have to put your own name next to the words "misconduct" or "copyright infringement", let alone when you're a fairly good student with plans for higher study and you've never done anything of the sort. I wrote myself a 'script' so I didn't stumble over my words too much (something I regularly do anyway, because I'm so jittery about phonecalls), but when I was put on hold my heart was thudding in my chest like I'd just run a 100m sprint. Gah.