The Watch E-Book

Bibi Berki

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 320

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish 2020 Fiction Prize One sweltering midsummer night, two young women forge an unlikely bond. One of them is full of hope and ambition, the other devoid of it. How can they lead good lives, they wonder? What will they give to the world? By the time the sun comes up, their futures have been rewritten and their fates decided. Captivating and involving, in turns joyful and desolate, this haunting mystery is an exploration of vicariousness, virtue and privilege.

Leseprobe

THE WATCH

BIBI BERKI

To Hrothi

Contents

Title PageDedicationPART ONE12345PART TWO12345678PART THREE123456789PART FOUR1234567EpilogueAcknowledgmentsAbout this BookAbout the AuthorCopyright

PART ONE

1

That evening, I had gone for a run.

Even at seven-thirty, the air was still thick with heat and my legs dragged and my head ached within the first kilometre. The tourists were out, loitering on the narrow pavements, and having to sidestep them made me all the more irritable. And so I returned earlier than I’d intended and went back to the college gates, annoyed by my lassitude, and by all the other people who lingered and looked, taking things slowly, aimless, disengaged.

At the college gate I was told there was a message waiting for me in my pigeon-hole.

I would have missed it had I not been told about it.

I would have gone back to my room and showered and probably walked to the river to watch the sun go down and that would have been that.

No story to tell.

But I went to the pigeon-holes and found the single folded piece of paper and opened it there and then and read it. It was addressed to me by name and signed by Dr Erin Waghorn and she was asking me to come up to her college rooms at once.

I knew her name, though I’d never been taught by her. She was a philosopher and lived alone in an apartment in Old Court and, because she had no family, had been appointed as the pastoral tutor for undergraduates. I can’t imagine it was a job that any academic relished, particularly the cut-off kind that populated the teaching staff in the college back then. I had seen Dr Waghorn occasionally attempting to chat with students on what I assumed were personal and pressing issues and she’d seemed caught, to me, trapped by things she neither delighted in nor understood. She bent down and proffered an ear in symbolic sympathy but her eyes had been fixed on the clock, or the shadowed staircase that led to her rooms. She was very tall and very slim and had the look of a starved hawk.

I wondered for a moment if I should go and change out of my damp shorts and T-shirt, but I wanted to get this over with first. I had a Coke in my fridge and I told myself that it would taste even better if there was no longer an appointment hanging over me.

The tapering staircase that led to her rooms was dark and instantly cold. I took the steps quickly, still with my heart set on the Coke, and stood outside her door and waited – I’m not sure what for. The landing was empty except for her name on a sign on the stone wall and a bucket and a mop a little further away, leaning against the wooden panelling and left ready, presumably, for the morning. The cleaners were everywhere, now that it was the end of the year, wiping the last term clean off the record.

Dr Waghorn opened the door and almost immediately turned her back on me, stalked over to a sofa, sat on it and waited. I hovered a moment before closing her door and taking a few steps into her living room. She was in a sleeveless black linen dress and the skin on her bare shoulders looked as though it were packed underneath with stones.

She looked up at me from her sofa and frowned.

“I was relieved,” she said. “When I realised it was you.”

I came a little closer and sat on the arm of a worn yellow armchair. (I would have sat in it, but it already contained books and journals and anyway I wasn’t going to join her on the sofa. She didn’t want that either. You could tell.)

All I could do was frown straight back at her.

Dr Waghorn’s rooms were sombre but not entirely unwelcoming. There was a reddish Persian rug between us and the panelled walls were hung with old political etchings. I could smell that she’d recently cooked something with red wine in it.

“I need someone to help me and I was glad to find you were hadn’t gone home yet. Not many people around any more. Have you been doing some sort of exercise, by the way? In this heat?”

She was affronted and she pulled the neck of her dress away from her collar bones to demonstrate how uncomfortable it was simply to exist this oppressive evening.

I ought to point out that Dr Waghorn couldn’t have been more than about 55 at that time, but as I was only 19, and had no grasp of middle life, I couldn’t imagine why heat would be so much of an issue.

“I’m in the hockey First Eleven,” I told her. “We usually train on a Tuesday night. I didn’t want to miss out.”

“Miss out?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Didn’t want to – I just like being active.”

She smiled then but not at me. I knew she was amused by the bizarre idea of pointless exertion.

“Anyway,” she said and stopped dead.

I thought of my Coke and shifted on the arm of the chair.

Hard to tell, now, which one of us resented the other more that stifling evening. I was still too young to be comfortable in the company of older, far more intelligent people. I felt I was being tested and that any failure in my character would simply confirm my fraudulent presence in such a prestigious place. It was a sickeningly regular occurrence in my psyche in those days, the sense of being found out and ridiculed. She was just fed up with all of us.

“I haven’t taught you yet, have I?”

“Not yet,” I replied. “I’m switching from economics to SPS.”

“Ah. One of those.”

I shook my head, as if to say: no, not one of those. I’m different. You’ll like me.

“Then we’ll cross swords later,” she said. “In the Marx module. It’s always a little bloody. Always a little bit of an exercise in disillusionment, I’m afraid.”

Was I meant to say something clever? I formed a sentence, gathered together vocabulary, constructed my idea. Quickly, quickly.

But she cut through it. Moved on.

“So,” she said and lightly punched a red silk cushion, transferring her irritation. “This is the thing. I have to go to an event this evening. Which means I need to turn to someone for help and …”

I waited.

“… and, as I’ve said, I’m extremely relieved to find that you’re the closest person to hand. I know – having spoken about you with colleagues – that you’re considered very responsible and – I think I’m right in this – a caring sort of person. You run some kind of group for the friendless, is that it?”

I was taken aback.

“I’m just on the social committee, that’s all. We get people in to give talks.” I had no idea where this friendless came in. Did they laugh about us, I wondered?

“Oh, is that it? Well, it all suggests a community spirit, am I right?”

I don’t know why, but I stood up.

Dr Waghorn’s palms slid across the smooth grey sides of her head.

I sat back down. What this up and down was about, I haven’t a clue.

“This is the thing,” she told me with a long sigh. “I need your help with another student.”

A sick feeling. A sagging. Already I didn’t want this.

“What kind of help?” I asked and she put up a hand to stop me asking any more.

Did she sense my apprehension, hear my whining doubts even before I formed them? It must have all shown up on my poor red, sweaty face.

“Your term go well, did it? No problems?”

Why the pastoral now, for God’s sake? It was clearly just an afterthought, an obligation. But I didn’t want to talk about myself or waste any more time. I might have been awkward with adults, but I could read them well enough, particularly when they were as reluctant to talk about personal matters as she was.

“Everything was fine, thank you. What kind of help do you need from me?”

She raised an eyebrow, scratched a dry kneecap.

“You need to spend the night watching over some girl,” she announced and breathed out at last.

I knew to wait now.

“She has to have someone with her at all times. There’s a post-grad there now, an American called Hannah, I think, but she’s been there since early afternoon and must be given a break. All it requires is that you sit with her until her parents arrive to pick her up and then you may go.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because she is … she has a history of wanting to … of wanting to end things. Do you understand?”

I didn’t and I think maybe my mouth hung open because for a moment Dr Waghorn looked like she might even laugh at me.

“You’re children, all of you,” she complained.

“Does she want to kill herself?” I asked.

She pulled in her chin and eyed me, clearly amused by my bluntness.

“That’s what she says – and she’s said this kind of thing before and even attempted it. Her parents live very far North and will drive through the night to pick her up. I doubt they’ll get here until the morning. In the meantime, I need someone to sit with her. I’m afraid that will have to be you.”

“But,” and I stopped at once, because I had so many objections that I didn’t know where to start.

“Her name is Danielle Gartner. She’s a year above you. Can’t recall her subject. Do you know her?”

I shook my head. Danielle. I’d known two Danielles at school, one a bully, one vague and self-obsessed. I hadn’t liked either. The name was pretty tarnished for me.

“I just have to sit with her?”

“That’s all. I think that’s pretty standard practice in these situations. I would do it myself but I am obliged to attend this foreign thing. It would look bad if I didn’t go. Anyway, you’re young, you can cope with a night of no sleep.”

Could I? I didn’t think I could.

“Because you mustn’t doze off or anything. People like her can be very sly about things. They see it as a challenge.”

“But what if she tries to do something?”

And now the gaunt hawk actually smiled. I think she pitied me.

“Oh, I doubt she will.”

That wasn’t quite good enough.

“But what if she does?”

Dr Waghorn waved the notion away impatiently.

“It’s a game, probably. An indulgence. She’s toying with us because she’s bored or unhappy or thinks she’s not getting the attention she deserves. I’ve heard her described variously as a genius and a weirdo. There are some people who are so excessively rational that they begin to question the point of themselves. Well, we’ve all done that at moments in our lives but most of us – of us normal people – just accept that things are the way they are and that we have to carry on. I dare say she’ll feel the same way when she comes to her senses. In the meantime, we have to make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid – or not on college property anyway.”

I wanted to go back to my room and drink my Coke and watch my telly. I wanted the blank and the blamelessness of the end of another day. But I was curious, too, I have to admit. All this talk about people like her aroused in me a sense of thrilling jeopardy. My life experience was so limited at that point, my upbringing so happily dull and unremarkable, that I got a frisson of potential adventure out of the thought of this raving girl, this basket case, this victim who needed protecting from herself. And, of course, I was a little puffed up from Waghorn’s opening remark, her relief that I was her only choice. She would have chosen me, had I been one of many.

I was already seen as a good person. A helpful type.

Dr Waghorn got up from her sofa, crossed her living room and disappeared into her kitchen. Was I supposed to go with her? Was the meeting over? But she was back in a moment, holding the stem of a glass which still contained a mouthful of red wine.

“I feel bad for this Hannah person, don’t you?” she said, her tone almost confiding. “She’s been there since about two.”

I nodded because I understood that things – my responsibilities – were meant to be starting.

“The poor Yank needs a break now, don’t you think?”

Once more, a nod, nothing verbal. I couldn’t.

“Gartner’s room is Hardiman Court, room sixteen, I believe. Ghastly building. I’d probably top myself as well if I had to live there. Brutalist monstrosity.”

I wasn’t grasping her, was hovering between getting up from my seat and staying put.

“Right, where are my bloody keys?” And she scanned the room, before her eyes came back to rest on mine. We paused, me suddenly bewildered by everything, her irked by my presence.

“Just one thing.” She fixed me with that intense raptor stare. “They can be sneaky, people like her. Tricky. They beguile you.”

“But why?” I asked her, backing towards her door.

“Because they want you to give them your approval. Your blessing. Your permission.”

My back collided with her door and I froze.

“My permission?” My voice, even to my own ear, was tiny and childish.

“That’s it. Let yourself out. Don’t wait for me. I can’t find my blasted keys. Best you go straight away, don’t you think? Everything will be fine – just don’t waste any more time. Your turn to be on watch.”

And I pulled open her door and let myself out.

The American postgrad answered the door and her angry relief came rushing out of her.

“Thank God!” she said, through her teeth, trying to keep her voice down. She pulled the door closed behind her. “I’ve just been abandoned here. I mean, what took you so long? I was told this was going to happen on a rota.”

Strangely, I felt more cowed before this powerful, stocky, blonde young woman, than I had in the presence of the formidable Dr Waghorn.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s so boring,” she complained, and the word dragged out of her. “I mean this kind of thing should be done by professionals, shouldn’t it?”

The same thought had occurred me as I crossed the quad to get there. But I’d assumed that the danger of this Danielle girl doing herself any harm was probably slight and that if the parents just wanted her to have a companion through the night then they couldn’t have been too worried. Waghorn had been overly dramatic. I would have to prepare myself for her disconcerting ways for when we crossed swords.

“Shall I go in?” I asked, stupidly.

“Well, I’m not going back,” said the post-grad. “I wish I’d brought a book. Better than sitting in silence like that for hours.”

And she left, outraged. I felt bad for her and then I felt bad for myself. I stood in front of Danielle Gartner’s door and experienced an urge to walk away, to run after Hannah and let her berate me a little more. Better than the unknown. Better than the boredom that surely lay ahead of me. Why hadn’t I brought a book?

But Dr Waghorn had been right about one thing. Luckily for her, one of the few students still there at the beginning of the summer holidays was a nineteen-year-old with a prevailing sense of responsibility. A girl who dearly wanted to prove herself an altruist.

I knocked on the door and went in.

2

She sat on her bed, her legs pulled up and held in her arms, and her chin on her kneecaps.

But I couldn’t look at her.

What struck me was the unexpected emptiness of her room. I’d never seen an undergraduate’s college quarters so plain and unadorned, so unpacked. Hardiman Court was a modern block (not quite as ghastly as Dr Waghorn had labelled it but not attractive either), mainly the preserve of second and third years. I’d been inside it before and been impressed by how tasteful and grown-up some of those rooms looked, with their cheese plants and film posters, brimming bookshelves and admirably cluttered desks.

There was nothing here but a bed, desk, wardrobe and armchair – and a cardboard box under the desk which, I assumed, contained all the items that should have been on it. The collapsing sun stood raw before a sealed, curtainless, window. The place was stifling and oppressive.

What do you say? What on earth do you say?

I remained at the door and waited and eventually I had no choice but to advance into the room. I couldn’t look at her at that point, let alone say anything. I wonder if I thought she might break to pieces if I asserted myself in any way.

All I suddenly knew was that I had never been in such a situation and was not equipped for what was being asked of me.

“I can’t open the window, sorry,” I heard her say.

I looked up and saw a smile before anything else. A broad, apologetic smile.

I’d seen her before, now that I allowed myself to take her in. It wasn’t such a huge college that you could remain anonymous for ever. Different years rarely mingled – it was like being at school in that regard – but certain faces always made a deeper scar in your memory and hers was one of them. All the same, there had been so little in common between us – evident in one glance – that I’d never really given her any thought.

Danielle Gartner straightened her legs and sat up against the wall and pushed her hair off her face and inspected me. I inspected her right back. What did she see? An awkward, pale-red-haired, bespectacled adolescent in her brother’s football shorts and a washed-out mauve T-shirt. What did I see?

Or should I say, what did I think I saw? Because – and I know I keep saying this – I was nineteen. My world view was that of a schoolgirl. I had completed a year at university, but it might as well have been another year of school, only without my parents to run home to. I was unsophisticated, still a little damaged by the girl-pack experience, untried, untested. I might have thought I was worldlier than most but that was nonsense. I was a child.

And she wasn’t.

Not that Danielle was an adult either, but someone hovering between the two states, at an optimal place for looking in both directions. I could tell at once that she understood more about everything than I did. It undid me. Within seconds of stepping through that door, I lost any plans I’d made on the way there to play the nurturing parent figure, someone who had the edge over her dependent.

But most of all I was caught out by her beauty.

She was slim though not at all thin and her skin was a warm brown, a few degrees lighter than her chestnut hair which was bobbed and curly and copious. Her eyebrows were broad and unkempt, which was the fashion of the day, and her eyes slightly protruding, very round, a little odd, rather dark. Her mouth was large but placid. Her smile was both glorious and outlandish.

She wore a chocolate brown silk dress with cream polka dots, and with a wide, loose neckline. She was – and this sounds so odd for me to have noticed – so healthy-looking, so flawless. I suppose I’d expected a wreck, someone who exuded failure and fear. But she looked like she might get up at any moment and head off to meet friends at a restaurant. I mean, who wears a dress like that during the day! For no reason, particularly no social reason, and without needing to be seen and approved of? And, come to that, why didn’t I own such a perfect dress?

Her feet were bare and her toenails painted rose-petal pink.

For a moment this disparity in our appearances – particularly those impeccable little nails – infuriated me.

“I’d just got back from a run,” I told her and threw myself into her armchair.

Her eyebrows shot up and she suppressed a laugh.

“I’m very sorry,” she sympathised.

I mumbled something about it being too hot to run anyway.

“I don’t have anything to drink, sorry,” she apologised once more. Her voice was deeper than mine and more cultured. It was the same velvet tone as her skin and eyes. “I would go out and get some but I think I’m meant to stay where you can see me.”

This last comment aggravated me even further. This whole arrangement seemed so farcically casual that I didn’t see why she should feel so victimised.

“You can do what you like,” I told her, ungraciously.

Another full, bizarre smile.

“I can indeed. Although it’s not that easy. Doing what you like.”

Did she mean what I thought she meant? I was appalled and not ready. I wasn’t going to be drawn into that kind of conversation, that personal, psychological kind.

“Tell a lie,” she suddenly said brightly, and pushed herself off her bed. “I’ve got this.”

She walked rapidly to her door and was out of it before I knew what was happening. I leapt from the armchair and rushed into the corridor.

To my relief she was in the kitchen. Each floor of the Hardiman block had a communal kitchen with a fridge and cooker and food cupboards. I couldn’t see this girl ever cooking, ever using the place at all. I imagined her food being brought to her, and her empty plates taken away. But she fished around in the fridge and stood upright and showed me a bottle of white wine and grinned.

“Don’t worry,” she confided, walking past me and back into her room. “I’ll water it down nicely to make it last. It’s going to be a long night.”

“To the suicide watch,” she said and raised her glass.

Too flippant, too soon, I thought.

I wasn’t expecting her to say the word. We’d chatted a little as she opened the bottle. I’d told her my name and I think we even complained about the heat and then I retreated to the armchair again, while she sat on the floor opposite me, her back against her bed, and poured the wine.

I reasoned that surely part of my role was to stop her thinking gloomy thoughts. (Oh God, that’s how naïve I was.) If I could steer her away from any dark subject then I might instil a more positive vibe. But I was clueless about such things and besides I was still angry. She could – I’m sure – see the conflict not so deep inside me.

“Don’t you have a telly?” I asked.

She shrugged with good-natured bewilderment.

“What about books then?”

“Oh. They’re all at home.”

“Don’t you read in bed?”

Again, a friendly shake of the head.

“But for your course,” I persisted. “Don’t you need to read for your degree?”

“Of course I do.”

That’s it. That was our small talk. That’s where anything trivial ended that night. She wasn’t interested in the inconsequential. She didn’t wish to fill time or populate silence with worthless words. I felt like I could cast away anything frivolous and immaterial. I was too young and inexpert at decoy chatter, in any case. I wanted to know things. I wanted to confront her there and then and let her know how I felt about being there.

Danielle Gartner dropped her chin to her chest and left me for a moment. The top of her head was thick with dark curls, hair so utterly different to my lank, sallow strands that I wondered if we were even the same species. I waited for her to speak but nothing came and so I looked around her room and, with nothing of interest there either, felt the ire rise even higher. Well, I thought, if you can be so unblinkingly direct, so could I.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Aren’t you worried that you’ll upset your family?”

For a moment there was nothing but silence between us. I was to get used to this, this waiting for an answer. She never seemed spontaneous, always gave even the most throwaway question thorough consideration.

“Are you sure you want to have this conversation?”

“Well I haven’t had any choice in anything so far, have I?” I came back, fast and with feeling.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I was an idiot. I said something I shouldn’t have. It’s ruined your evening.”

“But your family,” I pushed. “Aren’t you ruining their evening, too?”

“Am I?”

Such a monstrously stupid and insensitive question. What was she playing at? Was she trying to get me to say repellent things? Well, I wouldn’t. I wasn’t going to say those words she found so easy to utter.

“Yeah, you are, you really are. They’re probably really worried about you. You’re their child.”

“Oh, I see.” And another pause before: “When do I stop being their child, do you think? When can I make decisions about myself without worrying that I might hurt them?”

“Never,” I said at once.

“That can’t be right. It can’t be. That would be too cruel.”

“You’re the one who’s being cruel,” I insisted. “Playing these games.”

Naturally, she thought about this too.

“Why do you say I play games? I’ve long grown out of playing games.”

So I drank my wine and muttered into my glass, although I was already loosening a little, maybe because of the alcohol, maybe because she had seemed so substantial and not at all the bundle of fizzing nerve ends I’d expected. If anyone had walked into that room just then and been asked to point out the self-harming neurotic, I suspect they would have gone for me.

I was always too proud in those days, too combative. Too ready for a fight. I felt I had to assert myself from the start. I had a ton of chips on my shoulders. But I sensed early on there was going to be no easy route to self-righteousness with this one. Would she care that I was from what I so readily described as a working-class home? That I went to a comprehensive school? That I wasn’t pretty or imposing or outstanding in any way? My schtick was that I worked hard, never went easy on myself. That’s what got me to the university. But would that even register?

She wasn’t aloof or superior in any way. But she wasn’t like me, either. I didn’t see any fight in her. I saw a kind of peace which suggested she was well beyond the need to fight, that she knew things I didn’t. Maybe that’s what I’d mistaken for beauty, that composure.

Now and then I’d given some thought to physical beauty in the abstract. Not having much of it myself, it intrigued me. Was it even useful? What advantage did girls like Danielle Gartner have over me? It was all just an accident, surely. I didn’t hold with the notion that beauty led to a better mate. Maybe an equally beautiful mate but not a better human. Everybody had the same run-up to procreation, whatever their appearance, and babies appeared out of the wombs of even the most unappealing mothers. And so maybe beauty had no biological use at all – it was merely a random falling of the features in a particular way. People like me liked to look at people like her in the same way that we’d enjoy a painting or a view. Which was probably why rich men married beautiful women, I guessed – because they could have them to themselves and look at them all the time.

How awful to be looked at all the time.

 “Why don’t you take your trainers off?” she said. “Your feet must be sweltering.”

I glanced at her petal nails. I would not remove my trainers.

“So how come you’re still here after the end of term?” I asked.

“Why are you still here?”

“Because my parents have gone abroad and they’re having the house redecorated while they’re away and I’ve got nowhere to go for a few days. Anyway, I don’t mind being here alone.”

She seemed to approve of my answer.

“Neither do I. I pretended I had a summer course so I could be alone for a while.”

“English,” she then said. “I’ve got you down as an English student. Am I right?”

“No,” I told her. “Economics. But not for long. Changing to Social and Political Sciences.”

She shook her head slowly.

“Social and Political Sciences. Didn’t see that one.”

“What about you?”

“Theology.”

She might as well have told me she was a fascist.

“You’re not religious, are you?” I demanded, scandalised.

There was only a year between us but it might have been a lifetime. All I seemed to do was snort and stamp my feet like a child.

“You don’t have to be religious to study theology,” she replied simply.

“I thought you did.”

“No.”

I wasn’t letting go.

“So, why are you studying it then?”

“It’s the only subject that interests me. It is very interesting.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. You know how they say Latin helps you understand other languages? Well, I think theology helps you understand other things too. Informs us.”

“About how stupid we are,” I huffed.

She pursed her mouth against smiling.

“Very possibly,” she said and politely gave it some though

Suddenly she got up and walked to the window, her profile instantly ignited in red. She put her face in her hands and stood like that for a while, sunken, profoundly apart from me, the sunset blazing around her. I couldn’t have reached her if I tried.

What did Dr Waghorn expect of me? She should have given more specific instructions. Was I supposed to soothe this girl, keep talking at her until either the dawn came up and her parents arrived or she forgot why we were all there in the first place? I must have had some practical use in this scenario but I couldn’t work out what it was.

Her hands dropped from her face and she was looking intently at something or someone in the grounds. We were four floors up and surrounded by parkland. At this time in the evening during the summer holidays, tourists were allowed to visit the college park and gardens. The going opinion was that they shuffled through like cattle but I always thought we were the cattle, grazing in our enclosures, watching the strangers pass through, wondering where they came from and where on earth they went.

“SPS is interesting, too. And very useful,” I said.

“What?” she asked, and her eyes darted about to find where the voice had come from.

“Some degrees are useful and some aren’t. I wasn’t going to waste my time on something that wouldn’t benefit me later. That’s why I changed.”

“Oh,” she said and made her way back to her bed, perching on the edge of it.

“You’ve got it all planned out, have you?”

“I certainly have.”

I straightened up. If this was the way things were going then I could easily keep it up. I had a whole life plan to lay before her.

“I know what I’m doing when I leave here. I’ve worked it all out. First of all – ”

“Shall we go out?” she said. “It’s unbearably hot in here.”

Panic arrived before I even recognised what it was.

“I can’t,” I told her. “We can’t.”

“Says who?” she laughed.

“We’re to stay here.”

“Listen,” she said to me and I still hear her saying it, the placid authority, the hand hovering near my arm. I hear her saying it over the thirty years that separate then and now, and I remember the pale gold hairs against the sun-tanned skin, the little white bone tip at her wrist.

“You don’t really think you can stop me doing what I’m going to do, do you?” And she was delivering the sunniest smile as she said it. “I told you I don’t play games.”

3

Iwas running down the stairs behind her, catching sight only of a flap of her dress as it disappeared around each corner.

I didn’t even understand how it happened. One minute she’d been talking to me about her course, which lecturers she admired, which she hated, all the while rummaging under her bed for her sandals and strapping them on to her feet, the next she was out of the door.

I felt terror at first and then the whip crack of urgency, but even that brief dithering gave her a considerable head start.

“Hang on!” I’d called. Then: “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

But at the bottom of the stairs she was waiting for me, simply standing at the entrance and looking out into the park. How had it got dark that quickly? From where we stood, we could see in the middle distance the old buildings, where I had my own room, and where I’d been to see Dr Waghorn. Hardiman Court was separated from these by parkland, a path cutting through it, busy during term with students crossing from home to college, deserted now. The path was bordered on one side by a high brick wall which separated us from the town and on the other by the river.

It was with dismay that I watched her step out from the entrance and head towards the river.

“Where are you going?” I called, already losing her to the dark.

“Come on, keep up,” wafted back to me.

She wasn’t trying to get away from me, I realised. What on earth was I thinking? That she’d take a running jump at the water?

That’s exactly what I was thinking.

But I also got a sense that she actually wanted me with her and that my company was perhaps a little entertaining. Could it be that I was making her think about things? That my anger and vehemence, my appeal to her through her suffering parents, had penetrated? Had I reached her heart quite that readily? Well! Wasn’t I something!

Looking back, I really think I was that pompous, even when on the backfoot. My job had been to watch over her but already I was warming up to the role of saviour.

I reached her side and together we found our way down to the riverside. There was no one anywhere near us, although there were some lighted windows in the old college buildings further up the path.

“Be careful,” I told her. She was very near the edge of the water now, looking into its routine darkness.

To my relief, I saw she was sitting down. This stretch of river was very civilised and tamed. The grass was regularly mown and the river bank itself as neat and accommodating as a made bed. She was removing her sandals and putting her feet in the water.

“Ah, that’s better,” she said. “Come on. Look, it’s so dark, it looks like your feet are cut off at the ankles.”

I shook my head and grumbled – didn’t care for her way of describing things – or about the dance she was leading me on.

“Why didn’t I bring the wine?” she complained.

I stood above her and looked down at her head, saw the faint white line of her parting, a tiny path. One shoulder was bare where her wide collar had slipped.

And so I got down beside her and, still grumbling, removed my trainers and socks and gingerly introduced my feet to the cold, lost them, like she had, to the dark.

“Bingo,” she said.

“What?” I asked. While it felt unquestionably good to have my feet in cold water, I was still in a state of panic over what she might do next.

“That’s all I wanted, to get you to take your bloody trainers off.”

“That’s why we’re here? For my feet?”

“Yes! That’s why we’re here.” And she dropped her head back and inhaled the night and seemed utterly content with the way things had worked out.

“You’re not supposed to be outside. You’re meant to stay in your room,” I chided.

“Why?”

I didn’t really know and the question escaped from me, with no answer to catch hold of it.

“You’ll get your dress wet,” I tried.

“So?”

I was back to my frustration, my flailing fear of inadequacy.

“It’s all right for people like you,” I informed her and the hectoring began. “Posh people just do what they want, feel like they’re born to it. The rest of us aren’t so comfortable in places like this.”

She lifted her head and turned her face to mine with wide eyes and lips dancing with mirth.

“Oh, I’m posh, am I?”

“Yes. You clearly are.”

“And how do you work that out?”

“Just look at you. The way you dress. The way you speak. Studying theology just for fun, because you feel like it. You know what that is? That’s bourgeois.”

(It was the 1980s. I was young. Forgive me.)

She knew not to goad me by laughing but she was, of course, revelling in my audacity.

I needed to say more (dear God.)