REBECCA CONNELL

The Art of Losing

For my parents, Nigel and Elaine, and my husband, Daniel Cormack – thank you for all your love and support so far.

Contents

Title Page Dedication Chapter Louise Chapter Nicholas Chapter Louise Chapter Nicholas Chapter Louise Chapter Nicholas Chapter Louise Chapter Nicholas Chapter Louise Chapter Nicholas Acknowledgements Copyright About the Publisher

Louise 2007

Until I was ten, my father told me a bedtime story every night. I suppose that in the early days the stories covered the usual ground, but after my mother died, they changed. His new stories were all about her. Some time she would attempt to disguise them a little, holding up a book as if he were reading from it, but I wasn’t fooled. Other times he would simply sit at my bedside and pour out memories – his own, and those she had passed on to him. Often they made him cry, and I would comfort him.

I thought for many years that the stories were my father’s way of keeping her alive for me; that he was anxious not only that I should not forget her, but that I should learn even more about her than I would have done if she had lived. Now I don’t believe those were his motives at all. It was simply that there were no other stories he could tell. When she died, it closed off all other avenues, and for many years circling around these old memories was a compulsion and not a choice.

The last story he ever told me started off innocuously enough. Out at a party together, my parents had begun talking to a woman who claimed to be clairvoyant, and my father, instantly fascinated, asked her to read their future. The woman spun a pretty tale: two children, plenty of travelling, long and happy lives. My mother seemed to accept her words readily enough, but when they left the party she exclaimed how ridiculous it had been. Still basking in the rosy glow of the predicted future, my father was a little hurt, and questioned her on how she could be so sure that everything the woman had foreseen would not come to pass. She stopped dead in the middle of the road to face him, and said, evenly and quietly, Because I won’t live past forty. Irrational as they were, her words upset my father, and he demanded to know what she meant. She shrugged, and refused to elaborate. The next day, when he asked again, she claimed drunkenness and laughed the incident off, but in retrospect he believed that she was the one with the second sight – another attribute, albeit unwanted, to add to her extensive list.

When he finished this tale I was quiet, not knowing how or what I should reply. The point of the stories had always been that they were happy, but this one had left an unpleasant taste in my mouth and an eerie feeling sliding up and down my spine. My father was quiet, too, for a long while, staring down at the pink patterned coverlet. Although I can’t remember his expression, I can guess at what it would have been: the familiar lost, uncomprehending blanket of despair that was his face’s default setting after his wife’s death. After what seemed like hours, he heaved himself to his feet and left the bedroom without a word. When the next night came I half dreaded the bedtime story, but there was none forthcoming. The explanation was that I was getting too old for such things. Even at that age I knew better. The truth was that I was too young for the stories he had left – the stories he really wanted to tell.

I exercise it rarely, this talent I have. Scurrying down darkening streets, shivering in my rain-slicked clothes, I allow my muscles to relax into a familiar rhythm. I’m a dancer remembering a long-forgotten dance, a gymnast whose body instinctively recalls the twists and turns set aside many years ago. I haven’t played this game since school. Back then, Iused to skulk behind an admired teacher as he made his way from classroom to car park, always keeping a few steps behind. As he unlocked his car and drove off I would be there watching, only yards away, my breath still shallow from the excitement of the pursuit. Henever noticed me. I have this talent for following.

The man I am following now is just as oblivious. He thinks he is alone, but ever since he left the lecture hall, I’ve been with him. Down the high street, I slide through the crowd like mercury. His heavy burgundy coat glints wetly ahead like a jewel. As I keep my eyes on that coat now, I can’t help but compare it to my own. I want to be wrapped up in his coat, engulfed in its warmth. It would swamp me; he must be six foot two, a clear eight inches above me. It would smell of – what? Cigarettes: I saw him light up as he left the hall, cupping his hand to shield the tiny flame from the wind. I’m getting too close. I hang back as his pace slows, counting my steps in my head.

Abruptly he stops, as if hearing his name called. I shrink back into the recesses of a doorway as he puts a hand to the back of his neck. He’s forgotten something, perhaps – a book, an umbrella, a scarf. No. He’s simply forgotten himself – passed his destination. He hurries back up the road and ducks into a brightly coloured café, swinging the door shut behind him. I wait a few moments, then sidle up to the café, leaning back against its wet orange wall. Through the rainwater that streaks the window-glass, I watch. He’s settled into a table near the window, rummaging in his bag to withdraw a newspaper, turning the pages with the enjoyment of a ritualised routine. A minute later, a waitress brings him a cup, and I see his lips move in silent thanks. I watch him for five, ten minutes. His black hair is heavily threaded with silver; closer than I’ve been before, I can see fine lines exploding out across his face. I know that he must be fifty-five years old.

The letter he wrote almost twenty years ago is in my pocket. Its words are always with me. They run through my head when I talk, an almost-heard undercurrent bubbling just below consciousness. I tap them on an imaginary keyboard, my fingers digging privately into my palm. Close to my heart, I keep them folded up tightly in their faded paper everywhere I go. The name at the top of this letter is not mine, but I intend to borrow it for a while.

The lights in the café are so dizzily bright that when Lydia turns away they’re still imprinted on the damp grey alleyway in front of her like the afterglow of a camera flash. She blinks, once, again, to jolt herself out of the cocoon he has wrapped her up in. It works. The cold returns and clamps her like a vice. Suddenly she’s alone on the street with no idea where she is.

Lydia wakes without warning, dragged up sharply by the sudden dip of her elbow off the ledge. For a second she glances around bewildered, expecting to see the cool blue walls of the rented attic room encircling her. The dreamlike hour that has passed drips back into her mind: rising after too little sleep, riding down town to the faculty lecture hall in the November half-light, falling into her seat. When she arrived the hall was almost deserted. Now it’s packed with students, huddled in little groups and chatting, their steady buzz of conversation punctuated by shrieks of laughter and groans of disbelief. A few are still snoozing, heads pillowed on the wooden ledges. Undisturbed, Lydia watches them all. The snatches of conversation she picks up are inane but compelling. She has never had this: the easy banter between friends, the talk of nights out unrestricted by parental guidelines or curfews.

She is leaning forward to listen more intently when she sees a boy sitting a few seats along the row, watching her. Dark hair swept over his face and stubble prickling his chin. Curious eyes that look hazel in the sunlit hall. He’s looking at her insolently, half smiling, as if he’s thinking, I know what you’re up to. As she catches his eye, there’s none of the embarrassed gaze-shifting she expects, only a slow deliberate wink. Flushing, she scowls at him and looks quickly away. A moment later she risks a swift glance back to check that he is properly subdued. He isn’t. He’s laughing, and when he catches her eye again he mouths something. She doesn’t get it at first, and can’t resist a puzzled frown. The boy leans farther towards her and mouths the phrase again, full lips moving soundlessly and exaggeratedly among the noise around them. Forgive me, they say.

She bites the bubble of laughter back into her throat as the lecturer walks down the aisle and takes the stage. He’s wearing a long trench-coat, his black hair swept back into peaks, high lighting the silver strands running through it. As he strides to the podium the students fall silent, settling expectantly back in their seats. He takes a moment to survey the room, holding his audience, then starts to speak. Although she knows that she must have heard his voice many times as a child, she has been unable to recapture it in her head, and yet it has a familiar quality; deep, powerful and harsh.

‘Sensibility,’ he says. ‘It’s a word that has become downgraded over the centuries. Now, it aligns itself with sentimentality, and that carries a pejorative ring – mawkish, oversensitive, weak.’ He spits out the words one by one. ‘But sensibility was once the encapsulation of the finest feelings of which man was capable. An acute sensitivity to emotion, significance, mortality, all the things that still surround us in modern society but which are more often forced underground than brought out into the open. This was a different time, a time where a man crying at the symbolism of a caged bird was accepted as part of the natural order of life. Such over-analysis, such keen awareness of pathos and significance in every living creature, be it man or fly, was actively celebrated – and satirised too, of course, as every great movement is—’

She is dragged away from his words by a muted commotion a little farther down the row. With horror she sees that the dark-haired boy is nudging his neighbour and passing a folded piece of paper, whispering in her ear and gesticulating. His friend puts up a show of resistance, rolling her eyes laughingly, but takes it and turns to her neighbour in turn. The paper makes its whispering way down the row until it reaches the girl sitting next to Lydia, who passes it on with a look of contempt. Lydia smiles at her apologetically – we’re on the same side – but the other girl turns away and makes a great show of listening to the lecture. Hurriedly, Lydia unfolds the paper and smooths it out on the ledge. The note is written in uneven capitals, like those a child might use. YOU LOOK VERY SERIOUS, it says. I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYONE PAY SO MUCH ATTENTION TO A LECTURE. OR ARE YOU JUST IGNORING ME?

She puts the note to one side and tries to focus her attention back on the front of the stage, but she can’t concentrate, the lecturer’s words flowing over her in an incomprehensible torrent. Angrily, she snatches the paper up and writes quickly. In case you hadn’t noticed, everyone is concentrating, except you. Only someone very presumptuous would assume that a complete stranger should be looking at him rather than listening to the lecture. P.S. Your handwriting is terrible. I’m surprised they even let you in. She refolds the paper and passes it to the unamused girl next to her, who shoots Lydia a look of scorn and pushes it to her left without looking at it. It’s only five minutes before the paper boomerangs back. This time the girl lets out a long sigh and hands it to Lydia pointedly. She’s right; this has gone far enough. Lydia determines to read the note and then crumple it into a ball and discard it, no matter what its contents.

WE USE COMPUTERS NOW, it reads. ANYWAY, THERE’S NO POINT ME CONCENTRATING. I HEAR ALL THIS AT HOME, THE LECTURER IS MY FATHER.

The last words hit her square in the chest. She looks back up at the figure at the lectern, tall and imposing, dressed in black. She can’t connect this boy with him, or all she knows of him.

‘The concept of an emotional journey is one we haven’t lost,’ the lecturer is saying now. ‘But we’ve transfigured it into trite Hollywood movies, where a journey can be as simple as going from A to B with a ready-made message at the end of the rainbow. The ugly duckling transforms into a swan, and finds that in the end it’s her inner beauty that has captured the highschool jock and that looks don’t matter after all. Sterne’s concept of a journey was very different. Here we learn more about the travelling than the arriving; false starts, irrelevant-seeming diversions, every emotion of the traveller dissected.’ It seems to Lydia that his eyes are fixed on hers, blotting the rest of the hall out in a messy blur of light. ‘Which is the more real? Which is the more true to life? Do we still understand the meaning of sensibility, or are our attempts at sensitivity, at love, little more than hollow flights of fancy?’

A sudden burst of nausea jolts her into action. She stumbles to her feet and pushes past the row of students, fighting her way towards the aisle. Heaving the oak door open, she lurches out into the cool dark hallway. She presses her head against the stone wall, so hard that she feels a jolt of pain pass through her. The sickness soon fades, but she knows she can’t go back in there. She stands alone in the corridor, listening to the unmoved hum of the lecturer’s voice behind the door, until a faint noise makes her swing round. The dark-haired boy is standing silhouetted at the end of the corridor, watching.

‘I thought I should follow you,’ he says simply, shuffling forward. ‘I felt bad. Was it something I said?’

‘No,’ she mutters. ‘I felt faint for a moment. I shouldn’t have left. It’s nothing.’

The boy moves closer. Up close he seems different, his initial cockiness replaced by a charming diffidence which makes it hard for her not to look at him. His eyes are fringed blackly with long lashes like a girl’s, but there’s something in the hard set of his jaw which she realises now does echo the lecturer’s granite-carved face. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘I thought it was me.’ He breaks off and throws her a small smile. ‘Presumptuous again,’ he says.

‘Sorry about that,’ she says, hurriedly. ‘I just couldn’t understand why you were looking at me.’

‘Really?’ The boy looks her full in the eyes for a second, holding the gaze until she breaks it. ‘I’m Adam,’ he continues, extending his hand so that she has no choice but to take it. ‘Just to get the introductions over with.’

‘Lydia,’ she says, and the name still feels strange on her tongue.

‘Pleased to meet you.’ Adam clears his throat. She knows this should be her opportunity to get away, to thank him for his concern and abandon the situation before it grows more complex, but she can’t seem to rouse herself. ‘What college are you at?’ he asks now, smiling again and leaning back against the wall.

‘Jesus,’ she says automatically without considering her answer. She’s picked a college she has never even seen, which she knows nothing about.

‘Really?’ Adam says eagerly. ‘I’m at Lincoln. I’m surprised I haven’t seen you on the street before, or in the Turl.’ With difficulty she remembers that this is a pub which must presumably be near by. She shrugs. ‘So what do you think of Sterne?’ he asks, gesturing back towards the lecture hall.

This is too much of a minefield. ‘Actually, I’m not doing English,’ she says. ‘I was just interested by the topic and thought I’d come along. I don’t know much about it. I’m doing—’ She pauses fractionally, trying to settle on a subject of which Adam might reasonably be expected to have little knowledge. ‘Geology.’

‘Wow,’ he says. ‘Interesting.’ She forces a smile in response. ‘So what are you doing tonight?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says feebly. His rapid questions and subject changes are starting to exhaust her. ‘I have some work to do.’

‘I’m going clubbing,’ Adam volunteers. He names a place that she remembers passing a few nights back, and moving quickly away from as a gaggle of drunken students lurched out of its doors and started loudly heckling her. ‘I might see you there?’

She nods. She wants to get away now. This isn’t why she’s here, and she doesn’t want this boy to complicate things. She starts to edge away down the corridor.

‘I’ll see you,’ she says vaguely.

‘OK.’ He makes no attempt to follow her, and for a second she is perversely disappointed. She’s almost at the door when he calls her back. She turns expectantly. He’s smiling again, hands in his pockets, still lounging against the wall. Just as in the lecture hall, his lips move silently, exaggeratedly. I was looking at you, they say, because I think you look amazing. The unspoken words ring in her head. She turns and pushes her way outside, sharp winter air suddenly knocking the breath from her and making her light headed. Without knowing why, she breaks into a run.

When she is back in her bedroom it is still before eleven o’clock. She falls asleep again in the blink of an eye, and dreams of things that leave her lost and lonely when she wakes again and finds nothing but silence, silence and solitude and memories of people and places and things that feel so, so long ago that they seem to have happened to someone else – someone else entirely.

There are too many people in the club. After over an hour’s wait in the queue, Lydia hands her rain-sodden coat over to the cloakroom, then heads for the dance-floor. She pushes her way into the centre of the crowd, letting the rhythm of the dancing carry her along, closing her eyes as music thumps and screeches above her. She wants to get a drink, but the bar seems so far away that she’s not sure she’ll ever reach it. Gasping for breath, she elbows a path through the mass of dancers, following the twisting gaps and breaks between groups as if she is tracing the tangles of a densely knotted necklace. When she eventually reaches the edge of the bar she grabs it tightly, looking back at what she has come from. Neon lit, heads bob in the air like beads of rain trembling on a washing line. She can’t see the expressions on their faces, features blurred out in bursts of flashing red and green light. The music is changing now. Frenetic beats give way to slower, grittier rhythms, and the heads respond to it, bowing and swooping gravely back and forth.

She turns to the barman and motions him towards her. ‘Water,’ she shouts, but he seems not to hear her. She tries to shout louder, but her voice cracks and dries up. Instead she points at random at one of the bottles behind the bar. The barman nods and pours her a small glass of liquid that could be any colour, rippling over chunks of ice. She hands him a five-pound note and waits for change that never comes, taking a sip of the drink. It’s vodka, pure and strong, hitting the back of her throat like fire. As she takes another gulp, she catches sight of herself in the long row of mirrors behind the bar. A strobe light sweeps across and dyes her dark brown hair a dazzling white blonde, and for a second she looks like someone else and what she sees makes her turn quickly away.

Ever since she reached the club she’s been looking for Adam, somewhere in the back of her mind, but it’s only now that she sees him. He’s standing on a raised podium, a vantage point from which he is scanning the dance-floor. His dark hair curls around the collar of a bright white T-shirt, bare arms folded in front of him. He’s not looking at her, but he’s looking for someone, that much is clear. Before she can think about it, she leaves the bar and runs up the steps, weaving her way round the room. It takes her only a minute, but by the time she reaches him, he’s not alone. Another boy and two girls have joined him and all four are laughing together: they’ve found him before he found them. The boy has white-blond hair cropped to the curve of his scalp, wiry shoulders under a black T-shirt. His arm is slung around one of the girls, a Latin-looking brunette in a short skirt and knee-high boots, rocking from foot to foot to the rhythm of the music. The other girl is closest to Adam. Lydia watches as she snakes her arm around his neck, having to raise herself on tiptoes to reach him. The girl is petite and blonde, hair feathered in a funky crop around her face, her black dress highlighting the paleness of her skin. She’s snuggling in closer to Adam, hugging him to her; it’s hard to tell whether the gesture is that of a lover or a friend.

At that moment he sees her. For a second his eyes look through her blankly. Then something snaps into focus. He breaks away from the group and walks towards her, his face serious.

‘Lydia,’ he says.

‘Thought I’d pop by,’ she says, and only then does he smile.

He takes her arm, and leads her back to the three waiting figures. Now that she’s up close, she sees that the blonde girl is very beautiful; huge slanting eyes balanced on angular cheekbones, subtly pouting lips slashed with red. She beams and holds out her hand, but Lydia sees a swift head-to-toe glance of appraisal, sizing her up.

‘This is Isobel,’ Adam shouts into her ear. The girl nods and smiles again, saying something that Lydia doesn’t catch. ‘And this is Jack and Carla,’ he continues, lumping them together with a wave of his hand. They are clearly a couple, the girl’s hand now snaking into the boy’s pocket to retrieve his wallet as he rolls his eyes and wriggles away.

‘Hi,’ she says, laughing and snatching the wallet. ‘I was just about to go and get us some more drinks, d’you want anything?’

Lydia hesitates; she’s not sure of the etiquette. They’ve barely been introduced, after all. ‘I could give you some money—’ she starts, but Carla dismisses her words with a flamboyant wave of the hand. ‘Well, thanks,’ she says. ‘Vodka and lemonade, then.’

Carla disappears into the crowd, hips swaying confidently as she goes. Lydia sees Jack watching her out of the corner of his eye. ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘I know Adam from lectures. He said he was going to come down here tonight, so I thought—’ All too late she realises this sounds as if she has come deliberately in search of Adam, a fact she has barely acknowledged even to herself. Her cheeks flame up and she covers her embarrassment with a cough.

Jack’s eyes flare briefly and wickedly. ‘No worries.’ Drawled, flattened vowels lend his voice a dry edge. He’s only averagely good looking, but she can tell that his confident bearing would raise him a few notches on the scale with many women. He lights a cigarette now, narrowing his eyes above the smoke, and drags sharply on it. ‘You known Adam for long, then?’

Adam cuts into the conversation, saving her. ‘Ooh, a while,’ he says teasingly.

‘Yeah?’ Jack says. They both laugh. Lydia looks from one to the other, not seeing the joke. By the looks of it, it’s equally lost on Isobel, who looks briefly irritated before resting a hand on Adam’s arm and leaning in farther towards her.

‘So tell us about yourself,’ she shouts invitingly above the music. Lydia smiles and shrugs. ‘You know,’ Isobel continues, ‘name, college, what you’re reading, where you’re from, all that?’

Lydia fields questions until Carla returns with the drinks and Isobel is mercifully distracted. They find a small table on the far side of the club, but squeezing all five of them on to the narrow bench is a struggle, and Lydia finds herself pressed up tightly against Adam. At such close range, she can smell the tart citrus tang of his aftershave, and something deeper beneath, a mix of alcohol and cigarettes and sweat that makes her feel dizzy. His bare arm brushes her own, and all the hairs on her arm prickle in response. There’s no way he can know, but for a second he looks at her in a way that makes her look hurriedly away. They barely exchange a word for the next hour. Banter flows back and forth between the two boys with practised ease, and Lydia gradually finds herself chipping in with the odd jibe along with the other girls. She’s having fun, she realises with a shock as she tips back her fourth vodka. Laughter makes her hiccup on the last mouthful, and her eyes water and smart. Adam slaps her on the back, letting his hand rest there for a few moments longer than necessary, and she smiles her thanks.

‘All right?’ he asks, leaning in. She nods. ‘Do you live in?’ he half breathes, half shouts. It seems like a non sequitur, and an incomprehensible one at that. Her mind gropes around the strange unfinished sentence. ‘Do you live in college?’ he clarifies, seeing her lost face. ‘Or out?’

‘Oh!’ she exclaims. ‘No, I live out.’

‘Whereabouts?’ he asks intently, leaning in farther.

‘Beechwood Road,’ she says. The truth slips out easily; she’s sick of the lies she has been telling all evening and it feels like a small relief.

‘Really?’ Adam says, his seriousness replaced by an amused smile. ‘Which number? My mate Rob lives up there.’

‘Nineteen,’ she says. Again, it’s the truth, but she feels uncertain about divulging it. Adam merely nods, draining his drink.

‘How are you getting back?’ he asks casually.

‘I don’t know. I’ll get a taxi, I suppose,’ she says. She hasn’t thought this far ahead, but a glance at her watch reveals that it’s almost 2 a.m. It doesn’t seem to be the answer that Adam wants or expects; an irritated shadow passes over his face and he shrugs. Lydia is about to rephrase her answer into something more non-committal when there is a commotion at the other end of the table. Isobel is clambering up from her seat and standing on the table-top, spiky black heels sliding and gaining purchase on its shiny surface. She starts to dance, swaying seductively back and forth to the rhythm of the music, her short black dress snaking up and down her body and revealing tautly honed thighs. Her eyes are half closed, her red lips parted. Jack and Carla whoop in delight, whistling and slamming their hands down on the table-top. Before long a little crowd of men has collected around the table, encouraging Isobel on her self-appointed podium. She pouts her lips laughingly at them as she continues to dance.

Lydia is smiling, caught up in the moment, until she looks at Adam. He’s staring up at Isobel, watching the black silk slithering over her body, the blonde hair forming a soft static halo around her as she shakes her head. The look on his face is rapt and lustful, and his gaze doesn’t break until the song finishes and Isobel slips off the table to a chorus of cheers and wolf whistles. She crosses to behind where Adam and Lydia are sitting, puts her hands lightly on Adam’s shoulders. He leans back, looking up at her, and she puts her mouth to his ear and speaks clearly, loud enough for Lydia to hear.

‘Let’s fuck.’ The word jolts Lydia rigid and she stares down at the table-top, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. She doesn’t hear Adam’s reply, but she feels him shift away from her and get to his feet. When she next dares to look they have both gone. Abruptly she stands.

‘Stay,’ Jack calls over to her. ‘They’ll be five minutes, ten tops.’ She can’t bring herself to return his laugh or to say goodbye, pushing past the morass of people around them, heading for the cloakroom. The crumpled ticket is tucked inside her bra and as she fishes it out she feels her skin is burning hot and trembling. It’s cold in the cloakroom queue, but she can feel the sweat dripping off her. She snatches her coat back and wraps herself up in it, stumbling out of the club into the drizzling rain. It seems she walks for hours before she sees the bright beam of a taxi blinking ahead. She runs for it and slips into the back seat. The driver is talking to her, but she can’t make sense of his words. She can barely focus on the streets ahead as they zip through them, and when the cab pulls up in Beechwood Road she thrusts her last ten-pound note at the driver and slams the door without waiting for her change.

The noise wakes her hours later, a sharp, brittle sound like gravel hitting the windowpane. Head swimming, she sits up in bed and listens. A few moments later it comes again, stronger now. She hears him calling faintly below. ‘Lydia.’ A minute’s pregnant silence, then a frustrated noise, halfway between a sigh and a shout. Finally something else grazing the windowpane before dropping down; a softer sound this time. She is out of bed now, shivering by the window, hand poised to draw the curtain back, but something stops her. She waits until she hears the footsteps crunching away and dying into silence before she peeks outside.

The street lamps that flank the house are still gleaming, illuminating the pavement. She sees the flowers scattered below the window. Long-stemmed roses, blood red, abandoned where they have fallen. Before she knows it she’s running softly down the stairs in her thin T-shirt, pushing the door open, hurrying with bare feet over stone. She gathers the roses in her arms, their thorns grazing her fingers. Takes a deep breath, shakily inhales. In a moment she’ll turn back inside, but for that instant, she’s frozen in time, crouching motionless on the cold pavement, her head bowed as if in prayer.

Lydia waits at the orange café for five afternoons before the lecturer returns. Over those five days she’s done little else. The waitresses recognise her now, and when the jangling door announces her arrival on the sixth day they both look up and smile. She orders her customary coffee, settles into her corner seat and opens up the same book that she has been bringing to the café all week. She’s read through it twice already, but has taken in so little that she might as well be coming to it with fresh eyes. Her mind is elsewhere. She hasn’t seen Adam since the night in the club, although a couple of times Sandra, her landlady, has reported a visitor searching for her while she has been out. He’s an unwanted distraction, but nevertheless she can’t stop thinking about him: his wicked dark eyes, the hair softly curling around his collar. Anyone else would put it down to lust, but she finds it hard to do even this. It isn’t something she has ever experienced, and as a result it’s hard for her to classify.

The sharp clatter of the bell raises her head. It’s automatic by now, the hungry searching glance, constantly disappointed by a procession of scarf-wrapped students and nondescript families. This time she has to blink to make sure the lecturer is real. His outline shines against the bright winter sun and gives him the air of a mirage. He looks tired, distracted, and his clothes don’t match, an old-looking red jumper slung like an after-thought under his black suit. He stands in the doorway for a moment as if announcing his arrival. There are two seats he could choose: one directly opposite Lydia, the other tucked away in the far corner of the café. He looks back and forth between them. She sees a mental coin being tossed in the instant before he turns towards her and settles into the seat, so close that she feels herself trembling. He takes a rolled newspaper out of his pocket, smooths it carefully out on to the table and scans the page blankly. So far he hasn’t glanced at her, but she knows it’s only a matter of time before he realises he’s being watched. Sure enough, it is little more than a minute before awareness ripples the surface of his face. His head swings sharply towards her, and suddenly he’s staring straight into her eyes.

For a second she thinks she sees a glimmer of recognition; something in her features calling up a memory so obscure and unidentifiable that it slips away almost instantly. In that instant his mouth has fallen slightly open, poised to identify her, but his lips abruptly close. A frown of incomprehension settles on his face. He’s not a young man any more. He must be less used than he once was to students making eyes at him; perhaps he suspects an ulterior motive. She has thought about this moment many times, and with a shock she realises that she still hasn’t decided which way to jump. Lydia the earnest scholar, keen to engage him in academic conversation. Lydia the breezy, talk-to-anyone novice student, looking for a friend and mentor. Lydia-Lolita, amateur seductress aiming at the depths of his vanity. As the options whir through her mind each seems more unthinkable than the last, but to her surprise the decision has been made for her. Her eyes are filling with tears.

He looks concerned, but she sees a faint irritation sifting beneath. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks in a low voice, glancing around as if he fears the waitresses will accuse him of attacking her. She doesn’t reply, bowing her head as the tears start to fall. ‘Come now,’ he says, an edge of panic to his voice. ‘This is … this is unnecessary, surely.’

What did she expect? A paragon of sensitivity? She battles a wild urge to laugh, sniffing instead and wiping an arm over her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers.

He clears his throat, scratching the back of his neck with long fingers. ‘Is there anything I can get you?’ he asks, looking around again. ‘Another drink, or a cake or something? If you like cake.’ She shakes her head. ‘Well, then,’ he says. He can make a polite excuse and leave, or he can ask the question he so clearly wants to avoid. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’ he asks. To his credit, not much of his obvious reluctance comes through in his voice, and for a second she almost warms towards him.

‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ she says, shrugging and smiling shakily. ‘It’s just … the sadness of things.’

He doesn’t know how to respond to this. He inclines his head, perhaps respectfully. ‘Life can be very hard,’ he says eventually. To her shock she hears a raw edge of pain scraping his voice. He is frowning down at his paper, momentarily lost to her. She takes a moment to study him – the profile set into something close to cruelty, the strong Roman nose, lips hardened into a thin line. The sun pours a sharp radiance across his face, casting him in light. She knows what he is thinking of, and it makes her want to seize his hands roughly across the table and shout, You see? You see what you have done?

‘I should go,’ she says instead, not moving. He looks up at her again, nodding.

‘Well, I hope you feel better soon,’ he says. ‘Take care, ah—’ He pauses expectantly, waiting for her to fill in her name.

‘Lydia,’ she says, and watches him closely. This time the emotion spills across his face and he can’t hold it back. She knows her reaction is crucial. She frowns as if puzzled. ‘What’s the matter? Are you all right?’ she asks. He looks at her again, more intently this time.

‘It’s an unusual name,’ he says. ‘These days.’

‘Is it?’ she replies lightly. ‘My mum always says it was my dad who chose it.’

‘Does she,’ he mumbles, retreating back into himself. Her words have dismissed any lurking suspicion that has pricked him. She can see he wants to be alone with his thoughts. As she moves towards the door she looks back and sees him fending these thoughts off, his shoulders hunched against them, his back rigid. She feels a surge of anger so great that she wants to hit something, so hard that she draws blood, but she simply turns and leaves, closing the door quietly behind her.

Back in my room I study my face in the mirror for traces of my mother. I’ve done this a thousand times but I never tire of it. When you lose someone, you take any small comfort that you can get, and it warms me to see any echo of a resemblance. We did not look alike, not really, but when I look closely I can see the line of her jaw beneath mine, the tinge of her eerily green eyes making its impression on my own. She’s there inside me somewhere, but I don’t want her there. I want her here, so badly I can taste it, the acid tang of need sickeningly fresh and surprising every time. The face in the mirror is blurring before me and suddenly it doesn’t look like either of us. It doesn’t look like anyone I know. I blink the tears away. I whisper my own name to myself, wanting to hear it as she used to say it. Louise. It’s not the same, never the same.

I step back from the mirror, addressing myself in my head. You thought that this would be enough – to see him, to satisfy your curiosity. You were wrong. Nothing you can do will bring her back, but you have the right to know. This man murdered your mother. You need to understand why.

Nicholas 1983

I walked in to work across Waterloo Bridge every morning. I told myself that it saved me money, but in reality the walk was more about building a sense of occasion than anything else. It was something to do with height: the feeling that I was walking above the world and that the grey industrial sweeps of office buildings and the cloudy river beneath were somehow watching me and cheering me on. As I paced the bridge, I would often be hit by the sudden knowledge that the day was to be a momentous one, holding events that could alter the course of my life. It was one way – sometimes the only way – of getting me into the school and precipitating the same stultifying routine.

Strangely, I seemed to be able to fool myself with these false premonitions again and again. I thought they were harmless, but in retrospect they turned me into the boy who cried wolf. When the familiar sense came to me as I crossed the bridge on that bright morning of 17 May, I had no way of divining that, for once, the bubbling anticipation and queasy, faint foreboding sifting beneath my skin were genuine.

I had been working at the school for two and a half years, bumping along the middle ranks of the English department. Thirty-one, living alone in a box flat in Wimbledon, I had far too much time to convince myself that I was a misunderstood genius who was condemned to a life of a monotony as unremarkable as the recognition after my death would be ecstatic. I was writing poetry around this time: oblique fragments which aimed at Ted Hughes but fell anticlimactically short of the mark. I deliberately kept my flat in little better state than that of a hovel, telling myself as I drank cheap soup out of a grey chipped mug in front of my two-bar fire that I was the typical starving artist in his garret. At these times I conveniently forgot about the school, and my underpaid but decidedly middle-class position there. I hadn’t had a girlfriend for three years. Not because I didn’t want one, and not because I couldn’t get one, but because the two states of wanting and attaining never seemed to coincide. I sometimes thought about becoming a monk. All in all I was ripe for a major life overhaul, and that is exactly what I got.

When I reached the school that morning I had twenty minutes before I was due to teach my first class at nine. It needed no preparation; the collection of oiks and devils that made up my fourth form were so laughably beyond reach that I had given up on them in all but name months ago. I toyed with the idea of going to the classroom early, sitting at my desk and staring at the whitewashed walls, but the restless mood generated by the walk was still on me. I prowled the campus instead. Sprawling and unstructured, a peculiar mix of original Gothic towers and tacked-on post-war concrete blocks, the school must have once been beautiful, I knew. Now it had the air of an institution gone to seed, an impression only reinforced by the grubby teenage louts crammed into its every crevice. I found myself turning towards one of the few unspoilt buildings remaining on the campus – the library, a converted church with honeyed, yellowing stone walls and candles that lit up its long arched windows when darkness fell. I often wandered its aisles when I was at a loose end, enjoying the temporary tranquillity, for few of the students ever ventured in except under sulky duress. That morning I hesitated before entering. I didn’t feel like browsing, but I still had a quarter of an hour to kill. I pushed open the stone door and slipped into the silence inside.

I saw her almost at once. Sitting behind the check-out desk, she was slumped forward, reading a newspaper. Her face was shaded by her hand, but the curve of her blonde head, the long fingers splayed over her forehead and the narrowness of her sloping shoulders in their pink wool cardigan leapt out at me, as shockingly and unexpectedly as if she had jumped out of her seat and shouted at me across the library. I know you, I thought. It was an irrational thought, and I knew even as the words formed in my head that I had never seen this woman before, but that’s what it felt like: seeing a much-missed friend again after a long absence. I had to stop myself from going straight up to the desk and telling her so. Instead I crossed softly to the rows of desks that flanked the library’s darkest corner, and settled myself down to watch her. After a few minutes, she pushed the paper aside and looked up. Her face was finely sculpted, delicate yet sensual, dark brows and lashes framing large ethereal eyes. The way she looked, her ash-blonde hair falling primly over the pink cardigan, reminded me of a sixties fashion model, polished and restrained, but nursing a secret abandon. She was beautiful, but not really my type. I liked exotic girls, Mediterranean lips and curves, not wistful English roses who looked as if they should be clutching on to something at all times – a posy of flowers, a prayer book, a man’s hand. And yet somehow, looking at her, I realised that the preferences I had thought I had were all muddled up and wrong, belonging to someone else.

I went over to the nearest bookshelf and picked a book at random, an obscure Henry James. Without giving myself time to think, I walked up to the check-out desk and slapped the book down, making her look up with a start.

‘Have you read this?’ I asked.

She glanced at the title, then back up at me. ‘I haven’t,’ she answered. When she spoke, something seemed to light up inside her, animating her face and making her eyes shine. She was smiling quizzically. ‘Should I have?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I haven’t read it either.’

‘Oh.’ There was a pause; she was clearly baffled. I couldn’t blame her. As an opening gambit, it hadn’t been one of my best – I was obviously out of practice.

I cleared my throat. ‘My name’s Nicholas Steiner. I work in the English department. When I asked if you’d read it, it was really just a way of saying hello.’

‘I see,’ she said. I couldn’t read the expression on her face. ‘Well, hello. Nice to meet you. I’m Lydia. I just started here this week.’

‘Great,’ I said inanely. The library walls suddenly felt oppressive and hot, closing in on me. ‘So. I should probably go to my class, but … well, perhaps we could meet up later, go for lunch or something?’

She hesitated and brushed her hair back from her face, and in that instant I saw what I hadn’t before: the pale gold ring on her slim finger. ‘I said I’d meet my husband for lunch,’ she said. ‘He works in the chemistry department. You could always join us, if—’

I was already backing away. ‘No, no, don’t worry,’ I said distantly. ‘I just thought you might want someone to show you round.’

‘Your book …’ she began plaintively as I turned and strode away. I pretended not to hear and battled my way out of the stone doors, back out to the shrieking chaos of the campus. A dense tidal wave of pupils was surging across the square towards lessons, a contraflow to my own intended direction. Nine bells sounded out from the clock tower. I was going to be late.

It took me another week to work out who Lydia’s husband was. I kept myself deliberately aloof from most of my colleagues, and I knew no one in the chemistry department whom I would have trusted to make discreet enquiries. On the face of it, few of the six chemists under sixty seemed like plausible canddates. Ranging from the prematurely aged Henry White, who spent his free periods huddled over textbooks and muttering in the corner of the staffroom, to the cocksure Terry Hudson, who was not long out of university and spent most of his time eyeing up the bustier sixth-formers, they were a singularly unappealing bunch. The front-runner was Simon Shaw, a good-looking, well-dressed man in his late twenties, who wore a wedding ring and who was conspicuous by his absence from the staff dining room at lunchtimes. Over the course of that week I imagined him with Lydia, laughing over their shared lunches elsewhere, enjoying a quiet evening in front of the TV, entwined together in bed … until I became convinced that the unpleasant images I was imagining were fact. Wanting to have my suspicion confirmed, I dropped Simon into conversation with one of the stalwarts of the school, Evelyn, who had been pushing sixty-five for the past five years and who was passionately fond of a gossip.

‘I think I met Simon’s wife the other day,’ I said, gesticulating over towards where Simon was marking some papers in the corner of the staffroom.

Evelyn looked briefly shocked, then amused. ‘Simon hasn’t got a wife,’ she said.

I was thrown off base by this. I assumed she was implying he was divorced. ‘He still wears a wedding ring,’ I pointed out.

Evelyn leant forward confidentially, her bright, ferrety eyes gleaming with the unexpected excitement of imparting knowledge. ‘That’s not a wedding ring,’ she breathed significantly. ‘It’s more … well, how shall I put this? More of a commitment ring.’ In case I hadn’t picked up on the subtext, she clarified it for me. ‘Simon’s partner is a man,’ she ended in an audible whisper, with a triumphant flourish.

The news jolted me more than might have been expected. It was 1983, and although the gay rights movement was in full swing, there was still something of a ‘not in my back yard’ mentality clinging to me, however enlightened and progressive I may have thought I was. Evelyn was watching me intently as I struggled to keep the shock from my face.

‘You didn’t suspect?’ she asked, a hint of glee in her voice.

‘Really, I barely know the man,’ I said brusquely. ‘I simply must have got him confused with somebody else.’

‘I see,’ she said, her tone implying that she did see, but not in the way I was wanting her to. ‘I believe they haven’t been together all that long,’ she added. She obviously thought I had secret designs on Simon Shaw and had invented a mythical wife under some complex pretext. I battled down the rise of discomfort that such a thought provoked in me. Let her think it, if it kept her in staffroom gossip for a week.

‘Excellent news,’ I said sarcastically. ‘I must just go and talk to him now.’ Somehow, the news that Simon was homosexual freed something up in my mind, made it easier for me to decide to ask him about Lydia. I went over to the corner table, where his dark head was still bent over the pile of exercise books, and sat down opposite him. He shot me a polite glance of enquiry before returning to the books. We had done no more than nod a brief hello occasionally around the campus, after a hurried introduction on his first day several months ago.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ I said briskly. He looked up again, expectant now.

‘Yes? Nicholas, isn’t it?’ he said. I wasn’t given to stereotypes, but I thought I caught the faintest whiff of something about his manner, something that should have given me the clue as to the true nature of that ring. He was smartly dressed, as always, with a handkerchief tucked into his top pocket. I noticed that his fingernails were very clean, very white and finely shaped.

‘Yes.’ Now that I had begun, I didn’t know how to go on. Instinctively I felt that I couldn’t pussyfoot around the topic with this man. ‘There’s a woman,’ I said bluntly. That got his attention. He put down his pen, a faint amused smile playing around the corners of his mouth. ‘She works in the school library. She’s married to someone in your department.’

Simon nodded. ‘Martin Knight,’ he said instantly.

I took a moment to digest the pill of information, which was even bitterer than I had imagined it would be. I had eliminated Martin from my suspicions early on, on the grounds that he was far too pedestrian a character to hold any allure for someone like Lydia. In his mid-forties, greying at the temples, with a face too forgettable to be termed ugly, he had few obvious attractions. Incomprehension was what I felt, and a petulant, steadily rising indignation.

‘You’re sure you know who I mean?’ I said, just to make sure.

‘Blonde hair,’ Simon said eagerly. ‘About thirty. And, of course, very beautiful.’ He spoke with the detached relish of a professional connoisseur. I wondered whether he was trying to pretend that he himself had some interest in Lydia, to generate some sort of comradely atmosphere.

‘That’s her,’ I agreed. ‘Martin Knight. Well, no accounting for tastes.’

I had taken a risk, not knowing whether Simon and Martin were particular friends. From the smile that broke over his face I assumed that it had paid off, but he said nothing. The exercise books forgotten, he was leaning forward in his seat now, obviously awaiting my next move.

I didn’t like to be toyed with. ‘That’s all I wanted to know,’ I said, forcing a smile. There was no point in trying to backtrack or explain. ‘I trust you won’t mention this to Martin.’

‘My lips are sealed,’ Simon assured me. He hesitated, taking a furtive glance around the room before leaning farther in. His eyes fixed earnestly on mine. ‘So,’ he asked, with no little anticipation, ‘are you in love with her?’

The directness of the question should not have surprised me – after all, I had been the one to break the norms of social convention between us – but for a second it made my breath catch in my throat. ‘Yes,’ I said, entirely without thinking, and saw his face blossom into delighted approval.

Later that day I made a half-hearted attempt to berate myself for my foolish declaration, but I didn’t regret it. I tried to despise myself for falling in love on such scanty grounds; it didn’t fit with who I thought I was, to be so ridiculously besotted over a look and a few awkward words. Try as I might, I couldn’t make myself doubt my feelings, and the knowledge that I was not mistaken made me feel excited, righteous and determined all at the same time. I knew I could take her away from him. I did love her, I did want her, and in that moment, as thereafter, I made no apology for it. Not to anyone.

I struck up a casual friendship with Martin Knight. It wasn’t difficult to do; he was the sort of person doomed to be overlooked and to blend into the background. The unexpected attention I showed him seemed to please him. I started off small – a cordial comment or two around the campus, an offer to borrow my newspaper in the staffroom – then progressed to lengthier conversation, commenting on current affairs or the steadily improving weather. Not forthcoming by nature, Martin nevertheless responded to these overtures with eagerness. Within a couple of weeks he was singling me out in the staffroom between lessons, giving me a brisk, confident wave in the knowledge that we were more than mere acquaintances. I don’t know whether he ever stopped to consider why this unknown colleague, more than a decade his junior, had started to take an interest in him. With all that I came to know of him afterwards, I suspect that the question never arose in his mind. He had that peculiar yet surprisingly common combination, an acute academic brain coupled with a near-total lack of interest in human nature. He would wrestle with the finer points of molecular evolution with all the energy of a genuine truth-seeker, but when it came to emotion, he swallowed all that was told him without further question or argument.

As I got to know him better, I understood that he did have his qualities, however hidden they may have been on first inspection. He was cheerful and sanguine by nature, and spending time in his company was strangely reassuring. He had occasional flashes of quick, dry humour, invariably delivered with a sly look over the top of his glasses. He was automatically generous, often offering me things – a spare snack, a book to read in free periods. He didn’t seem to feel the need to show off or to impress me with his knowledge as so many of my colleagues did. Attractive though these things were, though, none of them made me sit back and think, Ah, so that’s what she sees in him. None of them seemed significant enough; there was nothing extraordinary about him, and I felt instinctively that Lydia deserved, wanted, something extraordinary.

I had decided early on not to mention Lydia until he did, but I didn’t have long to wait. I think it took only two days of desultory chat before Martin dropped the phrase ‘my wife’ into the conversation. ‘My wife always tells me I would make a terrible bachelor,’ he said, in response to some casual remark of mine about living alone. As he said the words, his face was suffused pinkly with something between embarrassment and pleasure. Watching him shift self-consciously in his seat and stifle a smile, I realised that he worshipped her. The knowledge didn’t soften me; on the contrary, it half angered me.

‘Why’s that?’ I asked, biting back my annoyance.

‘Well, I’ve never been very good at the domestic side of things,’ he explained. ‘Cooking, cleaning, tidying,’ he added, as if this needed clarification. ‘Lydia does all that.’

I adjusted my mental picture. I had assumed that she was the sort of woman who sat back and was waited on. ‘She must be very capable,’ I said.

‘Oh, very, very,’ Martin agreed with enthusiasm. I waited for some elaboration, but after a pause he shifted the conversation back to my own living arrangements and Lydia was not mentioned again. Nor was I ever invited along to their private lunches, which seemed to take place every Monday and Wednesday. I noticed that he often came back from these lunches buoyant and brimming with bonhomie, his greying hair ruffled, and I envied him.

One morning we were walking across the campus together at the end of the school assembly, which Ioccasionally attended out of lack of anything else to do. I was holding forth about the latest Thatcher debacle, and I noticed that Martin’s sporadic grunts of approval and murmurs of agreement had abruptly stopped. He was beaming, entirely distracted; I followed his gaze across the courtyard and saw that Lydia was approaching from the opposite direction. Clutching a bulging green carrier bag, books threatening to spill from its confines, she didn’t see us at first. It was only when we were within speaking distance that Martin gave a curious whistle of greeting, obviously some private signal between the two of them. She looked up sharply and smiled as she saw him.

‘Hello,’ she said, and then her eyes flickered to me. Her expression changed in a second, but I caught the signals I wanted: surprise and dismay. In another heartbeat she was moving on gaily, rolling her eyes laughingly at the pile of books in her arms, and calling ‘See you later!’ back at Martin, but I wasn’t fooled. She didn’t want me around her husband. If I had ever had any doubts that that brief minute in the library had stayed with her as it had with me, they were instantly discarded, never to return.

I excused myself to Martin on the pretext that I had forgotten a textbook and hurried back in the direction in which Lydia had gone. At the library, I saw her. She had stopped, leaning back against one of its yellowing stone walls and shifting the bag of books to sit more comfortably in her arms. I walked up behind her and put my hand on her shoulder.

I expected her to start, but she turned round with something close to resignation. ‘Hello,’ she said again. Her voice this time was softer, sadder. Her blonde hair was falling about her face, green eyes peeking up from under her fringe to meet mine.

‘I’m sorry if I scared you,’ I said, though it was obvious I hadn’t.

She shook her head and made an effort to drag some normality between us. ‘I didn’t know you knew Martin,’ she said cheerfully. The false brightness masked something closer to panic; I could see it in the aggrieved set of her mouth, the way she couldn’t look me in the face for more than a second at a time. ‘I assume you know he’s my husband?’

‘Yes. I only found out recently,’ I lied. ‘Not that it matters.’

She frowned, unsure of what I meant and whether to be offended.

‘Well, I suppose not,’ she said. ‘After all, why should you care?’

‘I do care,’ I said. She gave a short exasperated laugh at this, hoisting the bag back into her arms and moving away from me.

‘I don’t know why we’re having this conversation,’ she said. ‘Listen, I’m not stupid. I can see you’re interested in me, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about that. I’m married, and even if I wasn’t—’ She stopped short, and I caught the first hint of another of her qualities that I would later come to know well; an inability to give voice to the harsh thoughts that formed so clearly in her head. ‘It’s embarrassing,’ she contented herself with.

Silhouetted against the library, with the sun casting her in light, she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. ‘Well, I’m happy enough to be embarrassing,’ I said. ‘I like being underestimated.’

‘Nicholas,’ she said, and hearing her pronounce my name for the first time set off a strange erotic pang that felt as if it came from somewhere so deep inside I couldn’t locate it. I expected her to follow it with some condemnation or other. I think you should leave me alone. You’re being ridiculous. I would never be interested in a man like you. But she didn’t. After a long silence, she just said my name again, softly and caressingly, as if rolling it around her mouth. She didn’t seem to know what else to say.

After that day outside the library, it felt like only a matter of time before Lydia and I began an affair, and yet the next few weeks were the longest of my life. Every night that I spent alone in the flat I had once fancied an artistic utopia, surrounded by the paraphernalia of my suddenly unsatisfactory bachelor life, felt like an affront. At school I continued to spend time with Martin. Often I watched him and Lydia snatching a few moments together around campus, always laughing and joking between themselves, and I couldn’t rid myself of the nasty, gloating sense that things would not always be this way. I didn’t especially like it in myself, but at the same time I felt justified. I told myself that whatever it was between us was bigger than the English custom of stepping back politely at the sight of a wedding ring. Besides, it wasn’t in my nature to forgo what I wanted – not when I genuinely wanted things so seldom, not when I could tell that she wanted the same thing, even if she didn’t know it herself yet.

Over those few weeks I saw Lydia alone only twice. The first time, I sought her out, strolling casually into the library one morning to borrow a book. She greeted me brightly enough, tossing out some cheery query about how my week was going, but once again she couldn’t look me in the eye. As she pushed the book across the desk towards me my hand brushed lightly across her fingertips. They curled back into her palm quickly, too quickly, at the touch, and I saw that the skin on her cheekbones was darkening, flushing into pink. The second time, I came out of a lesson to find her standing aimlessly in the corridor, staring at the mass of leaflets and flyers tacked on to the whitewashed wall. When she saw me, she feigned surprise. I didn’t challenge her, even though I knew that she had no reason to be in the English block. She stood there awkwardly for a few moments, then declared that she had to go. Perhaps as a final gesture of defiance, she snatched a flyer from the wall as she went. It was the sort of gesture that from anyone else I would have found pathetic, but right then it made me smile. Looking after her as she hurried away across the courtyard, I knew that she had given me the nearest thing she could to a signal. It was time for me to test the water.

The next lunchtime, I excused myself from my lesson ten minutes early and went to the chemistry labs. I had reasoned that Lydia might well meet Martin there before their lunchtime dates, and my suspicion was right. She was sitting on a bench outside the lab, her bright blonde head bent over a book. When I saw her, my body went into overdrive, blood pulsing through me and adrenalin spiking my skin, making me feel light headed and delirious. My shadow fell across her as I approached, and she hurriedly tucked the book into her bag, but not before I had seen its title – the Henry James I had plucked from the library shelf on the morning of our first meeting.

‘I hope you’re going to write me a review of that book,’ I said.

‘I like Henry James,’ she said defensively. ‘I would have read it anyway.’

I laughed. ‘Of course you would.’

She ignored me, glancing over her shoulder towards the labs. ‘I’m waiting for Martin,’ she said. ‘We’re going to lunch.’ I noticed that she had a basket by her feet, covered with a cloth.

‘Having a picnic?’ I asked.

‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ she replied. ‘But yes. We sometimes go to the park, when the weather’s good. It’s nice to be alone,’ she added defiantly. ‘To have some time just the two of us.’

I sat down next to her and took her hand in mine. It was hot, trembling in my grasp, but she didn’t pull it away. Closer to her than I had been before, I could smell the scent of her perfume on her skin, a sweet, elusive smell that made me think of apricots and sunshine. Her green eyes were swimming with something that could have been excitement or tears, blinked away by long dark lashes that stood out dramatically against the paleness of her skin. Her pupils were fringed with a fine haze that graded from hazel through to almost gold. I wanted to kiss her, but something told me to wait. If I rushed things now, I could set us back days, and besides, I wanted to prolong the moment, now that I sensed it was so near.

‘Don’t wait for him,’ I whispered. ‘Come with me instead.’

At that moment the bell rang out sharply for the end of lessons. It galvanised Lydia, forcing her out of her seat as she wrenched her hand away from mine. She looked round wildly as the first students started to pour out of the lab behind us, shouting and pushing each other, swarming around us. I could have cheerfully murdered them all.

‘OK,’ I began, holding my hands up in surrender. She seized my arm, and I saw a new look on her face, a kind of fierce, almost angry desperation.

‘Come on,’ she said, looking me straight in the eyes. ‘Quickly, before he comes.’ The words hung between us in the air for an instant. I could see that she was half appalled at hearing them leave her lips; the betrayal tangible now, impossible to undo. In that instant I suddenly knew that all my certainty had been nothing more than bravado, and that deep down I had never expected this to happen. I couldn’t speak. So fleetingly that I barely caught the echo of the impulse, I thought, Stop this. Stop it now.

She was hurrying away from the lab, almost running as she elbowed her way through the spreading crowd of students. I had to stride to keep her within sight, focusing my eyes on the slight but powerful set of her shoulders in their white shirt, her hair drawn up enticingly from the nape of her neck. She seemed to know exactly where she was going. I followed her through the exit at the back of the English block, leading out on to the backstreets that wound towards the river. She weaved through the streets, never looking back, making me feel like a stalker. I was excited now, willing to play her game. I had guessed by now where she was taking me. Sure enough, she took an abrupt right, and the church loomed in front of us. She unhooked the gate that led to the churchyard and slipped swiftly inside, leaving it off the latch for me. Still she didn’t look back. She padded softly across the grass, slower now, taking her time to choose a spot. At last she came to a halt underneath a low cherry tree, masses of white and pink blossoms exploding across its thread-thin branches and casting a rose-tinged shadow on to the grass beneath. I came up behind her, put my arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck, burying my face in the warm scented sweep of her hair. The touch seemed to flick a switch inside her. She twisted around in my arms and seized my face in her hands, brought her lips violently up against mine. I had thought she would be pliant, beseeching, easy to mould or overcome. Instead, as we kissed, I was shocked to feel the stirring of something strong and defiant, a will that could conquer my own. It was her whose fingers stealthily worked at the buttons of my shirt, her who took my hands and guided them, her who shook her head and pulled me towards her again roughly when I drew back and looked around. I began to speak – concerned someone might stumble upon us, someone might see – but she shook her head, staring at me, and suddenly it didn’t seem important any more. We made love quickly, without ceremony. Her face was pale and transported, her head thrown back against the carpet of blossoms. It couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes, but in those minutes everything changed. If any small cruel part of me had thought that once I had fucked her I could forget about her, it shrivelled and died.

Afterwards she was silent, turning away from me and lying on her side, her skirt still rucked up around her thighs. I ran my fingers through her pale gold hair, carefully unwinding its strands and releasing the scattered cherry blossoms that had tangled their way in among them. It was a few minutes before she rolled on to her stomach and looked up at me, eyes narrowing in the sun.

‘I love you,’ I said, because she seemed to expect me to say something, and because I meant it.

She looked more sad than rapturous, bowing her head towards the grass. ‘I can see that,’ she said. It should have sounded arrogant, but somehow it didn’t. As would often come to be the case with her, I had a feeling that there was a subtext beneath her words which I couldn’t catch, but which would always absolve her. ‘I want you to know that this is the first time I’ve done this,’ she continued.

‘Do you love him?’ I asked. I was prepared for either answer, or for the shaky middle ground of uncertainty. She nodded, and that was fine, because I didn’t believe her. ‘How long have you been married?’

She mumbled something I couldn’t hear, so I asked her again. ‘Six months,’ she said, loudly and clearly this time, as if daring me to show any shock.

Despite myself, I was shocked. In my head I had built up an image of a marriage gone to seed. A teenage Lydia married far too young, a few happy years, then a growing sense of restlessness, the realisation of a decision too quickly and impulsively made. Not a cold-hearted newlywed casting round for some spice outside her life with her dull husband.

As soon as I had thought it, I knew I couldn’t cast Lydia in that role. It would ruin everything. ‘Tell me about it,’ I said.

She sighed, scrambling to sit up and leaning her head back against the tree. ‘I was working in a bookshop when I met him,’ she said. ‘He used to come in and browse the science section almost every day, or so he says, but I don’t remember ever seeing him until he came up to me one day and asked me out. I was flattered, I suppose, even though he wasn’t my usual type. There was still something about him.’ She must have seen the incredulous frown that briefly split my forehead, because she rolled her eyes. ‘Men like you never understand what a woman could see in someone like Martin,’ she said. It felt like a rebuke, and I murmured an apology. ‘But he is attractive, in his way. Anyway, we started seeing each other and it was only a few months later that he asked me to marry him. He was much older than me but that didn’t seem to matter. I couldn’t think of any good reason why I shouldn’t marry him. He made me feel safe and loved. We married at the end of November last year. God, it was a horrible day – cold and pouring with rain. I remember shivering in my wedding dress outside the church. I couldn’t think of anything except how cold I was.’ She trailed off for a moment, recalling. ‘Anyway, we were happy. We moved into a lovely little flat. This job came up a little while ago and I jumped at the chance, because I was tired of the bookshop, and it would mean we would see more of each other, and it seemed convenient.’

I was waiting for the end of the story: some catastrophic turnaround from the gentle domestic bliss that she had outlined. When it was evident that none was coming I cast my mind back over her words, trying to find some clue aside from the doom-laden storm of the wedding day, which hardly seemed a valid reason to embark on an affair.

‘So why?’ I asked finally, when I had found none.

Her face was vacant and puzzled. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t.’ Throughout her speech she had been confident and self-assured, hard even. Now she looked vulnerable, like a child seeking reassurance and comfort. I kissed her, stroking my hand across the curve of her cheek. She responded, but I could tell that her mind was elsewhere.

‘We should get back,’ she said. ‘It’s almost two. I’ll go first, and then you can follow me in a few minutes.’

‘OK.’ I watched her stand and smooth down her clothes. ‘Will I see you soon?’

‘Maybe,’ she said. I must have looked hurt, because she bent down and gave me a brief, apologetic kiss on the forehead. ‘I mean yes,’ she said. ‘But I have to think this through. I’ll see you in a couple of days.’

She hurried through the churchyard, away from me, sunlight dappling her bare arms and legs, blonde hair glinting in a long rope down her back. I felt exhilarated and angry. I knew that she was wondering whether to give me the brush-off, and it irritated me that she could even consider it; it was so plainly impossible. I knew there was nothing I could do to hasten or influence her decision, and it gave me a sliding, nauseous feeling, as if I were playing a game of chance on which everything I had rode.

Later, in the staffroom, I saw Martin, dialling a number on the staff phone and waiting with an air of pinched concern. Relief broke over his face in waves when she picked up. ‘I was worried,’ I heard him say, and then, ‘Where were you?’ Whatever the lie was, it must have come smoothly, because when he turned away from the phone, he was smiling, a huge weight visibly lifted from his shoulders. In the weeks that followed, I was often ambushed by a brief photographic flash of his face as he had sat waiting at the phone. He had looked hunted, haunted, as if he were steeling himself against a blow from which he might never recover. I think he was imagining that she might be dead.

I could easily have sought Lydia out after our assignation in the churchyard, but I grimly resisted the temptation. I had never been involved with a married woman before, but already I was glimpsing the rules: she called the shots and she made the choices, because she undoubtedly had more to lose. It took three long days for her to make up her mind not to write the churchyard off as an insane aberration. On the fourth day, she turned up at the door of my flat after dark. At first I could barely believe she was there and thought I was hallucinating, that my wanting her so much had magically made an elusive image of her appear. She stood at the doorway in a long green dress and gold jewellery, dressed for the opera or a cocktail party. She was breathing heavily, as if she had been running.

‘I got your address from the school files,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I was at a dinner party, and all of a sudden I knew I had to come and see you, so I said I was feeling ill and I was going home. I told Martin to stay, but he won’t stay out late, so I probably don’t have long.’ She laughed nervously, giddily. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said again.

I unwrapped her like a present in front of the two-bar fire, glowing in the dark room and subtly illuminating her body. It was slower than the first time, more intimate. She whispered my name over and over again as we moved together, every whisper sending an almost painful reverberation straight to my heart. Afterwards she buried her face in my shoulder and I knew she was crying. I didn’t ask her why, but I held her and stroked her hair as if I understood.

After that we started meeting whenever we could. Most of our meetings were snatched half-hours around the school, at break times and before class. I often went to the library between lessons just to say a brief hello and have two minutes’ worth of chat. The rest of the time I was on call, watching for notes in my pigeonhole written on the trademark yellow notepaper that she used. Some days there would be no note at all, and I knew that I wouldn’t see her. Other days there would be a few scrawled words: Can’t get away. Missing you. Thinking of you. And other days, less regularly, the notes would take a triumphal tone. M out for the evening! Will come to you at seven. It never occurred to me to rebuff any of her plans or invitations. On the contrary, my social diary was even emptier than it had been before, permanently cleared for Lydia. When we did meet, perhaps twice a week, it wasn’t always for sex. We spent hours talking. She was intelligent, much too intelligent to be wasting time working in a library. I said as much several times, but she claimed she liked it. It went against the grain to think of her whiling away the hours be hind that desk, when she should have been with me.

When I think of the summer that followed, it’s as a series of picture-perfect snapshots, all blurring into one. Lydia on her back in the churchyard, singing with her eyes closed. Her hair, just glimpsed through the darkness in the tower at the top of the library, deserted in the summer holidays, where she waited for me. The two of us trailing our feet in the river, sharing a bottle of wine on a rare Saturday afternoon together. We were happy, as happy as we could be in the circumstances. I never got used to not having her full time, but I accepted it. Sometimes I felt guilty. I had kept up my friendship with Martin, as much out of habit as anything else. The sight of his friendly, earnest face occasionally set off a pang of nausea in me as I thought of how little he knew. I spent very little time with the two of them together, partly because it was simply too hard for me to keep my feelings to myself around Lydia, and partly because it was painful in some nebulous, craven way to see Martin taking such pride in her. He seemed to find every move she made endlessly fascinating. I would catch him looking at her intently in the course of some prosaic task like peeling an orange, and I could tell that he was marvelling at the way her fingers flexed and worked at its skin. He was quick to join in her laughter, even if he plainly did not understand the joke. He praised her dress sense, her skill at cooking, her sensitivity, to me on numerous occasions. It took all I had to smile and nod, and not to shout that he knew nothing, and that his beautiful, talented wife was spending her time away from him fucking the closest thing he had to a friend. Sometimes I thought I hated him. Other times I wished that I had met Lydia first, and that the three of us could have been friends.

Rarely, I wished that I had never met her at all. Once, towards the end of the summer, we were arguing, the same old argument that we always had. I wanted to see her the next night, and she said that it was impossible. I was always chasing her in those days. We were standing facing each other in my flat, both brimming with sour indignation. The conversation was to all intents and purposes over, but I wanted to give a final twist of the knife.

‘It would be better if we had never started this,’ I said. Her head jerked up sharply and I saw the blood drain from her face.

‘You don’t mean that,’ she said.

‘Maybe I do,’ I shot back, unable to stop goading her now that I had got a reaction. ‘It’s not going anywhere, is it? Where could it go? Sometimes I think it’s pointless.’ I couldn’t go on. She had slumped to the floor, knees drawn up to her chin, as if shielding herself against my words.

‘Well, we can stop it, if you like,’ she said, so quietly that I could barely hear her. The words hung in the air between us, and for a moment I thought, yes, this thing has run its course. Leave it now, and maybe you can paper over the cracks and it’ll be as if it was never there. I knew I was fooling myself. In another moment I was at her side, putting my arms around her shaking shoulders.

‘I know this is hard for you,’ she said, her voice muffled by my embrace. ‘It’s hard for me, too. I don’t know what to do.’

It was the first hint she had given that there was a choice to be made. Naively, I had thought that this precarious middle ground could continue. Now I saw that she had gone farther, and that in the not so distant future there were two possible paths calling her; Martin or me. The knowledge frightened me. I couldn’t see how the affair between us could end, but nor could I imagine her standing in front of Martin, peaceable, unsuspecting Martin, and saying that she wanted a divorce.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said then, moving to face her. ‘I was frustrated, that’s all. You know I want to be with you. And if you’re thinking that you need to make a choice, I want you to know that I’m ready to give you whatever you want. If you want us to go away, start a life somewhere new, we can do it. I’ll get a new job, we’ll buy a place, I’ll do whatever it takes. It’s all I want, you know that.’ I was talking fast now, words tumbling out one over the other. ‘I can’t imagine being without you. I won’t be without you. You’re right, we have to do something, I can’t carry on like this.’

We didn’t talk any more about it that night. I knew, though, that the conversation had started off a chain of thoughts and possibilities in her, and that they daunted her. In early September, when we had returned to school, I saw her a few times around the campus, walking with her arms crossed in front of her, so lost in her thoughts that she looked through me blankly. I think she would have come to a decision soon after of her own accord, although even now I’m still not sure what it would have been. In the event, without even meaning to, I pushed her to make the choice before she was truly ready.

We were curled up together in the library tower; it was the Tuesday lunch hour, which we always contrived to spend together. It had been one of our best times, when we seemed to be perfectly in synch, laughing and finishing each other’s sentences like a couple of much longer standing. I remember that it was raining lightly outside, the raindrops making a faint tattoo of noise on the skylight above us. Lydia was lying back in my arms, smiling up at me. I wanted to prolong the mood, and fatally I snatched at something that suddenly struck me as amusing.

‘You know, something funny happened earlier today,’ I said, and felt her squirm in delighted anticipation. ‘I was expecting a bulletin from the head of department, but I couldn’t be bothered to go and check my pigeonhole.’

‘So lazy,’ she said, and swiped her hand up to playfully tap my face. I caught it and bit it, making her squeal in outrage.

‘So anyway,’ I continued, ‘I asked Martin to go and check it for me. But when he was halfway there, I suddenly remembered that you might have left a note, and that he might recognise your writing. I had to sprint over to get there before him and pretend I had had a sudden spurt of energy—’ I was suddenly aware that Lydia had stiffened in my arms. She pulled away, staring incredulously at me. Already I realised my mistake, but it was too late to undo it.

‘How could you be so stupid?’ she whispered.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I shouldn’t have told you. Listen, it was fine – he didn’t suspect anything. He thought it was funny.’

She carried on as if she hadn’t heard me, talking to herself. ‘How could I never have thought about anyone else seeing those notes?’ she said. ‘I put them in a public place where anyone could find them. We’ve been so stupid.’ She stood up, dusting off her skirt. I leapt up to stop her, but she pushed me away, avoiding my eyes. ‘I want to be by myself,’ she said, and in another moment she was gone. I could have run after her, but I didn’t want to arouse suspicion in anyone in the library downstairs. I told myself she would get over it, but I couldn’t shake off the dread that was slowly trickling through my veins, the feeling that I had ruined everything.

The next day she wasn’t at work. I waited at the library long past the time when I should have been teaching my first lesson. She didn’t appear on Thursday either. It took until Friday for me to crack and approach Martin. I gave him some cock-and-bull story about having needed to borrow a new set of books for my sixth-form class, and having noticed that Lydia was not there. Immediately I could tell that there was something he was keeping from me. He had a smug, self-satisfied look about him, as if he were cherishing a special secret that excluded me and everyone else. I pushed him harder than I had thought my pride would allow, desperate to get to the root of Lydia’s disappearance. Eventually he capitulated, with all the laughing good humour of a man who had everything he wanted. I was not to tell anyone just yet, but he and Lydia were leaving, he said. She had grown tired of London and wanted to settle down somewhere quieter, maybe start a family. At this point he blushed visibly with pleasure. She had always been impulsive, and ideally he would have liked to stay in London a little longer, but what was a man to do? The headmaster had been very understanding, and was allowing him gardening leave from the end of next week. He knew they would be happy, and he hoped that I would come and visit them, wherever they ended up. All at once he faltered, obviously realising that I was not heaping congratulations on his head. With a heart so full of panic, pain and incomprehension that I thought it was impossible that he should not see it, I shook his hand and wished him joy.

I saw Lydia once more before they left. She came to toast Martin at his leaving drinks – he had been at the school for six years, and although he had been consistently passed over for promotion, friendship and approbation, his colleagues apparently felt an urgent need to celebrate his reign. I watched her from the other side of the room, laughing and clinking glasses with all the suddenly gallant scientists flocking around her like bees round an exotic flower. She was wearing a tight black dress, her hair piled on top of her head, soft tendrils escaping and caressing her bare shoulders. I was furious with her, for looking so beautiful and happy, for leaving me. I thought that she had not seen that I was there at all, but when she and Martin turned to leave, hand in hand, she looked straight across the room at me for an instant. Her eyes were pleading, full of longing. I knew she was trying to tell me that she still loved me, but I looked back coldly, giving her no sign that I had understood, and then looked away. When I turned back she was gone.

I spent the next three years trying to get over her. I was promoted at work, and became head of department. I started tutoring the more demanding pupils one on one for an extra fee, and soon I could afford to move out of my box flat into somewhere far nicer. After those three years had passed I met Naomi, and she woke up the faintest echo of something in me that I had thought had died. We married a year later, and when I thought of Lydia, it was with the certain belief that I would never see her again. And for almost six years, I was proved right.

Louise 2007

Lydia cannot always trust her memories. Scenes and events from her childhood swim into her mind with disturbing frequency, but she seems to have no way of sorting truth from fiction. She used to have a favourite memory – her father kneeling down to present her with a hot pink flower, her mother clapping her hands delightedly in the background, the setting luminous and imbued with well-being. One day she switched on the television and saw the very same scene eerily played out in some old film she must have seen years before, the faces blurred into unfamiliarity, but everything else identical to the picture in her head. It was the first but not the last time that she realised that her mind had played a trick on her. The memory had felt like hers, but it belonged to someone else. And as the years go by, she loses more and more memories, not by forgetting them, but by handing them back to their rightful owners.

She doesn’t know why, but she has always been this way. Her name, her age, all those everyday and automatically known things, have never seemed to be part of her in the way that they seem to be of other people. She is liable to misplace them, muddle them up in her head. So taking on her mother’s name feels strange to her, and yet not strange. It is just as much bound up with her as her own, and it needs to be used. It’s been hanging around unspoken for too long. She supposes that it is her mother’s memory she’s marking. However little Lydia remembers about her, and however unreliable it may be, she existed. That shouldn’t be forgotten. Least of all by him.

Adam’s flowers are starting to wilt. She has kept them in a vase by her bed for the past week, and for days they stayed in full bloom, their crimson petals so plushly perfect that she had to inspect them several times to make sure they were real. She knows that Sandra has noticed them; a sly hint was dropped at the dinner table, a jocular attempt to find out the identity of the sender, but she pretended not to understand. Now the roses are curling and browning slightly at the edges. In another day or two they will be dead, and she will have to decide whether to throw them out, or whether to swallow her pride and press them into dried-out husks, as she secretly wants to. Sitting at her dressing table, she plucks a petal off and crushes it between her fingers, the sweet scent rubbing off on to her skin. He cannot have known that roses were her favourite flowers, although she supposes it is a common enough choice.

This is not the first time she has sat like this, staring at the flowers. In fact, since she collected them from the pavement seven days ago, it has become something of a mid-morning habit. So when she hears the doorbell downstairs, Sandra’s voice raised in polite enquiry, and the almost inaudible but unmistakable tones answering back, it is perhaps not as much of a coincidence as it might seem. Still, it is enough to make her start up from her chair and run to the door, heart hammering. She can hear him more clearly now – he is asking whether she is around, his voice strained and embarrassed. Mentally, she wills a message down to Sandra. Tell him I’m out, tell him I don’t live here any more. And then finds with a guilty start that this is not what she wants at all.

Footsteps are approaching now, coming up the stairs to find her. She darts back to the dressing table and opens a book, pretends to study it. The door is pushed open and Sandra peeks around it – she never knocks, presumably clinging to the knowledge that despite the fact that she has been forced to take in a lodger, it is her house and therefore hers to do as she likes in. She’s a big woman, comfortable and matronly with a peroxide bob and meticulously plastered make-up. Such is the size of her that for a moment, Lydia doesn’t see Adam lurking behind in the shadows of the hall.

‘You’ve got a visitor,’ Sandra announces, beaming. ‘The same visitor you’ve had every day for the past week, in fact. He finally tracked you down!’ Behind her, Lydia sees Adam experiencing a silent agony of embarrassment and feels sorry for him. She suddenly realises that he must only be nineteen, and still has something of a teenager’s gaucheness. He’s several years younger than her, although of course there is no way he could know this. ‘So!’ Sandra prattles on, oblivious to the mortification she is causing. ‘I suppose this clears up one mystery!’ With a flourish, she indicates the roses, which have clearly been given an elegant vase and set in pride of place. Lydia feels her cheeks flame up, so that by the time Sandra retreats, with much innuendo about leaving them alone for a good chat, she and Adam are equally mute and self-conscious.

He recovers first, wiping a hand across his mouth and shrugging as if to slough off the temporary awkwardness. ‘Tracked you down is about right,’ he says. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

She is tempted to ask why but can’t quite get the words out. Standing in her bedroom, where she has only imagined him up to now, he seems larger than life. His scuffed trainers, his big hands and his muscular body don’t fit the quiet chintz of Sandra’s box room.

‘I’ve been quite busy,’ she says. ‘I did want to thank you for these, though.’

He dismisses the roses with a wave of the hand. ‘Least I could do,’ he says. The allusion to what happened in the club upsets her. She has been trying not to think about Isobel, or the lust-drunk look on Adam’s face as she danced, and much less what happened after. ‘Listen,’ he continues, sitting down with a bump on her bed, ‘I have been round a few times. Not quite as many as your interfering landlady might have suggested, obviously, but still, a few. I wanted to see you.’ He pats the bed and she goes and joins him there, thinking that this at least cannot hurt.

‘That’s very flattering,’ she says. ‘But I can’t imagine your girlfriend is too pleased.’

‘It’s not like that,’ he says, a trifle too quickly. ‘Isobel and I – we’re friends, sometimes we have fun.’

‘Have sex, you mean,’ she snaps, aware that she is sounding jealous, but unable to help herself.

‘Yeah, OK – have sex,’ he agrees, shrugging his shoulders helplessly. He’s trying to look contrite, but he can’t entirely hide the ghost of a smirk. ‘But that doesn’t mean she’s my girlfriend. Look, I feel really bad about going off and leaving you like that. I don’t know why I did it. It was you I wanted to—’ He breaks off and in her head she finishes the sentence with forbidden words, words that she has never said aloud. They make her feel hot, bewildered. She stares down at her hands.

‘Would she like to be?’ she asks then. ‘Your girlfriend, I mean?’

Adam shrugs again and frowns, as if weighing up an entirely new concept. ‘She might do,’ he says. ‘But she isn’t. And besides, term ends in a fortnight. She’ll be going home to Kent, and obviously I live here.’ She doesn’t like the inference, and looks at him sharply. He corrects himself with commendable swiftness. ‘I mean, I don’t mean … it wouldn’t be going behind her back for us to spend some more time together. Because, like I say, there’s nothing going on.’

‘Mmm.’ She isn’t convinced, but wants to leave the subject of Isobel until she can think about it, alone. ‘What makes you think I’m not going home for the holidays myself?’ she demands. As soon as she asks, she sees a shift in Adam; he looks surer of himself, even a little angry, and with a flash of insight she realises that she is about to be challenged.

‘This is the thing,’ he says. ‘After I’d been here a couple of times and you weren’t in, I went over to Jesus and tried to get hold of you that way. But you’re not a student there, are you?’

Lydia knows she will have to think fast, but she can’t get rid of the nagging question in her mind. ‘But you don’t even know my surname,’ she says.

‘I know that,’ he replies. Her comment seems to have taken away some of his anger; he leans back against the headboard, stretching his legs out across the duvet until they almost graze her own. ‘I left a note in every pigeonhole with the first initial L.’ The matter-of-fact tone in which he makes the admission suggests that, amazingly, it doesn’t seem to embarrass him. As she takes in what he has done, she finds that she is flattered and more than a little amused. She can’t help smiling.

‘That was very enterprising of you,’ she murmurs.

‘Yes,’ he snaps back, irritated again now. ‘And I left my number so you could get in touch with me, and I’ve had crank calls from about a dozen people all week, mostly blokes taking the piss.’

She can’t hold back the laughter that bubbles up in her throat, and has to clamp a hand over her mouth. To her relief he joins in, and for a few moments they abandon themselves to a mutual paroxysm of mirth, flapping their hands at each other in wheezing protest. ‘I might have got your note, and just decided not to reply,’ she points out when she has calmed down, wiping her eyes.

Adam shakes his head confidently. ‘You would have replied,’ he says, and for an instant she wonders what else was in the note besides his phone number. ‘Besides, you’ve just given yourself away a bit there.’ There is a pause; he looks slyly up at her, hands clasped behind his head, waiting for her to speak. ‘So what is it with you?’ he asks when she doesn’t. ‘You’re living here with some middle-aged battleaxe, you say you’re at college when you’re not, and you can make yourself disappear for days on end. What are you really doing here?’

She can’t blame him for the directness of the question, but it brings her back down to earth. She thinks of Nicholas, and feels sick. Adam’s face looks sad now, reflective, as he takes in her silence. The winter sun streaming through the window picks out his features and, more than before, she sees Nicholas’s strong brow imprinted on his, Nicholas’s lips softened into Adam’s. Just for a moment, the resemblance is so strong that she feels a surge of hatred for him, but almost as soon as it has come she forces herself to lock it back up in its box. It isn’t fair to blame him, or to assume that all the unpleasant qualities she knows his father has have been passed on down the generations with Adam’s birth, like gifts from a malevolent fairy godmother. She sighs and tucks her legs up under her chin, pulling her skirt down over her knees.

‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘I’m not at the university. I wish I was. The truth is that I had a bit of a falling out with my parents a month or so ago. I was at uni in Manchester, but I dropped out of my course – I wasn’t enjoying it, I don’t think it was really what I wanted to do – and they weren’t happy about it. It got to the point where I just needed to get away, so I came here – I always liked Oxford, and I thought I’d be able to get a job. I still might … I haven’t been looking very hard.’ She stops for breath, marvelling at how easily the words have come, without her even having to formulate a story in her head beforehand. Adam has straightened up on the bed, his dark brown eyes serious and sympathetic.

‘This falling out with your parents, is it bad?’ he asks.

Lydia weighs up the possibilities. She doesn’t want to be seen as a martyr, complete with a complicated family feud that she might well have to keep enhancing and adding to as the weeks go by. ‘Not really,’ she says carefully. ‘They understood that I needed some space. They expect that I’ll go back to studying eventually, and I’m sure I will. I think they think of this as more of a gap year.’

Adam nods, relieved; this is safer ground. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t just tell me in the first place,’ he says a little aggrievedly. ‘Did you think I only talk to Oxford girls?’

‘No, of course not,’ she says hurriedly. ‘But, you know, when we met … in the lecture theatre … it seemed the obvious thing to say. I know I shouldn’t really have been at that lecture, but I’m … I’m interested in literature.’ Again, Adam appears to accept this, half-truth as it is, without thinking it too strange. He visibly relaxes, obviously relieved at having solved the puzzle, and for the first time he shoots her a warm and genuine smile.

‘Well, I like a woman of mystery anyway,’ he says flirtatiously. ‘Look, I’m due at a tutorial in half an hour, so I’m going to have to go. But do you want to meet up tomorrow? I’m having a few people round for drinks in my room in the evening, about nine probably – nothing major, but if you want to come it would be good to see you. Again.’

‘Will—’ she begins, and then cuts herself short. She had been going to ask whether Isobel would be there, but realises it is none of her business. ‘Will you give me your number?’ she covers up. ‘Then perhaps I can call you tomorrow and we’ll see.’

‘Sure.’ She watches him cross to her dressing table and jot down the number on the edge of her notebook. From behind, he looks tall and imposing, a grown man already, and it makes her feel young and, briefly, inadequate. She shakes the thought off, going to join him.

‘Just one thing,’ she says, putting her hand hesitantly on the sleeve of his coat. ‘If I do come along tomorrow, I’d rather that nobody else knows my situation. I’d rather they thought I was at the university. It makes things easier,’ she finishes lamely. She knows it sounds foolish, and can’t really understand her reluctance herself for one lie to be replaced with another. Adam looks as if he might argue, then he nods.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘It’ll be our secret.’ The words please him, it seems. He’s standing very close to her, so close that his citrus-spiked aftershave prickles her nose. Very lightly, he puts one hand on the small of her back and the other to her cheek, two fleeting caresses that leave the parts he has touched tingling. Only two or three times before has she been this close to being kissed. On every occasion, the moment itself proved a letdown, a damp squib instead of an exploding rocket. She moves away from Adam and holds the door open for him. She won’t risk the disappointment again.

‘See you tomorrow,’ she says. ‘Maybe.’ He nods and brushes her arm briefly as he leaves. From her vantage point in the attic room, she watches him as he steps out on to the street, strolls down it with his hands in his pockets and then, restlessly, as if he can’t keep all his jolting and jumping nerves still, breaks into a brisk jog. She stays at the window until he has become little more than a bobbing shape on the horizon. Turning back into the room, she starts to remove the heads of the scarlet roses carefully one by one, discarding the dripping stems.

The next night Lydia stands in the porter’s lodge at Lincoln College, shivering in her thin coat. It’s raining again, and she has been sheltering in the lodge for almost quarter of an hour. When she arrived, she sent Adam a text message: ‘By the entrance to your college. I don’t know where your room is – come down and meet me if you like.’ She knows she should have called him, but when it came to it, she couldn’t face the possibility of hearing his voice turn distant and unfriendly, regretting the invitation. Cursing herself, she hugs her arms around her chest, shifting from foot to foot. This is ridiculous, but she can’t face turning round and going back out into the cold, hailing a taxi and spending another night alone with Sandra’s television blaring downstairs.

Suddenly she hears a commotion across the quad. Peering into the dark, she can just make out a figure running towards her, feet pounding wetly on stone. Part of her already knows, but it’s only when he passes under a solitary floodlight that she sees it is Adam. He runs into the lodge and envelops her in a sudden hug, crushing her against him. He’s brought the smell of the rain with him – damp grass and the faint, musty scent of earth. In the fuzzy half-light of the lodge, Lydia looks into his eyes and feels dizzy.

‘Sorry,’ he gasps, panting from his exertions. ‘I had some music on and didn’t hear my phone, I only just got your text. Have you been waiting ages?’

‘Not at all,’ she lies, smiling radiantly. ‘Am I late?’

‘Not at all,’ he says in turn. ‘Come with me.’

They run back across the quad together in the dark, hand in hand, her unreliable high heels slipping and sliding along the rain-washed stone. By the time they reach the other side her hair is soaked and plastered to her scalp. Laughing, she wrings it out as she hurries up the staircase after Adam. They climb several flights of stairs, each one winding closer and tighter than the last. He has an attic room too, she thinks, and feels stupidly pleased at the note of similarity. When they near the door she hears the music thumping behind it, and the shouts and screeches of laughter tumbling over each other from what sounds like a dozen or more voices. She freezes; she isn’t used to this. She had vaguely imagined a select group of Oxford students, sitting sedately around a bottle of wine and talking about literature, but this sounds more like a lunatic asylum. Adam sees her apprehension and grins, steering her towards the door.

‘Don’t worry, no one’s that pissed yet,’ he says. His words have the opposite effect of their calming intention on Lydia, who finds it hard to envisage the carnage that could come later. Numbly she allows herself to be shepherded through the door and into the bedroom. People are draped over the bed and chairs, lounging on the floor and perched on the windowsill. A couple are smoking a joint out of the window, deep in animated conversation. Others are bellowing along to the thrash metal track that is blaring from the stereo, so absorbed in it that they don’t even turn round. A couple of girls shout Adam’s name drunkenly, beaming red-lipsticked smiles and raising their arms to the air in delight. She recognises one of them as Carla, the Latin-looking girl in the club. As they approach Carla points at her and smiles again, her dark eyes half closing in recognition.

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