It had been ten years and she could still remember everything about him. She had a sudden memory of him explaining his final year project to her; the way his voice came alive when he talked about his work. It was that passion that got him the PhD offer that took him to Canada. That passion would still be there. Unless he’d changed. She looked around at her cramped office, with its board covered in deadlines and proposals. You didn’t stay in academia if you didn’t love your topic. That passion was the only thing that made it worthwhile putting up with the rest of the crap.
It was 18.59 now. She reread the email she’d just drafted. Oh no. That would never do. She tried again, but her thoughts kept escaping and running back to a time when she was nineteen and stupid enough to fall in love. 19.01. Oh dammit. She had to know.
Chaya’s footsteps echoed in the corridors of the Geology department. Everything seemed bigger and slightly eerie in the night-time lighting. The lecture had started fifteen minutes ago, so there was no one outside the lecture hall. She opened the door to the back of the lecture theatre and slipped in.
The lights were down. A video was playing. Colours moved across a map. Chaya took a seat at the back, in the seat with the worst view when the place was full. There wasn’t a huge crowd now, though. There never was, despite the millions of emails that were sent out urging staff and students to attend lectures. That said, this turnout was respectable. Noah must be well known in his field. Of course, he would be. He was clever, her Noah.
She caught her train of thought just in time. He wasn’t her Noah. He wasn’t her anything. He was a guy that she used to know. Nothing more.
The video came to an end and the lights went back up. And there he was. He still had red-blond hair, cropped shorter now. Even from this distance, he looked a little older. The young face had firmed up, losing the softness that she’d never noticed back then. Protective walls she’d built around her heart cracked. She missed him, in spite of everything she told herself.
Coming to this had been a huge mistake. She wanted to leave, but she couldn’t move. She watched him, suddenly too tired to pay attention to the words. He waved his arms around when he talked, in that way of his. He leaned forward towards the audience when he had a point to make. Each familiar gesture was a hammer blow to the walls that kept her feelings safe.
When the lecture came to an end, people asked questions. Noah answered them, self-assured as always. He made a joke, his voice lifting with a little laugh at the end. The sound was so familiar, so beloved, it stopped her breathing for a second.
People started to file out. Chaya knew she had to move, but she didn’t. The crowd thinned. If she didn’t leave now, he would spot her, lurking in the back. So she stood up. As she moved away from her seat she looked up. He was looking straight at her.
He frowned. ‘Chaya?’
Trapped, she stopped and gave him a tiny wave.
‘It is you,’ he said. ‘Hi.’ He took a few steps towards her. His colleagues… no, his hosts, her colleagues, were looking at them curiously. She couldn’t sneak out now, so she descended the steps to the front of the lecture theatre.
‘Hi Noah.’
It was surreal, seeing him again. Chaya felt light-headed. She put a hand on one of the seat backs to steady herself.
‘Er… Chaya and I knew each other at uni,’ Noah said. He didn’t meet her eyes when he said it. ‘Knew each other’ was probably the understatement of the century.
Chaya managed a smile. ‘It’s been… a long time,’ she said. ‘How are you?’ Her voice sounded stiff and strange.
‘I’m good,’ he said, smiling warmly. ‘How are you? You look great.’ The tips of his ears started to turn pink.
She pulled herself together and tried to remain professional. She wanted to touch him, check he was real. She put her free hand in her pocket. ‘I enjoyed your lecture,’ she said. ‘Very interesting.’
‘And you work here, I take it?’ he said. ‘Still doing biochemistry?’
The door by the stage opened. A tall, beautiful woman came through, holding the hand of a little boy. It was clearly a late night for the kid, who stifled a yawn and leaned against his mother’s side. Noah spotted them.
‘Oh, hello darling.’ He stepped towards her, away from Chaya. ‘Er… Kath, this is Chaya, an old friend. Chaya, this is my wife Katherine and my son, Alex.’
Katherine smiled at her. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, polite, but clearly not interested. ‘Noah, I’m going to take Alex back to the hotel. We’ll see you later?’ She sounded American … no, not quite. Canadian? Well spoken and well groomed, she was exactly the sort of person Noah’s diplomat attaché parents would have wanted him to be with. Much more acceptable than Chaya would ever have been.
Noah said, ‘I’m going to dinner with some people from the department. I shouldn’t be too late getting back.’ He knelt down in front of the boy. ‘How was the show?’
‘It was great,’ said the boy. ‘Loud.’
‘Tell me all about it tomorrow.’ He kissed the boy on the head and stood up. ‘See you later.’ He kissed the wife too, a quick peck on the lips.
Chaya looked away. The others from the Geology department were shifting impatiently. ‘I’d better get going too,’ she said. ‘It was good to see you again, Noah.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We should get back in touch. Catch up.’ He sounded sincere. Clearly he had moved on and relegated his memories of her to somewhere where they didn’t hurt. He held out his hand to shake hers.
She couldn’t touch him. It would be too much to bear. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later.’ She flashed what she hoped was a convincing smile and turned and fled.
She practically ran back to her office. There was a fist in her chest, a tight knot behind her sternum that was making it hard to breathe. She made it to her own department building before the pain hit. He had moved on. Of course he was married. Of course he’d changed. She walked along the empty corridor, head down, breathing fast. He had been pleased to see her. That just showed how far he’d moved on. She had thought that somehow he’d remained frozen in time as that boy who loved her. Of course he hadn’t. Stupid, stupid Chaya.
The building seemed to lean in, darkening the edges of her vision. Her heart galloped and she could hear the blood roaring around her head. She put her hand on the wall next to her, fighting for breath. She was hot, then cold, in waves. The first time this happened, she’d thought she was going to die. Now she knew it would pass. She had to ride it out. Here in the deserted corridors of her work was as safe a place to be as any.
When it finally passed, she felt weak from the exertion. She pushed herself away from the wall. The worst of the panic attack was over, but the despair was not.
Breathe, breathe. She had to get back to the lab, away from the world. Don’t stand there, move. Get it together Chaya. Go.
Instead of taking the lift, she took the stairs, forcing her legs to move. If she stopped, she might just fold over on the stairs and stay there. She had to keep moving. Her thighs started to burn. By the time she reached her floor, blood was pounding in her ears, and her throat and torso were a mass of pain again. Only this time, she was in control of it. She stopped at the lab door and leaned forward, her hands on her knees, breathing hard as the physical pain drowned out the emotional one.
When her pulse finally slowed and she could bear to breathe, she realised she was sweating underneath her winter clothing. She went into the office and shed some layers, then down to the toilets to splash her face with cold water. She dried her face using a scratchy paper towel and checked herself in the mirror. Under the harsh light, her face was pale under the brown, with hints of red where she’d rubbed it. Her hands trembled. She went back into her office and sat down, tucking her hands under her thighs until they stopped shaking.
Really, this couldn’t go on. She really needed to get over it. Until recently, her work had been enough to keep her mind off the hollow left by Noah, but lately, it wasn’t
enough. Perhaps it was time to let someone else into her life. Someone to distract her and keep her busy. Perhaps she should get her parents to find her a husband, like they were always suggesting. She sighed again and went back up to the lab.
The lab was dark, lit only by the lights from the city outside. Machinery hummed, clicked and whirred; various control lights and displays winked. Chaya breathed in the familiar smells of agar, bacteria and chemicals. The tension in her shoulders dissolved a little. Regardless of whether the place was full of chatter and music, as it was during the week, or deserted as it was now, the lab soothed her. There was always something that needed to be done, something to claim her attention. It was more home to her than the bedsit was. If she were allowed to sleep here, she would.
Chaya flicked on the light switch. One by one, fluorescent strip lights came on, bathing everything in clinical white light. She shared the lab with another small research group – the space divided up, with the shared equipment in the middle. Her bench was the one at the far end of the room, the unsociable one that no one else wanted. Traditionally, it went to the most junior member of the lab, but Chaya preferred it. It gave her a secluded workspace. She could watch the movements and interactions of the rest of the lab from behind her palisade of reagent bottles, but the others couldn’t see her unless they came round to her bay. She could interact with them when she had the energy or hide when she didn’t.
Her lab coat was folded up on her stool, as always. She pulled it on and buttoned up. Without really looking, she grabbed a pair of fresh latex gloves with one hand, and flipped her lab diary open with the other. She always left herself a note on what to do next. Not that she needed reminding, it was just good practice.
Pulling on her gloves she read. ‘Gels.’ She nodded to herself.
Her lab technician had offered to leave her some ready-poured gels, but Chaya preferred to make things up fresh as she went along. Whilst the gel was setting, she prepared her samples. Her hands and eyes moved mechanically, measuring, pouring, pipetting, which left her mind free to wander.
Seeing Noah had been a shock. He seemed so normal. So settled. He had done exactly what he’d hoped to do. Unlike her.
Despite her initial ambition to work in the field of tropical medicine, she had ended up working on non-pathogenic bacteria instead. At the moment she was working on making recombinant proteins that she hoped would one day be useful in disease prevention.
She was still firmly an ‘early career’ academic. She was doing okay, but her attempts to progress hadn’t exactly been a huge success. She had no social life to speak of, partly because she was always working, but also because all her friends were married and had kids now. Before the kids arrived, her friends Sara and Jay had let her tag along and hang out with them from time to time, but now that rarely happened. She made a note to call Sara to catch up. She could offer to do some babysitting.
She double checked her notes and set her pipette to the correct volume. She thought fleetingly of Noah’s wife. How glamorous she looked! Perhaps she needed to rethink her own life a bit. All the dedication to her work was great, but maybe she needed to get out there a bit more. Go to more conferences, give more lectures about her work. Make an impression. Maybe that would help.
She could try and change her image. She wasn’t getting any younger. Looking after herself a bit would probably make her look less like an oddball and more like professor material. Academia, as with everything, was about more than being good at your job.
Chaya smiled a thin smile. She was managing to talk herself into dramatic changes. The last time she’d done that, she’d broken herself. No. Thinking about that was not allowed. Not now, not ever. She shouldn’t have gone to see Noah. It was a ridiculous thing to have done. She didn’t have time to think about what might have been. She had work to do here.
She gave each of her samples a flick to mix the dye in, followed by a quick spin in the centrifuge to get them all to the bottom of the Eppendorf tubes, ready to be pipetted out.
A gentle shake showed that the gel was set and ready to load. She put it in the machine. Getting the tiny volume into the equally tiny well required Chaya to hold her perpetually moving hands still for seconds at a time. Each sample was the culmination of three or four days’ work. Wastage was not permissible. Chaya bit her lower lip and concentrated, hands moving in concert. Gently, smoothly, keep steady. Pick up sample. Load. Pick up. Load.
Once her hands found their rhythm, her mind wandered again, skirting neatly round the issue of Noah and staying on this new idea of starting afresh. She had lost the knack of interacting with people. In the beginning, the effort of keeping up the appearance of normality and stamping down the panic was so great, that she’d tried to get through the day talking to as few people as she could manage. Over the years, this had become habit and she had retreated further and further into her work. She was careful not to be rude or unpleasant, just always busy. Too busy to go out. The others in the lab had stopped expecting her to go to anything social now.
She would have to brush up on her social skills; almost reinvent herself. Why not? She already did a good job of persuading people she was fine. All she needed to do was persuade them that she was enjoying herself as well. How hard could that be?
She loaded the last sample, put the lid carefully into place and set the gel running. It would run slowly overnight, stretching out the blue samples into their constituent parts so that by morning, the jumbled mess would be converted into beautiful clarity.
Chaya nodded to herself. Yes. Reinventing herself a bit felt like a positive thing to do. She glanced at the clock. But first, she had to respond to that email and revise her grant application.
Chapter Four
Chaya –Train to Oxford, 1995
The train drew away from the station and Chaya waved to the aunty who had come to drop her off. The aunty and her husband were her father’s friends. Chaya stayed with them when college shut down for the Christmas holidays. It was unusual for her to go and visit them in term time, but after weeks of struggling, she’d let slip that she wasn’t sleeping very well and her mother had insisted she take a break.
She had tried to relax, honestly, she had, but with an essay due on Monday and a practical write-up due the day after, she’d had to do some work, despite aunty’s tutting. At least she was now extremely well fed.
Chaya settled back in her seat and closed her eyes. She seemed to permanently be in crisis mode these days. This was her second year and it was meant to be easier, but there was so much information being fired at her on a daily basis, she had to work constantly, just to keep up. At least she’d got the essay done. She opened her eyes again and picked up her bag. She should really read through it. She’d have to defend what she’d said when it came to tutorial time.
When she stuck her hand in the bag, her fingertips brushed the second-hand copy of Little Women that she’d optimistically packed, but not opened the whole weekend. Maybe she could read a bit. After all, her essay was done. Besides, she was travelling. Being in transit was a magical time when she wasn’t fully tied to a place and the obligations that belonged there. She carefully pulled the book out of her bag and removed the bookmark. Just a few pages.
When the train pulled into Birmingham New Street, Chaya looked up. It was raining. The train felt stuffy and smelled of wet coats, so it must have been raining for some time. Chaya shrugged and returned to her book where Beth was dying. She fell into the heartbreak of the March sisters. She forgot about the real world and read on, blinking every now and then to clear the tears.
‘Excuse me?’
The voice made her jump. She looked up. A guy about her age, with hair plastered to his forehead from the rain, was standing by the empty seat next to her, his backpack hovering over it. ‘Is this seat taken?’
She shook her head. A tear inconveniently detached itself from her eye and ran down her cheek.
The guy gave her a concerned look. He dropped into the seat
. ‘Are you alright?’ he asked.
She wiped away the tear. ‘Sorry. Yes, I’m fine. Just…’ She gestured to the book. ‘I just got to the sad bit.’
He smiled. ‘Oh, right. That’s okay then. I thought maybe I’d dripped on you.’
She gave him a small smile and opened the book again. He shuffled around, taking off his wet coat. The seats weren’t exactly roomy and the shuffling was hard to ignore. She tried to shift away. The sleeve of the wet coat escaped from his grasp and smacked against her book.
‘Oh no. I’m so sorry. Is the book okay?’
He looked genuinely worried. He stuffed his rolled-up coat down at his feet. ‘I’m really sorry. If it’s ruined, I’ll buy you a new copy.’
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘It’s a second-hand copy anyway.’
He nodded. ‘A book that’s been loved.’
What an odd thing to say. She looked at him properly then. He had reddish blond hair that was too long, blue eyes and freckles. He met her gaze and smiled. It was a smile that transformed him from nondescript, to someone enchanting. She couldn’t help smiling back.
He offered her his hand to shake. ‘I’m Noah,’ he said.
She shouldn’t talk to strangers. This was such a basic tenet of life. Anyway, people didn’t talk to each other on trains. Never. So she wasn’t sure what made her say ‘I’m Chaya,’ and shake his hand. She wasn’t sure why she answered his next question and got into a conversation. She wasn’t even sure when exactly she put the book down on her lap and forgot about it. It was a snap decision made almost subconsciously.
It was a decision that would change everything.
* * *
Reality reasserted itself when they arrived in Oxford and Noah offered to walk her to her shared house. It wasn’t dark and there was no reason to accept his offer, really. She should say no. She didn’t really know this guy, even though they’d spent two hours chatting about all manner of things. She knew he was reading Geology and that he was in the year above her. She knew which college he was in, which TV shows he watched and that he considered Jo’s Boys to be a superior book to Little Women and was astounded that she hadn’t read the full set. But really, she didn’t know anything useful about him. So she should politely say no.
A Convenient Marriage Page 2