by Mel McGrath
‘She told me she got a first.’
‘I see,’ he says, his throat closing. He slides the paper from the desk and takes a cursory look to buy some time. He has no need to remind himself. The second year undergrad proof, a stochastic differential equation for a transcriptional regulatory network in saccharomyces cerevisiae, simple brewers’ yeast, and below it several lines of code enabling the calculation to be done from numerous different sample sets, both neatly typed and heavily annotated in red pen.
‘Are these Dr Ratner’s corrections?’ he asks, puzzled. Who corrects papers by hand these days?
‘No, they’re mine. You don’t have to look very hard to see that the maths is all wrong. So is the coding.’
Cullen scans the page, checking Nevis’s corrections, aware of her gaze on him. Yes, of course. That would seem contradictory and odd. He imagines Nevis taking the paper to Ratner or even to Keane or Madeleine Ince, the same innocent, wide-eyed enquiry on her face. No, that won’t do. Something in his head resolves and clarifies. He takes a few deep breaths and reminds himself that he is the Dean.
‘Oh that’s right, I remember now, she was having trouble with a few of the concepts. I gave her a couple of review sessions.’ Handing back the paper, he says, ‘Evidently this is an early draft. I do recall handing a batch of papers to Dr Ratner, so I expect the final draft was among that batch. Gosh, well spotted!’
He watches her soften. She is thinking, applying logic, weighing up the probability of his explanation.
‘Don’t worry about it. Easy mistake to make,’ he smiles, reassuringly. ‘But if you’re concerned, why don’t I call Dr Ratner now and ask him to confirm.’
‘It’s all right,’ she says.
‘Good then,’ he says, checking his watch and standing to show her out. He feels recklessly exuberant now, almost grateful. Out of the woods, though perhaps not yet the forest. He’ll have to continue to keep an eye. She’s clever this one, and unlike most nineteen year olds, methodical. Patiently exacting. ‘You know what?’ Her head snaps up at the question. ‘You already have my work mobile. I’m going to give you my new personal mobile number. Just in case you need to speak to me. About anything. Day or night.’ He watches a delicate, girlish smile appear on her face. ‘How’s that?’
Chapter 26
Cullen
Cullen is just finishing Veronica’s dinner of langoustines when the doorbell rings.
‘Oh blow,’ Veronica says. ‘I was hoping that we could spend the rest of the evening getting frisky. Whoever it is, can’t you get rid of them?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Cullen says, praying not to find the goon at the door wanting money. He’d managed to stave him off with his last few hundred but it was only a matter of time before he’d be back again. At least now, finally, he has a plan.
He moves into the hallway and sees a slender shadow through the etched glass. A woman? He checks his watch. Late.
His heart falls at the sight of the Vice Chancellor, Madeleine Ince.
‘Chris, I’m sorry it’s so late, I’ve just come from some awful fundraiser dinner. Can I have a word or two?’
‘Of course. Please come in,’ he says, graciously, waving her into the living room. A remarkably attractive woman, he thinks, even now. Maddy had loved him more than he’d loved her all those years ago when they were involved, before either of them ever came to Avon. But he sometimes wonders what it would have been like to have married Maddy rather than Veronica.
‘I’ll just tell Veronica you’re here,’ he says. ‘Can I get you a coffee? Glass of wine?’
‘A whisky if you have any.’
‘Of course,’ he says. Another point in Maddy’s favour. Veronica only ever drinks wine.
Leaving her sitting on the sofa, he hurries back into the kitchen.
Veronica is not happy about the visitor. ‘Oh God, can’t you tell her you’ll see her in the morning?’
‘No. She’s my boss in case you’d forgotten.’ He’s never told Veronica that he and Madeleine had a thing together. She wouldn’t like it, not through any sense of jealousy or possessiveness, but for the simple fact that Maddy is now his boss and Veronica is a traditionalist, in this respect as in many others.
They walk back down the hallway together, Cullen carrying a little tray on which is balanced a small ice bucket and a jug of water.
‘Madeleine, what a pleasure,’ Veronica says, clasping her hands around the Vice Chancellor’s.
‘I’m sorry it’s so late, Veronica. I’ll try not to keep Christopher long.’
‘Nonsense, Madeleine,’ Veronica says, a little too brightly. ‘Stay as long as you like. I’ve got the clearing up to do anyway.’
Cullen waits and feels his diaphragm move once more.
‘What’s going on, Maddy?’ he says, with his back to her. He takes out two highball glasses and a special occasion bottle of Macallan from the mahogany cupboard, then opens the drawer beneath, looking for the silver stirrer, his eyes alighting instead on his mother’s diamond and gold bracelet, which he’d lifted from behind a bank of lacy handkerchiefs in her bedside table earlier that evening, while she was quietly sleeping. The bracelet was an heirloom from Amanda’s mother but needs must. Making an early claim on his inheritance is all it is. God knows, he’s earned it. In the unlikely event that Amanda even misses it, he can always float the theory that someone in the home must have been responsible. One of the carers, perhaps, or another resident. But he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
Pouring a finger of Macallan into one of the glasses and four fingers into the other, he drops into each glass two cubes of ice and, rebuilding his best smile, turns back into the room, bracing himself for whatever Maddy has to say.
‘I got a rather worrying call from Lea earlier,’ she says, taking the proffered glass. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware that her daughter, Jackie, works as a paramedic at the Royal Infirmary?’ Oh bloody hell, thinks Cullen.
Her eyes flash to the door and her manner suddenly softens and for an instant he’s persuaded that she’s the Maddy who still carries a torch, the Maddy he can twist around his little finger. ‘Chris, what is happening to you?’
‘In what sense?’ he says.
‘In the sense that you apparently showed up at the infirmary at some ungodly hour last night, six sheets to the wind and demanding to see Satnam Mann.’
‘Ungodly? It wasn’t even ten.’
She fixes him with an even look that sends a shudder through him. ‘Is that your best get-around? Or is there a better one coming down the pipe?’
‘She’s been on my mind, obviously.’ He checks the door. God please don’t let Veronica come in, not now.
‘She’s been on everyone’s mind.’
‘I was under the impression that her parents had requested a visit from a representative at the university. I undertook that task. It was Lea who asked me if I wouldn’t mind.’ A day ago, an hour, a minute even, he felt nothing for Lea but a healthy contempt. If you’d asked him yesterday, he would have said he would rejoice if she got the sack. Now, he’d quite cheerfully bury the bitch alive.
‘Late at night? From someone who gave every impression of being drunk?’
‘I wasn’t drunk.’
‘It was reported that you smelled of alcohol.’
‘Godssakes, Maddy, a man can have a glass of wine with his supper, can’t he?’
Ignoring him, Madeleine goes on, ‘Because, if alcohol is the culprit, there’s help out there. You’d have to step down from your role as Dean and take a sabbatical, but we’ll do everything we can to support you. I doubt I could swing full pay, though.’
‘We?’ he says.
‘The University. The Board of Governors. You know how highly they think of you and I have always, always supported you…’ she tails off.
He feels himself stiffen. ‘I suppose the Board of Governors knows how lucky they are to have me. Second most cited pure mathematics PhD of 2003. They remember that when it
suits them.’
‘Really, Chris, there’s no need for this. You’re talking to me, Maddy, not the Vice Chancellor now.’
‘Don’t bring ancient history into this, it’s unbecoming. In any case, I haven’t got a drinking problem so this discussion isn’t going anywhere.’
Madeleine stands. ‘Perhaps we should continue this tomorrow after all.’
He feels himself going to the door, blocking her way. ‘Oh no you don’t. You came here to say something, so say it! Spit it out! I’m losing it, is that it? I’m a mess. My behaviour is inappropriate. God help any of us if we dare to be inappropriate.’
‘I think it’s best if I go now, Chris.’
‘Oh no, no, no. Not before you’ve got it all off your chest. Which, by the way, I always considered very disappointing. My friends used to call you Maddy Flatty.’ His voice comes back to him as a series of sludgy, strangulated sounds, like a recording played at the wrong speed. He thinks, what the hell am I doing?
Madeleine is ice cold. ‘Now you’re just embarrassing yourself.’
Yes, he thinks, I am in the process of making what will possibly become the second biggest mistake of my life. Pull yourself together, Cullen, Maddy is your ally. He steels himself and in a single breath, says, ‘Oh God, that was an unforgivably stupid thing to say, absolutely idiotic. I apologise unreservedly.’
‘Hmm.’ Madeleine eyes him askance. ‘Very well then,’ she says eventually, sitting back down.
He reaches for her hands but stops himself mid-air. He knows her well enough to understand that any attempt at coming closer will be rebuffed. There will be some kind of retaliation for his earlier remark. He lowers his voice to a whisper, ‘Between you and me Veronica is driving me nuts with this pregnancy obsession.’
Her voice comes back at him at a perfectly modulated hiss. ‘You have always been able to count on me, and you can count on me now, but if you put my position on the line, Christopher, you will find that my loyalty is volatile. Put it under enough pressure and it will evaporate.’
‘Listen, Maddy,’ he says imploringly, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Veronica and I had a tiny disagreement. I took off in my car to cool down and found myself at the infirmary. It was a spur of the moment thing, a misjudgement I see now.’
‘Just don’t push it,’ she says, stepping through the door. In the hallway, she stops and turns. ‘Odd, you recounting tales of friends, Christopher, because I don’t recall you having any.’ At the front door she says, ‘Give my regards to Veronica.’
Once he’s seen her out, he leans his back on the door, shuts his eyes and does his best to steady himself. Quit drinking and stop making such a bloody mess of everything! Come on, Cullen, get yourself together. There’ll be a solution to this, to all of it.
Moments later, Veronica reappears from the kitchen wearing a quizzical expression.
‘What’s wrong? Why have you got your face in your hands?’
He jerks upright and stiffens his spine.
‘Nothing. Just tired I suppose.’
He watches her approach him with what she hopes is a seductive swing of the hips. ‘Not too tired to muster those troops, I hope, darling?’
He fixes his face into a semblance of a smile, and thinks, When in God’s name will this all end?
Chapter 27
Nevis
Nevis opens her eyes. It takes a moment for her consciousness to catch up, leaving her blinking into the darkened room as that part of her rises as if from the ocean bed, fighting its own weightedness, coming to the surface in spite of itself. She’d been in the middle of a dream which has already escaped though she’s aware that it featured kingfishers and that they had been nesting so it must have been around Easter time. Her mind shoots back to an evening a few years ago. Easter was late that year and there were still a few days to go before the end of the school term. She blinks, the dream replaced by the memory. Her mind brings up the date. 27th March, a Tuesday, Nevis was sixteen. Honor had been out at a London Boaters meeting, which was unusual because Honor never went anywhere. She’d promised to be back by eight but had texted to say everyone going on to the pub afterwards and would Nevis mind if she went too? Nevis did not mind. So long as she was on the water she did not feel alone.
It was late when Honor finally pitched up, maybe just after midnight, and the canal was shrouded in that deep lonely dark that, in London, was unique. Nevis had woken to a cry and gone out to discover her mother, four sheets to the wind, fumbling around in the cratch for the hatch keys.
‘Ssshoory to wake you.’
Nevis let her mother in and saw to it that she got down the steps into the saloon safely since whatever she’d drunk had gone to her legs, which wobbled about like a colt’s. Assuming her mother would want to go directly to bed, Nevis directed her towards her room, but Honor wanted to sit up a while and watch the water so Nevis helped her to her armchair in front of the dying embers in the wood burner, laid a blanket over her lap, and went over to the kettle to make her a cup of chamomile tea. By the time she returned with the tea, only a matter of minutes later, Honor was asleep but she woke with a start when Nevis laid a finger on her arm.
‘Let’s get you to bed.’
Her mother peered at her through glassy eyes and Nevis saw her lips open with the beginnings of a smile. Then in a voice still cracked with sleep Honor said, ‘Zoe? Is that you?’
The pain was as shocking as a knife to the heart. Her own mother, at least the only mother she ever knew, mistaking her for a dead woman, the ghost in whose shadow Nevis had always lived, always knowing that not a day went by when Honor didn’t wish for Zoe’s company. Nevis wanted to say, it’s me, the stand-in, the understudy, the placeholder, the body double, the fraud, but no words came. Instead, she watched as reality hit and tears began to spiral down Honor’s cheeks.
‘Nevis, darling, of course it’s you!’
And then the words came out in a rush, tumbling over one another, and she heard herself say, ‘But you wish it wasn’t, don’t you? You’ve always wished it wasn’t.’
Time seemed to stand still. Nevis saw Honor’s eyes widen into dark pools and her shoulders begin to shake and covering her face with her hands, in a voice that seemed to come up from the depths of the canal itself, she said, ‘Never, ever say that again,’ and Nevis knew she had gone too far, that she had touched a nerve so tender and raw that to touch it again would break them apart.
Over the days that followed Honor back-pedalled and apologised and begged for forgiveness, but the knife she had thrown had stuck, and still awaited the arrival of some force strong enough to remove it. No such force appeared and the discovery of the letter in the book of Greek myths a few years later only dug the knife in deeper. Her heart still felt so heavy that she sometimes thought the only reason she was still alive was that the blade had staunched the bleeding.
Awake now and heart thumping from the memory, Nevis sits up and, groping for her phone on the bedside table, glances at the time. 2.40 a.m. Hears a doorbell ringing, realises that it’s hers. Who is at the door at this hour? Drunks? She takes a deep breath. Early morning jitters, her mind still part stuck. Ignore whoever it is and go back to sleep. A moment later the buzz comes again and this time, as she throws off the duvet, she sees her phone silently flashing a new call. She sits up and does her best to quell her pulse. It’s fine, just sit here a moment until you can think straight.
Another buzz. The phone lighting up with another call. You must go, she tells herself, because whatever it is, it is already happening, the equation has already been written, the parameters set. She gets up, unlocks her bedroom door and stands in the hallway adjusting to the dim light coming in from the window in the living room where she forgot to draw the curtains. Still half asleep she shuffles to the video entry and presses the link button. Nothing. Just the thin light in the entryway.
‘Hello?’
A face appears but so distorted she can hardly tell who or what it is. The voic
e is like a vixen wailing for a mate.
‘Let me in.’
Nevis presses the green entry button and moments later the door slams shut and there comes the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She goes to the door and opens it. A figure bolts into the hallway and bends over to catch her breath, resting her hands on her thighs, her chest heaving.
Tash.
Nevis slides the door chain into its keeper, acutely aware of the adrenaline prickling her skin. Tash is speaking but the words spew between great gulps of air and Nevis cannot understand what she is saying. She feels the cold shock of spit spray landing on her cheeks then hears another voice, her own this time, shouting, ‘Not Satnam, not Satnam!’ Her hands have come up over her ears, trying to block the sound. There is a death and she cannot bear it.
‘What are you talking about?’ Tash’s eyes as wide as saucers, not comprehending, her grip on Nevis’s arm so hard now that the pain has broken through the panic.
‘Satnam is gone!’
‘No, no, it’s not Satnam, it’s Jessica. Jessica has thrown herself off the bridge.’
Chapter 28
Cullen
He’d woken with a hangover. At breakfast Veronica again asked him what Madeleine Ince had wanted from him so urgently last night. He repeated what he’d already said, that there had been an ongoing security issue following the break-in. The fact that she’d asked twice suggested she didn’t believe him, but she’d decided not to pursue it, which was really all that mattered. Maddy had fired a shot across his bows but he was reassured that, so long as he behaved himself, she would help escort him through the current rough waters. There was no one better to have on his side.
The arrangement meant he could, at least temporarily, turn to other, very pressing matters, namely the getting of hard cash. The thug awaited payment, his visits to the house a clear threat. Cullen had managed to allay Veronica’s fears for now, but even Veronica wouldn’t swallow the broadband story for long. Maddy’s support has at least bought him some time. Leaving the house shortly after breakfast he gets in his Volvo and drives through Clifton past the infirmary and Broadmead towards Temple Meads station until, reaching Lawrence Hill, he checks along the road for a parking space, slows into second gear and flips the indicator to signal left. In the eight years he’s lived in Bristol he’s never been here, though it’s only four miles from Clifton. Not his kind of place. Everything is smaller and meaner, from the shops and pavements to the spaces for the cars.