Scandalous

by Tilly Bagshawe

  It was delivered as a joke, but the hostility beneath Tom Dean’s yellow smile was transparent.

  “She’ll be joining me in a few weeks,” said Theo smoothly, “once the children start spring break. We don’t want to unsettle them more than we have to. Not until we’re sure we’re moving here permanently.”

  “Nonsense.” Anthony Greville tottered over. Christ, he looks old, thought Theo, like he might drop dead any minute. “Of course you’re moving here permanently. The whole college supports you, isn’t that right, Johnny?”

  Another frail, elderly man had joined the group by the fire. It took Theo a moment to recognize him as Jonathan Cavendish, head of history and one of his bêtes noirs from the old days.

  “Hmm?” Johnny tapped his hearing aid. “Oh, yes, yes, jolly good.”

  The Johnny Cavendish Theo remembered was a booming Friar Tuck of a man, hugely fat, drinking and smoking himself to an early grave. Or so Theo had thought. How on earth did he make old bones?

  “Not the whole college, Anthony. You really must try not to be so sweeping.”

  Theo looked up. Now that was more like it. A very attractive blonde woman in her early thirties was helping herself to a canapé from the tray next to him. She wore a subtly clinging gray jersey dress with black tights and boots, and she positively radiated disapproval.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met.” Theo stood up and offered her his hand. “Theo Dexter.”

  “Georgia Frobisher,” said the blonde, shaking hands stiffly. “And we have met, as it happens. Many years ago. I was an undergraduate here when you were teaching.”

  “I don’t think so.” Theo looked at her meaningfully, giving her the benefit of his practiced Hollywood smolder. “I wouldn’t have forgotten a face like yours.”

  The blonde’s look of disapproval intensified. “You didn’t teach me. You taught a friend of mine. Sasha Miller.”

  The smile melted on Theo’s face. “Oh.”

  “Professor Frobisher is our director of studies for architecture,” said Anthony Greville, without enthusiasm. “Our resident feminist, aren’t you Georgia?”

  “Fuck off, Master,” said Georgia robustly, helping herself to two more smoked salmon blinis before walking away.

  Theo raised an eyebrow. You wouldn’t have got away with insubordination like that in his day. When I’m master, she’ll be the first to go.

  The elections were in three weeks’ time. Three weeks in which Theo intended to make the most of Dita’s absence and enjoy all that Cambridge had to offer. She’d agreed to make at least one trip over, to help him campaign, but it shouldn’t be for more than a few days. He wondered how hard it would be to seduce the prickly Professor Frobisher before then. Fucking her and firing her would be double the thrill. But perhaps he should make life easy on himself and stick with pretty undergraduates instead? That was like shooting fish in a barrel—all the satisfaction but none of the challenge.

  He was thinking wistfully about a redhead he’d seen walking across Second Court only this morning when he realized he was being spoken to.

  “…reach our fund-raising targets. I’d like to carve out some time with you if I may. There are a number of urgent projects we need to prioritize…”

  Dominic Lawless, the college bursar, was as dull an accountant as one could ever hope to meet. Theo struggled to focus on his monotonous drone as he driveled on about interest rates and alumni donors.

  “Of course, Dom. That’s a priority for me, too.”

  Theo was well aware that his support base for the mastership was founded on a belief that he was wildly wealthy, with access to mythical, limitless amounts of cash, cash that he would be happy to channel into St. Michael’s College coffers. Had any of the fellows seen Dita’s latest livid-red credit card statement, not to mention the lawsuits pending against Theo’s production company for a web of unpaid loans, their enthusiasm for his candidacy might well evaporate.

  For the next month Theo would have to walk a tightrope, hinting at money and connections while keeping his specific promises vague. Then, after he was master, he would gently lower expectations. After all, it wasn’t as if he were broke or anything, and he could raise St. Michael’s profile, something that the other candidates, including poor old Theresa, had no hope of doing. Hugh Mullaney-Stoop from Robinson was grayer than a misty morning in Scotland, the sort of man who faded into a crowd even when there was no one else in the room. Graham North was an engineer, which everyone knew was code for “socially inadequate.” He could barely make eye contact, never mind raise money. Andrew Gray, the other St. Michael’s fellow who’d been in the running, had pulled his name out once he heard Theo had applied for the job. It was fair to say they weren’t exactly awash with options. Theo had come back to Cambridge to save money, not spend it. Poor Dom was in for a shock.

  “This week I’m completely snowed, as you can imagine,” he said soothingly. “But maybe we can sit down next week. Get a handle on the big picture?”

  “Sure, sure, absolutely.” Dom nodded like a dashboard dog.

  Theo was used to obsequiousness. The world of television was full of yes-men. But it wasn’t the same as being kowtowed to by one’s intellectual equals. He had missed Cambridge more than he realized. It was good to be back.

  Theresa pushed her cart down the frozen food aisle at Waitrose, trying to think of anything she was allowed to eat that didn’t make her feel nauseous. It wasn’t easy, partly because her obstetrician had given her a printout as long as her arm about avoiding mercury, vitamin A, uncooked this and overcooked that, and partly because most days even the thought of food made her sick as a dog. All the advice on pregnancy seemed contradictory. Keep active but don’t overexercise. Eat fish, but avoid mercury. Eggs are good, but easy on the cholesterol. It’s a wonder anyone ever had a healthy baby with this minefield to navigate. Never mind actually held down a job.

  Listlessly picking up a four-cheese pizza, trying to remember which cheese she was allowed and which, according to the scaremongering leaflets at the doctor’s office, was the equivalent of feeding the baby arsenic, she became aware of a group of undergraduates staring at her. Inevitably, the battle between Theo Dexter and his ex-wife for the mastership of St. Michael’s had become the hot topic in Varsity, the student newspaper. Theresa was aware she was the underdog. If she were honest, she was aware she had already lost. But Sasha Miller’s arrival in Cambridge in particular had strengthened her resolve not to give up without a fight. Since their first bizarre meeting, when Sasha had shown up on the doorstep at Willow Tree Cottage, the two women had formed an unlikely but blossoming friendship. Sasha was staying at the University Arms hotel and seemed to spend most of her days holed up in mysterious meetings with developers, city councilmen, and a slew of local politicians. Quite how this was supposed to help get Theo out of Cambridge, Theresa had no idea, but Sasha’s quiet confidence was contagious.

  Of course, Sasha didn’t know about the baby. Apart from Theresa’s doctors, the only soul on earth she had told was Jenny Aubrieau, and even Jenny had had to swear that she would keep it from JP. “I haven’t told the father yet.” Theresa blushed. She was sure Jenny must know that Horatio was the dad, but she didn’t want to confirm it, not until he knew himself. “And he should really be the first to know.”

  “So tell him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Theresa had used the mastership race as her excuse. She wanted to keep the pregnancy a secret until elections were over. While this was true, it conveniently saved her from having to admit the real reason for keeping quiet. Once Horatio knew, he would want to be involved. Not just want. He would insist. He would want them to be together, and Theresa knew she couldn’t do that, she couldn’t give him what he wanted. Just thinking about it made her heart ache and her hormone-overloaded body push her to tears.

  Wantonly throwing the pizza into her trolley without resolving the cheese issue—every trip to Waitrose felt like Russ
ian roulette!—she pushed around the corner away from the gawking students. Pulling her baggy sweater down over her swollen middle, she realized that pretty soon her secret would be out of the bag whether she liked it or not. It was astonishing how quickly she was gaining weight, particularly since she felt as if she threw up a good half of what she ate every day. At not yet four months gone, her bottom already looked like a giant, cling-film-stuffed bag of porridge. As for her breasts, she’d seen smaller mounds on an ordinance survey map. Was that what those kids were staring at? Can they tell?

  She was so busy thinking about her whalelike frame that at first she didn’t hear him.

  “Theresa!” The voice was louder this time, almost a shout. “It is you! My goodness, how are you? Long time no see.”

  Standing at the checkout with a packet of Jaffa Cakes in one hand and a pizza in the other, Theresa froze. There, like a vision from another planet, was Theo. In a dark suit with a bright-blue shirt and St. Michael’s College tie, he looked tanned and relaxed and at least ten years younger than she remembered him. When he smiled, she noticed that his teeth were even whiter than they used to be. He smelled of Gucci aftershave, confidence, and money, and in his single shopping bag were a six-pack of protein shakes and some smoked salmon.

  “I knew we’d run into one another eventually, but I didn’t think it would be here.”

  “No.” His friendliness was so disarming, Theresa found herself tongue-tied.

  “You look, er…well.” His eyes swept over her figure. In a threadbare man’s sweater, long tweed skirt with a comfy elasticated waist, and the sort of scuffed lace-ups that Theo used to refer to as “lesbian shoes,” Theresa knew she looked a wreck. To add insult to injury, her pregnancy hormones had given her pimples. Not expecting to run into anyone remotely interesting at the supermarket, she’d come out without makeup and with her hair scraped up in a messy bun, so that every last zit was on display.

  “I’ve been busy,” she mumbled.

  “The election. Of course.”

  “On top of my regular workload. Those Shakespeare papers don’t mark themselves, you know,” said Theresa, instantly regretting sounding so defensive. What do I care if he thinks I look awful? Or that I’m some downtrodden, haggard old spinster who can’t cope? She told herself. His opinion means nothing to me. But the pity in his eyes still irked her. Why did he have to show up here, of all places, and looking so unreasonably handsome?

  “I know what you mean. I’m on my way to London, actually. Got an interview at Television Centre in two hours,” said Theo cheerfully. “It never stops, does it? Anyway, good to see you.” Before Theresa could move he was kissing her on both cheeks, as if they were old friends. “Take care, T, and best of luck…you know. May the best man win and all that. Bye-eee.”

  She watched him go, still rooted to the floor, like a frightened cow watching something spectacular and unexpected, like a passing cyclone.

  “D’you wan’ any cash back?”

  “Hmmm?” said Theresa vaguely.

  “Cashback. You wan’ any?” the surly girl at the checkout repeated herself.

  “Oh. No. Thank you. I’m fine.” Grabbing her shopping bags, she practically ran outside. The streets were thronged with lunchtime shoppers. Theo, thankfully, was long gone. Their encounter had been surreal. Not upsetting exactly, but jarring and depressing. Once upon a time we were everything to each other. Ridiculously, she found herself thinking about Horatio, wishing he were here to hold her and hug her and tell her she was beautiful, even when she looked like an acne-prone shot-putter. Just then her phone rang. Already annoyed that she wished it were he, her heart sank still further when she saw “Sasha mobile” flash across the screen. Sasha had been lovely these last few weeks, a human injection of energy and confidence and sisterly spirit. But Theresa couldn’t face a rousing pep talk just now. All she wanted was to crawl under a duvet and eat Jaffa Cakes.

  Guiltily pressing “ignore,” she switched her phone off. She realized that the dampening of her spirits was nothing more than a dose of cold reality, delivered face-to-face when she’d least been expecting it.

  Theo was here.

  He was going to win the election and become master of St. Michael’s.

  Theresa was either going to have to come to terms with that—with running into him in the supermarket, at university functions, on the street—or she and her baby were going to have to move somewhere and start afresh.

  Sasha kept telling her she could do it, she could stay and beat Theo and become master herself. Theresa wanted to believe it. But whom were they kidding? Just looking at Theo today brought it home to her. She didn’t stand a chance. Besides, Sasha had her own agenda. She’s here because of Theo, not me. She wants to hold on to the past, and I want to escape it.

  In a week, the whole mastership debacle would be over. But Theresa would still have some tough decisions ahead.

  Anthony Greville shouted into the phone. “That’s not possible, do you hear me? Not possible!”

  On the other end of the line, a patient female voice assured him that not only was it possible, but it was an indisputable fact. “Check it out for yourself, Master, but my source is one hundred percent accurate.” The girl was a journalist from the local city newspaper. She seemed not in the least bit bothered that she had ruined Anthony Greville’s day. In fact, she seemed to take great pleasure in the conversation, pushing him for a juicy quote to top off her scoop. “The land has been sold to a private buyer, and preliminary permissions have already been granted. They’ll be the first new luxury apartments to be built in the old town since the St. Frideswide’s Church conversion in the eighties. But these are new build. ‘A sympathetic addition,’ the planning committee called them.”

  “A sympathetic…what?” the St. Michael’s master spluttered. “That land has been green space for seven hundred years! This is outrageous.”

  “The college will be appealing, then? You’ll protest the development?”

  “Most certainly we’ll protest it. More than that, madam, we will prevent it,” Greville seethed. “Who is this private buyer?”

  For the first time, a note of disappointment crept into the girl’s voice. “I’ve no idea, Master. I was hoping you might be able to shed some light.”

  Anthony Greville hung up. He was about to reach for the phone again and dial the head of the Cambridge City Planning Committee, when a small voice in his head made him hesitate. It was he, Anthony Greville, who had sold the two-acre plot of St. Michael’s land back to the city in the early nineties. Back then the college had been in deep financial trouble. Even so, he’d been roundly opposed at the time by many of the fellows, who saw the sell-off as the “thin end of the wedge.” The controversy over the sale had died down years ago. The city had preserved the open space, and life continued much as it had before, except with the college a much-needed four million pounds richer. These days Anthony Greville’s mastership was widely viewed as having been a prosperous, stable period for St. Michael’s. But if this deal went through—if a block of modern apartments were really to be built overlooking the college’s ancient, tranquil courts!—his reputation would be left in tatters.

  He might have sounded off to the young journalist, but the truth was he had no specific right of appeal. He’d sold the land to the city free and clear. Their undertaking to leave it green had never been anything more than a gentlemen’s agreement, one that, in this latest financial crisis, they could no longer afford to honor. As tempting as it was to vent his spleen to the planning committee, Anthony Greville knew better than anyone that he would need a better plan than that. He needed a knight in shining armor, and quickly. The council was unlikely to be outargued. Their “private buyer” could, however, be outbid.

  He called for his secretary. “Yasmin,” he said imperiously. “Get me Theo Dexter. Try all his numbers. Go to his home if you have to. Tell him I need to see him urgently at the Master’s Lodge.”

  “Yes, sir. Should I say what
this is concerning?”

  Anthony Greville thought about it. “Tell him it concerns his future and the future of the college. Tell him if he wants my job, he’s going to have to earn it, and he’s going to have to start now. Oh, and Yasmin?”

  “Master?”

  “Tell him to bring his checkbook.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THEO DEXTER WALKED out of Television Centre onto the South Bank with the sort of spring in his step he hadn’t felt in years. London looked beautiful in the late afternoon sunlight. Below him, barges slowly chugged along the silver Thames. Above him, a surprisingly blue sky shimmered over modernist glass towers and grand Victorian mansion blocks, that mishmash of eras and architectural styles that made the city so vibrant and unique.

  Theo’s interview with Connor Greaves, ITV’s new face of late-night talk, had gone remarkably well. So well, he could almost have done it live, although as usual Ed Gilliam had insisted on the slot being prerecorded, “Just in case. You never know when someone’s going to try to trip you up.” In fact, Greaves’s questions had all been softballs: How did it feel to be back home after such a long sojourn in Hollywood? What did Dita think about living back in Blighty? Would Theo be making a return to British screens anytime soon, or would his academic ambitions preclude that?

  Theo could hear his own voice now, soothing and mellow. You know, Connor, I think Cambridge is moving with the times along with the rest of the world. I’ve always seen myself as a scientist, first and foremost. But if I have an opportunity to share that passion, that vocation, with ordinary people? That’s something that I think the university and St. Michael’s College would both be excited by. He pronounced it “excidid,” the faintest twang of an American accent creeping into his voice. In the US he worked hard to sound as clipped and British as possible, but here a little hint of Hollywood went a long way. In fact the interview had gone so well, he’d gone further than he intended, referring repeatedly to the mastership as if he’d already been appointed. He’d been careful not to stray into arrogance, though, talking pointedly about his desire to “give back.” I’ve been very blessed, Connor. I’ve reached a point in my life where I can afford to think of others. I see myself as very service-oriented. It’s all about service, you know? To your country, to science, to the next generation. The housewives would love it. So, hopefully, would the St. Michael’s fellows. With any luck this was just a taste of the great PR he could get for them once they appointed him master.