But he was right, as much as I hated to admit it. The seminar would start at 1 and I’d need to ring Connie well in advance if she was going to be able to cover it for us. It was already cutting it very close. Martin had already abandoned one class that week, and doing so a second time would see him hauled before the Vice Chancellor. I nodded and reluctantly stood up to fetch my phone.
22 new messages from Connie H greeted me on the screen. Jesus, I thought. I pressed the phone icon next to her name to call her.
“Hello?” she said, picking up on the first ring.
I remembered Martin’s suggested cover story. Cursing the fact that I was such a sub-par liar I launched into the lie.
“Connie?” I croaked into the phone, pretending that I was struggling to speak.
“Where have you been?” Her tone was angry. “I wish you would reply to at least one of my messages.”
“I was throwing up all night,” I said in my best sick voice. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” she said, her tone becoming slightly less annoyed. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I croaked. “I’m not going to be able to make the seminar today.”
“Oh!” she said, and I could have sworn I heard glee in her voice. “That’s too bad! Do you want me to do the presentation instead?”
No, actually - I didn’t. Not only would she hold this over me forever, she’d now have more teaching credits than I would. And her presentation would probably be a disaster, for which I’d get the blame.
“That would be amazing,” I lied, keeping my voice in a croak. “Connie you’re a life saver.”
“No problem at all! I hope you feel better soon.” Yeah, right, I thought. Before I could reply she started to say goodbye.
“Wait Connie, there’s just one other problem…”
“Yeah?”
I hesitated. This was the trickier part. “Um, I’m really sorry to do this to you, but, um... Martin is sick as well.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He can’t teach the seminar. So, as well as giving my presentation, do you think you could maybe also teach the entire class? No big deal. He’ll send the notes to you in an email. All you really have to do is lead the group discussion, you know how these things go.” I paused. “He would be really grateful.” My fake sick voice was starting to give out.
“Hang on, why is he also sick?”
“We must have eaten the same bad food or something.” It seemed like a reasonable enough explanation.
“What were you doing eating a meal together?” Her voice was no longer sweet and understanding. It had switched to shrill and accusatory in a split second.
Oh lord, I thought. “We had a...thesis meeting yesterday. It was just a quick lunch in the cafeteria.”
Connie didn’t respond.
“Con? So, can you teach the class or not?”
“Fine,” she said, sounding anything but fine. She hung up the phone abruptly before I could even thank her or promise to make it up to her, or reassure her that Martin and I were not having an affair. Which is what I was sure was the main cause of her anger.
I put my phone back down on me bed, and walked back into the kitchen. I nodded quickly at Martin. “She agreed to do it. It’s all fine.”
A look of relief washed over his face. “Thank god for that.” He handed me a plate with bacon and eggs on it, along with a couple of slices of orange which I thought was a strange addition to the dish. Very 1970s. I took the plate and thanked him, adding a T
That was strange, I thought, glancing over at Martin, who had busied himself in his eggs. Another coincidence?
Chapter Thirteen.
I was in my room changing when there was a knock on the other side of the door. “I’m not dressed!” I called out.
“Anna?” It was Martin’s voice. “I need to talk to you while Robert is outside smoking.”
I pulled my top back down and abruptly pulled the door back. “We seriously do not have anything to discuss.”
He sighed. He looked incredibly tired, much older than his 39 years. If I hadn’t known better I would have sworn his hair contained 50% more grey than it had two days earlier. Then again, I never really saw his head this close up. “We’ve got a lot to talk about,” he said.
“Oh do we just?” I asked. “How about you start by explaining how in the hell — and I mean how in the hell — you know my dad. You cannot possibly be a good explanation for this.”
“I did try to explain, last night...”
“Yeah right, as if you would have given me a straight answer anyway.”
“Look, Anna you are just going to have to trust me.”
I laughed. “Yeah right. I did once, you know. I did trust you. But not right now, not anymore.”
“I told you this in the hospital two days ago,” he reminded me. “You shouldn’t have come along with us, you shouldn’t have been there. You didn’t listen though, of course. But I was right, wasn’t I?”
I thought about that. Sure, if I had listened to him my life wouldn’t have been in danger. But still, what right did Martin Anderson have to tell me what was wrong and right for me? So I refused to answer his question with a yes.
“You’ll just have to trust me on this as well,” he said, when I remained silent. He raised a hand to his hair and rubbed the top of his head. He was yet to start balding, despite his age. He sighed deeply. “Believe me, your father is the last person on Earth I want to see...”
“Join the club!”
“But we have to see him. We have to speak to him. I think the time has finally come.”
“Come for what?”
But at that, the fly screen banged open in the background, and Robert was back inside the apartment. Martin pulled away from me and called out to him. “Maybe you should borrow some of my clothes, Robert. We’re going to have to go out in public and this is a very small town…”
Robert was still adamant that he wasn’t going to dress in anything other than his glam rock 70s attire. But, personally - I thought that Martin was right — we couldn’t walk around Nelson Bay with a David Bowie lookalike with us. Maybe in Inner West Sydney you could get away with it, but not in the most white bread town in New South Wales.
I walked out and waited in the living room while Martin pulled a reluctant Robert into his own room to change clothes. I pulled my laptop out of my bag to flick through some lecture notes: despite everything that was happening, some of Martin’s academic guilt had rubbed off on me, and I felt a twinge of worry every time I thought about the university. This was possibly the worse start to a semester that I had ever had. Day three and I was already missing my first big presentation.
I switched tabs, which accidentally brought my thesis up on the screen. I let out a heavy sigh, slumping back in the uncomfortable lounge chair behind me. I threw my laptop away beside me, making sure it bounced into a seashell shaped cushion. My bloody thesis – I wondered now how much of it I was going to have to re-write. It had all been based on a theoretical model of time travel, but now, if what Martin had said was true: that the man in black and his pals were conducting experiments, then there was nothing theoretical about it. As much as I had always believed time travel to be possible — and wanted to prove it — I wasn’t sure I had actually wanted to stumble upon already existing time travel technology. This was going to mean two years of hard work down the freaking drain. I leaned forward and tapped my long manicured nails on the glass table in front of me, waiting for the other two to reappear, trying to push my academic worries out of my mind.
Robert reemerged from the room with the face of a five year old who was being forced to dress up for a funeral. He was wearing one of Martin’s professor outfits: grey pants, pinstriped shirt and navy blue v-neck jumper pulled over the top. I smiled up at him. “You look...nice,” I said.
“I look like a total square!”
Martin ignored the insult and said we needed to get going, so Robert should shut up and stop complaining. Robert
looked at me, a pleading expression on his face. “Anna, can I at least borrow your mascara or something?”
“Sure,” I said standing up and heading to my en suite bathroom to grab my makeup bag. I probably wore even more make up than Robert did: I also gravitated towards heavy dark eyes. Rob followed me and I passed him a tube of mascara as well as a thick coal eyeliner. “Awesome,” he said, turning to the mirror to apply it.
Outside the door Martin was growing impatient with us. “It’s almost 11! We really have to get going!”
“Get going where?” Robert whispered to me, still staring straight ahead and filling in his left eyelid with the aid of the mirror.
I shrugged. “Damned if I know. I’ve almost given up asking questions at this point. There’s never any good answers.”
“Aren’t you a scientist though? Isn’t that kind of your job, providing answers?” he asked, in a teasing tone.
“Physicist, actually. Which is basically all questions, no answers.”
“What is a physicist, anyway?” he asked, switching to the right eye. “Is it like studying plants or something?”
“No. That’s a botanist.”
Robert finished up both his eyes and stood back to admire himself. Dressed in Martin’s conservative outfit, and now with the dark black panda eyes, he looked much more bizarre than he would have if he’d just worn his usual outfit.
“So what is it then?”
I felt like making my own eyes darker, so I grabbed the charcoal out of his hand and began applying it liberally to my own eyelids. “Quantum mechanics?” I asked him, and he shrugged. “Time, space, reality, that kind of thing.” I paused. “My thesis is on time travel. It’s about how time travel could be possible with the use of a computer code.”
Robert stopped checking his reflection in the mirror to turn to face me. “Really?” He lowered his tone again and looked suspiciously toward the door. “Isn’t that a bit coincidental?”
My ears pricked up at that term again: coincidence, coincidental. I’d just been thinking that same thing, about Robert’s familiarity with Nelson Bay. “I don’t know that it is a coincidence. I mean, I’ve been pursuing the study of time travel for years.” I glanced up at him. “And I basically forced my way into the hospital the other day.”
“Did you really force your way in though?” he asked. “Security seemed pretty tight. I mean, that chick with the gun and all.”
I thought about that. I didn’t really like what he was suggesting. That I’d been allowed to be there, rather than having used my own wits to get in. “Yes, I did.”
He pulled a face. “Alright, if you say so. And what about Martin being your teacher then? Is that also a coincidence?”
“Well…I suppose so. I mean, I certainly didn’t know about him being a time travel detective when I first started taking his classes six years ago. How could I have? I chose his classes for the same reason all the first years did — there was no exam at the end of them.”
“And why did you choose him as your PhD supervisor?” Robert took a furtive glance toward the door, where Martin was surely waiting impatiently on the other side.
I shrugged again. “He’s the best lecturer in the physics department.”
Robert raised an eyebrow. “Is he?”
A rapid knocking on the door broke up our exchange and I hurried to shove my makeup back into its case. I looked at the reflection of Robert and I in the mirror. We were now makeup twins. I grinned. As we exited the room Martin stood and glared at us — had he overheard anything? As I walked past I turned back to look at him over my shoulder. It had been six years, but did I really know this man at all?
Chapter Fourteen.
Robert and I were waiting inside the Nelson Bay tourist centre, a small dome-shaped building in the middle of town, located beneath an esplanade of shops and cafes, all of which were deserted on that winter morning. I picked up a brochure showing a happy couple surfing and shoved it in Robert’s face. “See? I wanted to go to the beach.”
“I don’t think there’s much chance of that happening today. Look’s like we’re on a mission.”
He jutted his head to point in the direction of Martin, who was at the help desk inquiring about local mechanics and car rentals. He hadn’t been able to start his Holden that morning, so we’d had to walk two kilometres into the almost deserted town to find some sort of help. I had suggested the tourist centre simply because I knew it was open every day of the year. Martin was arguing with the plump read-headed woman behind the counter about something. I felt sorry for her.
“Come on I’ve gotta have a smoke.”
I followed Robert out into the cool fresh seaside air. I could smell the ocean and fish and chips in the wind. It was chilly out, but not freezing. I’d even broken my usual uniform of all black to put on a pair of jeans and an almost-festive white shirt.
“Why is he always so grumpy?” Robert asked.
“Martin?” I pulled a face. “That’s just his way. He’s a serious guy.” The sun came out from behind a cloud and I pulled down the pair of sunglasses that were sitting on my head in order to shield my eyes. I pondered for a moment. “He wasn’t always like that.” I looked far off into the distance, remembering.
“Really? What the frack happened to him then?”
“He’s younger than you’d think, you know. He’s not even 40. When I was first his student, way back in first year, he was the youngest lecturer in the science faculty, pretty much. He was 33.” I raised my eyebrows at the memory. “Believe it or not, he was considered the young, funky professor. Everyone loved him.”
“I can’t imagine that,” Robert said, pulling a face.
“They still do love him,” I hastened to add. “Just in a different way. Now it’s more based on fear and respect, whereas it used to be because he let us all hand in assignments a month late without penalty.” The memory of that long-ago incarnation of Martin Anderson now seemed like a completely different person.
A seagull landed near us and Robert backed away in fright, shooing it. “Man I hate those things.” He stepped back behind a pole, which he seemed to think might defend him from the seagull. “So?” he repeated. “What happened to him to turn him into such a grump?”
I was conflicted about whether or not to tell the story: it wasn’t really my story to tell. But I wanted to defend Martin, so I looked around to make sure he was still arguing with the lady in the tourist centre, and began, with a deep breath. “In first year, when he was still considered the ‘fun’ teacher — and had sandy blond hair, it wasn’t grey then — he was,” I paused. “Engaged to another member of staff. A biology lecturer called Kate Schwartz. I took one of her classes in first year, everyone loved her as well. She was really nice.” I trailed off.
Robert lit up a second cigarette before the first had even finished. “Yeah?”
“Everyone kind of knew they were together, they were like a famous faculty couple.” I almost laughed at the memory. “We teased them a lot about it in lectures, and they received some kind of joke award at the end of the year for hottest couple in the science faculty or something.”
Rob was listening intently to my story. When I stopped talking for a moment he nodded at me. “Go on,” he said.
“It was the summer break between first and second year. I was 19 years old, about to turn 20. I’d gotten at least a distinction in all of my subjects and I was applying for scholarships and deciding what to major in the following year. I decided on physics because we all loved Martin so much. His classes were always so much fun...”
The sun disappeared behind a bunch of small grey clouds, but I kept my glasses on. “It was sudden, we didn’t really find out about it until we all returned to class the following year. But I had heard a whisper, and living so close to campus I often hung around there even during break, so I think I found out the news faster than some other students.”
“What happened?” Robert asked gently.
“It was so horrible
. She’d been fine, and then suddenly she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I heard a small rumour at the time of the diagnosis, but the next news I received was five weeks later, and she was already dead. It was so freaking sudden.”
I kept my head down, not wanting to look up at Robert, but I felt his eyes staring at me.
“We didn’t think Martin would return to teaching. We assumed he would take a semester’s sabbatical, at least. But first day of semester, there he was, teaching classes. I had enrolled in three of his subjects. So I saw him every day. It was so weird. None of us knew what to say to him. No one dared to misbehave in his class, or even joke around anymore. There was such a sullen vibe amongst all of us. Not to mention Martin. God, he was completely different. He never mentioned what had happened, never spoke a word about Kate. But slowly he went from being the most fun lecturer in the science department to the most terrifying one.”
Robert finally interrupted. “So why did you stay in all of his classes then? If they were no longer fun?”
I thought about that. It was a good question: the Martin Anderson I’d signed up for in first year was definitely not the same one I got in second year.
“Did you feel guilty about dropping them? After what had happened to him?”
I shook my head. “No, regardless, I still wanted to major in physics.” I turned to look at him finally. “That was when my obsession with time travel really piqued. Although I had always been fairly obsessed. But no, it wasn’t guilt that made me stay in his classes. Martin was actually — and I feel quite bad saying this, I have to admit — a much better teacher after that.” I scrunched up my face apologetically. “He stopped being fun and turned into the best lecturer in the entire science department. He lost a bunch of old fans and students, but gained new ones. After that people really wanted his respect and approval, because he didn’t give it out very readily.”
“You’ve got that right.” Robert blew a long puff of smoke into the air. “Man. That is so hardcore.” He glanced at Martin through the glass of the tourist centre. “Maybe I should give him more of a break.”
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