Isabel was surprised at the depth of her supervisor’s perception. She shook her head, however. ‘I’m fine, honestly,’ she assured the professor.
Gillian Green sat back. ‘In that case, are there any other issues affecting you?’
Was Jasper an issue affecting her? That was one way of putting it, certainly. Partly from nerves, Isabel felt the sudden urge to laugh, but fought desperately to keep her face still.
Obviously she did not entirely succeed. ‘I can see you think it’s none of my business,’ Professor Green said dryly. ‘But I have to tell you that what is very much my business is the quality of your work. You came to this university with an excellent reputation and we all had very high hopes for you. But on present form, you’ll be lucky to scrape a third.’
Isabel stared at her in shock. She felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. Then she hung her head, her heart racing as she stared at her jeans. She was, she noticed vaguely, much thinner than she used to be. But you couldn’t be too rich or too thin, wasn’t that right? Funny, they were the only kind of quotes she could remember these days. Her concentration seemed completely shot.
‘I’ll try harder, Professor Green,’ she said, noticing, now, that the other woman had stopped speaking.
‘You’ll need to,’ was the acid reply.
Dismissed, Isabel rushed out of the faculty building and into the leafy road. She was ashamed and embarrassed and wanted to run away from the feeling. She must reach Jasper. Once she was in his arms, everything would be all right.
There was, Richard felt, nowhere to run. Sara and Milo had completely taken over his home. She seemed somehow to be everywhere at once: half-dressed in his bathroom; lounging in low-cut dresses over his sofas; clacking across the Lodge’s concrete floors in leather trousers and stilettos; seemingly forever on his (much lower) heels.
‘Do I look nice in this?’ she endlessly asked him, twirling in some flimsy, figure-hugging scrap that seemed to him indistinguishable from any other of her flimsy, figure-hugging scraps. They were all, he felt, unsuitable for someone her age and the idea of her wearing them in public at the alumni dinner made his toes curl. Yet this was the purpose of the fashion show. She was, Sara claimed, trying to hit on the exact right outfit. While in most respects he dreaded it, Richard also longed for the weekend to come, for the dinner to be over. Then, as he sought to remind her at every opportunity, she would leave.
His desperation for her to do so redoubled after finding her in his bed. She had, she claimed, mistaken his door for hers. As Richard had stood there, pondering this unlikely excuse, she had lain below him, naked and pouting, arms above her head and writhing energetically against his sheets. While insisting, with what voice he could summon, that she return to her room, he had done his best to avert his eyes firmly from her erect, cone-shaped breasts and the strange sparkle about her magenta-dyed and heart-shaped pubic region. But the image had haunted him in his dreams: in a fur coat of a violent rose-colour, he had run through a storage depot of vast pink ballistic missiles, searching for the way out.
So unruffled by the incident did Sara seem afterwards that he wondered whether he really had dreamt the whole thing. This possibility seemed almost more worrying even than if it had been real.
He started to avoid her, to keep away from rooms she was in. He had realised fairly early on that the kitchen was not Sara’s favourite place. She seemed unfamiliar – more so even than him – with the various objects it contained; he had to show her how to switch on the electric kettle.
It was in the kitchen that Richard was, hastily, eating a piece of Marmite toast, when Sara unexpectedly entered. He doubled his haste immediately, his jaws crashing so hard on the toast that he could barely hear her speak.
‘What?’ he asked, having swallowed.
‘I need to talk to you,’ Sara gasped.
Richard glared from under his brows. He hoped it wasn’t about dinner parties again. Much of her conversation was a stream-of-consciousness about her former life in London, which she was labouring under the illusion would interest him. She seemed especially keen to emphasise her abilities as a hostess, her experience of dinner parties for influential people. As if he cared!
‘It’s about Milo.’
Milo. The very name made Richard frown. Whenever he entered the sitting room it was to find the ghastly child and his violent video games scattered over the floor.
Richard cleared his throat. ‘I’m glad you’ve brought the subject up.’
Sara threw back her hair and beamed hugely. ‘He’s simply desperate to be a neurotic— I mean, neurologist. He’d love to come with you to the labs again.’
Richard summoned up what little remained of his patience. Of all the week’s enervating events, worst of all, worse even than the bed episode, was Milo’s visit to the labs.
It had been as unscheduled and unsanctioned as Sara’s own first appearance at his place of work. That seemed to be the Oopvard way. And, contrary to his mother’s assurances, Milo was not the least bit interested in neurology. Richard’s attempts to explain how he was training his worms to recognise colour and smell met with the usual unsettling blank stare. This, and the fact the boy spent most of the time playing on his iPad, seemed to belie Sara’s claims concerning her son’s intelligence. ‘Top of his class at school and off the scale at Mensa; they’d never seen results like his,’ she had invented wildly. Richard could well believe the latter.
He was about to say as much when Sara jerked her cleavage meaningfully in his direction. ‘After all,’ she trilled, ‘you do rather owe me one, after I saved you from Diana’s evil clutches!’
He was about to object, but the breasts rose in his face again and she got there first.
‘Milo just adored it last time.’
‘He had a funny way of showing it,’ Richard confined himself to remarking. ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he added as discouragingly as possible, and escaped to the labs with all speed after that.
He had only just started work when the phone on his desk shrilled.
‘Is that you, Master?’
Richard suppressed a groan. The Bursar again. His colleague seemed to have been reduced to a state of near-paralysis by the looming prospect of the alumni dinner and, in particular, the looming prospect of the wealthy guests of honour, the Snodgrasses.
‘What’s a thread count?’ the Bursar asked.
‘No idea,’ Richard said shortly, one eye on his worms. ‘Why?’
‘Mrs Snodgrass can’t cope with less than nine hundred.’
Richard was sufficiently distracted as to enter the worms’ direction in the colour box into the wrong row of figures. Now all his calculations were confused. He cursed under his breath.
The Bursar, meanwhile, was getting into his complaining stride. ‘And Mr Snodgrass only drinks filtered tap water. At room temperature, not a degree above or below.’
By the time Richard had put the phone down he had had enough. These people were mad. He was mad, for staying here. What for, anyway? Nothing had worked out for him here. He was in the wrong place, in England. Why didn’t he just go back to America?
Nothing was what it had seemed, from Diana to the job as Master. The college had assured him he would be left alone to work, but his time was continually taken up with absentee students, drugs, alumni dinners. And this winter was shaping up to be an absolute bum; he had not realised how hard it was to cycle on icy roads. You had to progress down other people’s grooves and the risk of falling over was ever-present. Richard wasn’t a literary man but he could recognise a metaphor when he saw it.
And Christmas was coming, with all that meant. Excited children. Carol services. Other people’s happiness. Amy had always loved Christmas; apart from spring, it had been her favourite time of year. He still felt his wife all around him, more than ever just at the moment.
What would Christmas be like here, that season of cheerful excess, among the bleak sixties futuristic architecture? Unbearable, frankly. Who would he spend it with? Most probably his worms. Perhaps he’d light them up in green and red for the festive season. He felt a miserable loneliness, a feeling of being hopelessly adrift. He wanted to run away.
Diana was picking Rosie up from a friend’s house. Not Shanna-Mae’s, obviously. Just as Debs would not speak to Diana, Shanna-Mae had since ignored Rosie.
‘She’s got a bunk bed,’ Rosie was saying eagerly about her friend. ‘Can I have a bunk bed, Mum? Handy for when people come to stay,’ she added, without irony, it seemed.
‘Mmm,’ Diana said, not really listening. She was unable to concentrate on anything at the moment. Her thoughts ricocheted between a murderous loathing of Sara, anguish about Debs and a combination of anguish and loathing when it came to Richard. He was taking Sara to the dinner instead of her! How could he? How had it happened?
It was not a real question, of course. Diana had no doubt, now, why Richard had not been in touch. Sara had poisoned him against her as she had earlier poisoned Debs. And now Sara had moved in to the Master’s Lodge and was no doubt sizing Richard up as a replacement for Henrik.
Diana could see it all now, horribly clearly – almost as if she had been Sara herself. She had been the victim of a plot. Sara had money after the divorce, but no importance. Richard was a widower and Master of a prestigious university college. It was all so obvious.
Obviously, too, Diana would now have to go. Christmas approaching or not, there was no question of remaining at Branston after Sara became – as Diana did not doubt she would – the Master’s wife. In one fell swoop, over one catastrophic weekend, Sara had destroyed her closest new friendship, her burgeoning romance and her job prospects.
She had tried to salvage the situation with Debs. Only this morning they had walked down their respective garden paths at exactly the same time and Diana, swallowing her fear, had tried to rekindle some spark of friendship. But Debs had stonewalled her completely. She had not betrayed by as much as a glance that she was aware of Diana’s presence.
‘And she’s having a Strictly Come Dancing disco birthday party,’ Rosie added as Diana turned into the Campion Estate. ‘Could I have one of those, Mum?’
Diana closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She must not get annoyed. None of it was Rosie’s fault. She was blameless; indeed, she had made more than the best of her new situation. Whereas she herself . . .
‘Of course you can,’ she forced herself to say through the hard ball suddenly rolling up her throat.
‘Oooh, great! . . . What’s the matter, Mum?’ Rosie’s elation gave way to concern. ‘Are you crying?’
Diana shook her head hard. ‘No . . .’ But it came out as a gulp.
‘You are crying, Mum! What’s the matter?’
Diana pulled in. The car behind, which had been following too close, with over-bright headlights, zoomed past with a rude admonitory parp. It added to her crushing sense of failure.
She had tried to make a go of it, to work hard, remain cheerful, adapt uncomplainingly to her new circumstances. She had imagined she was building something solid. But it had taken only one short visit from Sara Oopvard for everything to collapse. What had been the point of it all?
Light fingers were pressing her hand. ‘Mum!’
Diana sniffed, and with the mightiest of efforts pulled herself back from the brink of hysterical sobs. She could not cry in front of Rosie.
‘Come on, Mum!’ Rosie was urging.
Diana’s head, which had been bent, now slowly raised itself back up.
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered dully, rummaging for a hanky and feeling that roles had somehow been reversed. Rosie had become the mother, all resolve and encouragement, and she the defeated small daughter.
The impression intensified as Rosie produced a scrunched-up tissue from her school cardigan pocket. ‘Here.’
Diana took it, and dabbed fitfully at her eyes. A sense of shame gathered within. What was the matter with her? Not only had she allowed Sara Oopvard to ruin her life, she was showing less spirit than a nine-year-old. Had she, Diana asked herself fiercely, learnt nothing from what had happened to her?
Rosie’s voice went on, patient and encouraging as before, but now unmistakeably desperate too. ‘You can’t just give up because of horrible Sara Oopvard. And even more horrible Milo. You can’t let them win.’
Her daughter was right, Diana realised. She mustn’t let Sara defeat her. Not just for her own sake, but for Rosie’s.
Like a smouldering log suddenly bursting into flames, a violent rage leapt within her, of an intensity that vaporised the misery she had felt. Flamelike, it scorched up and down her nerves. She clenched her fists; the pain as her nails dug into her palms was almost welcome.
‘I won’t let them beat us,’ she muttered.
‘You go girl!’ cheered Rosie. ‘You go get ’em!’
This unaccustomed phrase – from her daughter, anyway – stopped Diana in her tracks sufficiently to allow doubt to catch up again. Because what could she do about any of it? Wouldn’t appearing at the dinner be just a horrible humiliation? Wasn’t what was done, done?
Doubt now held a blanket over the flames of fury just felt. Doubt was about to drop this blanket and extinguish them. It was all very well when you were nine, Diana thought. Things were simple. Her daughter had no idea of the million and one reasons why she could not just ‘go get ’em’, as suggested – Sara or Richard. There was also the mess next door, with Debs and Shanna-Mae.
‘I’ll try not to let them beat us,’ she amended her earlier assertion, shrinking inside at the disappointed look her daughter turned on her.
‘Come on, Mum,’ Rosie began urging again. ‘You go and sort it out. And if you don’t,’ she added boldly, ‘I will.’
‘You will?’ Diana regarded her daughter with a sort of amused hopelessness. ‘What could you do?’
Rosie crossed small but capable forearms. ‘I’ve sorted out next door, haven’t I?’
‘Have you?’ Diana gasped.
‘Didn’t I say? Yeah, I saw Shanna-Mae at school today and we had a good talk in the sixth-form area. I told her that you didn’t know about what Dad did and you were upset because Sara stole your boyfriend . . .’
‘You said what?’ burst in Diana. Boyfriend!
Rosie carried on regardless. ‘And so I said Debs had to go easy on you. Shanna-Mae promised to speak to her mum. She says Debs feels awful, anyway, about all the things she said to you. So it’ll be fine, Mum, honestly,’ Rosie finished, breathless and cheerful. ‘It will, honestly.’
And perhaps it would. For, at the sight of her daughter’s brave little face, her resolute little eyes, Diana felt a new strength radiate from her heart and travel with a slow, steady warmth along her veins and nerves.
Isabel had already started to plan the Christmas holidays. She was eager to move things on and meeting each other’s parents was the next step. Would Jasper come and stay with her or would she go to him?
She longed to show him off. The thought of him in Lochalan made her thrill with pride. His exotic blond beauty would have an electric effect on the village. She could imagine the buzz of gossip in the teashop, in the supermarket – how well Isabel Murray had done for herself! What was less easy to imagine was how Mum would view it all.
Her mother now, finally, knew about the existence of Jasper. Isabel had taken a deep breath and dropped him into the conversation as casually as one might – if one took it – drop a sugar lump into tea. She had told Mum how handsome he was, how well dressed, but Mum had seemed unimpressed. ‘Fine feathers make fine birds,’ she had sniffed.
After that, Isabel had been careful to keep mentions of Jasper to a minimum. If Mum was jealous, the most likely ex
planation, it would be unwise to fan the flames. Once Mum had met Jasper herself and seen how wonderful he was, everything would be fine.
There was but one shadow on her happiness: the feeling that something, somewhere, was a tiny bit not quite right. Or might even be wrong.
Resist the thought as she might, she could not entirely shake off the impression that Jasper had been evasive these past few days. Her calls and texts had gone unreturned and twice when she had gone to his room he had not been there. She had hurtled happily up his staircase to find the door shut, not ajar as generally it was. She knocked on the brittle oak, the impact painful on her chilly knuckles. No answer. She knocked again and stood there for a few moments, her heart beating fast in a silence that smelled of furniture polish. He was not there, however. She could sense it. Beyond the door, the room was empty.
Both times she had gone back through the slippery streets to Branston. The ringing bells had seemed to taunt her, the ice beneath her feet trying to bring her down. The last time, she had watched as a couple of cyclists wobbled and then slid over, shouting curses as they hit the road surface.
Yes, somehow, for some reason, some of the earlier magic had gone.
Nothing had changed, yet everything had. Alastair, Olly felt, had saved him. In giving him a job, the editor had enabled him to take up once more the cudgels of life. He felt enormously relieved, and newly determined.
He felt he could see things more clearly. Even Isabel. Especially Isabel. It seemed to Olly that his thwarted passion and burning resentment now had the perfect outlet in the story Alastair wanted him to do. And Alastair, it turned out, had more than mere editorial glory in mind when dreaming the stunt up.
He too had an axe to grind. He too had suffered at the hands of the De Borchys. The paper he had previously worked on had been owned by the family and summarily shut down. Many of Alastair’s former colleagues were still attempting – with diminishing hope – to get some compensation. To expose the Bullinger, Alastair felt, was to hit back to some extent.
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