Dying for Millions by Judith Cutler

another mass-produced pizza; instead I fell, quite by chance, upon a risotto richly flavoured with coriander and a green salad laden with ripe avocado. As a rare and extravagant treat I polished off a huge portion of lemon tart, so sharp and delectable I could have murdered for the recipe. The only other eaters were a middle-aged couple tucked in one corner; from the expansiveness of their gestures their food was as good as mine. The chef, who had doubled as waiter, talked with passion about coriander and then waved me goodbye as if I were an old friend.
    So I was in a much better frame of mind – until I returned to College. Those of us in the fifteen-floor staff room sometimes manage a rota for picking up each other’s post from the general office on the eighth floor; but more often we don’t. As I had just consumed more calories in one meal than I normally would in a week, I decided to walk up the stairs; the eighth floor made a convenient resting place.
Convenient
! I was so out of condition that I couldn’t possibly have made it to the fifteenth without stopping. There was a fistful of mail in my pigeon-hole, which I sorted before setting off again. Notices of several meetings; minutes for several more; messages from employers about work experience. Junk mail – almost any advertising matter comes under that category if the college it’s sent to can’t afford even the paper for exams. Two requests for references from past students looking for work. And two envelopes tightly sealed with tape, addressed in Karen’s undistinguished fist.
    Two?
    I sat down at one of the vacant desks, using a canteen knife smelling strongly of oranges to slit the first envelope open. Then the second envelope: this scrawl related to her ‘earlier note’. ‘Note’ was a distinct misnomer: epistle, more like. I went back to the first. Ostensibly, it was a thank-you letter for Saturday; in reality it was a paean of praise for Andy – his looks, his kindness, his compassion. Would I pass on her thanks – or better still, pass on the enclosed letter? That accounted for some of the envelope’s fatness – there was another ‘note’ for Andy sealed – and taped – in with the first. On, then, to letter number two. This was a reprise of number one, except that she would now be too embarrassed for Andy to see the first letter, so would I destroy it and pass on this one instead? She’d asked the secretary to return her first letter to me, but …
    Confused, and not altogether interested in her protestations of undying love for my cousin, I gathered the whole pile together and resumed my journey upwards. And damn me if there wasn’t another note, on my desk, also sealed with tape, saying she needed to be alone and, in her absence, asking me to destroy all her letters. Preferably burn them. I thought the shredder might do, but it seemed to be jammed, and rather than trudge back down to the eighth I decided to leave it till morning. I shoved them into my in-tray, under the agendas and minutes, so that no one else would read them and see what a cake she was making of herself.
    There was just time to finish marking a pile of assignments well overdue for return. But, at this point Gurjit arrived. I suppose her promptness – she was half an hour early – augured well for her work experience, but at the moment it merely meant a kicking of heels – hers while I ploughed through assignments, or ours while we waited for Mark, if we arrived early at the airport. In view of her obvious anxiety, compromise seemed in order, so she sat through one assignment and one repair of make-up and half an hour later we were in the airport car park, watching the little numbers hopping round on my dashboard clock.
    It had turned into an unattractive night. A thin drizzle seemed to be freezing as it fell, and the wind took the absence of major obstacles as an invitation to gust so