The Whole Day Through by Patrick Gale

airmail envelope she produced from her bag.
    ‘Thank you so much,’ he stammered, when it was announced that coffee would be served in the room where they had first assembled. ‘I just wish I could have taken notes while you were talking.’
    ‘Waste of time,’ she said. ‘What you don’t remember without notes will be of no use to you in an exam in four days’ time. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. You’re hoping for a first, naturally.’
    ‘Well…’
    ‘The college is, of course. That’s why you’re here.’
    He thought of Laura, who passionately wished for a first in maths to please her parents, but had not been invited to one of these lunches, and felt treachery, then guilt, then an unexpected and sickening slippage in his feelings towards her.
    ‘Consider my research programme at Imperial when making your applications.’
    ‘I will. Of course I will,’ he gushed. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Have you got a girlfriend or something?’ she asked bluntly. Almost everyone had left or was leaving the table and they were virtually alone there.
    ‘Er. Well, yes,’ he said. ‘We’ve been going out for two terms now.’
    ‘But nothing serious? You’re not engaged or anything?’
    ‘No,’ he admitted, perplexed.
    ‘Good,’ she exclaimed, gently slapping the table edge beside her. ‘You’ll think me old-fashioned but there’s nothing more depressing than students just embarking on important research who go and get married. Such a mistake. Such a drain. Either they drop out, because they suddenly need to make money, or they simply lose their focus and I end up having to dump them. If she’s really keen, let her down gently but let her down all the same. At least for the next few years. Your work has to come first. I never married exactly but I settled very young – I thought it was just part of being adult – something one had to do – and it was such a mistake.’ She thumped the table again.
    ‘You’re not together any more?’
    ‘Yes. Still together and happily so but –’ She touched his forearm and her grasp was like steel as she looked so deeply into his face that he could smell the wine on her breath and see a stray eyelash that had caught on her cheek. ‘Love is an amazing thing but – there’s no nice way to put this that won’t sound arrogant but what the hell – for exceptional people, for people like you, it’s nearly always diminishing .’
    Something in the way she said that word chilled him and, as she stood to obey the repeated summons of thewarden’s wife to come and admire something rare that was flowering for the first time in the garden and bade him a curt goodbye, Ben stood too and found he was shivering. It wasn’t cold or fear at work but a kind of excitement, as at something momentous that had to be done but would require courage and a stern, monastic steadfastness.
    He broke up with Laura that afternoon. If she had wept or raged at him or even argued he wouldn’t have gone through with it. He assumed she would argue, half-hoped it, and that she’d convince him to change his mind. He heard again now with chilling clarity his pompous, cack-handed explanation that he wasn’t ready to get serious, that he couldn’t afford to commit to anyone because of the need to focus on his further studies.
    All she asked was, ‘Is there someone else?’ to which he quite honestly – for it was true at the time – answered no. ‘So it’s me, then?’ she asked to which he said,
    ‘No. Of course not. It’s me. It’s all me.’ Which, he now reflected bitterly, was also true and had continued to be the case. All the mess began and ended with him and his egotistic dithering and need for approval.
    As he left her rooms and hurried down the long staircase that led back to Holywell Quad, he had started to shudder with adrenalin again. He had felt sorrow, of course he did, but also a self-dramatizing thrill at the enormity of the sacrifice he had just made. He might never meet