anyone as lovely again. He might be doomedto become one of the boffin bachelors the students laughed at, the sort with odd socks or egg stains on his tie. But it would be in a noble cause; he would have dedicated himself like a monk or, more alluringly, some kind of chaste knight.
He sought out his school friends, who shared a set of rooms overlooking the garden, and told them at once, so as to make it real and stop himself wavering. Once again he half-hoped for a stay of execution, that these naysayers would suddenly change their tune, tell him he was mad and she was one in a million and that he must run back to her at once and beg.
They were startled but they were also relieved and only now told him in full all the reservations they’d entertained about Laura but had only hinted at before, about her suitability for him. This denigration of her pained him but he couldn’t explain why he had split up with her without sounding grotesquely ambitious and it was easier to let them make assumptions than have them tease him. They saw he was suffering and had the decency to change the subject but he was astonished at how easily destroyer had come to be treated as victim and every consideration shown him in the hours that followed was another splinter in his soul.
The fault was his not hers, as he had told her, and if he made himself break off from his furious revision to think of her, all that came to mind was the sad pallor of her face as she’d watched his windbaggy self-justification.
It was only after his exams were done and once his friends introduced him to Chloë and she had treated him to the college ball that he began to convince himself there had been something wrong about Laura, even as Chloë fulfilled Professor Jellicoe’s gypsy warning to the letter by joining her father in pressuring him to pursue a clinical rather than a research route.
Chloë was demure, sexually a little shy, or at least she expertly conveyed that impression in their first weeks together. By comparison the almost sexless casualness with which Laura would drop her clothes and her honest eagerness to fall into bed came to seem odd, unfeminine, even slightly unhinged.
Chloë and Laura didn’t know one another except as names and faces but colleges were small enough and Chloë was jealous enough that she found out about Laura with time and grilled girlfriends who had known her even slightly so that whenever the question of Ben’s past love arose she would talk disparagingly about ‘your North London hippie with the slutty friends’ and established an official version of Laura as a muddy-soled bad girl and anarchist. It couldn’t have been further from the truth but it flattered her by comparison and flattered him too, as though he had been somehow tamed but retained the capacity to run a little wild.
He emerged from his guilty reverie to find himself staring at the seminar room clock and suddenly knew that all that mattered to him would be waiting in the disabledparking spaces down below. Tolerance stretched to its limit, he stood in such a hurry the plastic beaker that had held his juice clattered off his table to the floor. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered as colleagues and drug reps looked round. ‘Sorry. I’ve just got to er…’ And he slipped out. He’d plead a migraine, a stomach ache.
The lift stopped at an intervening floor, then at another. He cursed and pushed through a swing door onto the stairs and ran down them, dodging slowcoaches and apologizing to startled faces he encountered as he lurched around each twist in the stairwell.
The disabled parking bays Laura favoured were tucked into an unpromising side alley, the kind of lost courtyard that endlessly extended and adapted hospitals must have created the world over, which only the initiated would have any hope of finding. He sprinted out into the internal service road that led to it. Then he froze, panting ludicrously, and quickly backed into a doorway before she could spot
He sought out his school friends, who shared a set of rooms overlooking the garden, and told them at once, so as to make it real and stop himself wavering. Once again he half-hoped for a stay of execution, that these naysayers would suddenly change their tune, tell him he was mad and she was one in a million and that he must run back to her at once and beg.
They were startled but they were also relieved and only now told him in full all the reservations they’d entertained about Laura but had only hinted at before, about her suitability for him. This denigration of her pained him but he couldn’t explain why he had split up with her without sounding grotesquely ambitious and it was easier to let them make assumptions than have them tease him. They saw he was suffering and had the decency to change the subject but he was astonished at how easily destroyer had come to be treated as victim and every consideration shown him in the hours that followed was another splinter in his soul.
The fault was his not hers, as he had told her, and if he made himself break off from his furious revision to think of her, all that came to mind was the sad pallor of her face as she’d watched his windbaggy self-justification.
It was only after his exams were done and once his friends introduced him to Chloë and she had treated him to the college ball that he began to convince himself there had been something wrong about Laura, even as Chloë fulfilled Professor Jellicoe’s gypsy warning to the letter by joining her father in pressuring him to pursue a clinical rather than a research route.
Chloë was demure, sexually a little shy, or at least she expertly conveyed that impression in their first weeks together. By comparison the almost sexless casualness with which Laura would drop her clothes and her honest eagerness to fall into bed came to seem odd, unfeminine, even slightly unhinged.
Chloë and Laura didn’t know one another except as names and faces but colleges were small enough and Chloë was jealous enough that she found out about Laura with time and grilled girlfriends who had known her even slightly so that whenever the question of Ben’s past love arose she would talk disparagingly about ‘your North London hippie with the slutty friends’ and established an official version of Laura as a muddy-soled bad girl and anarchist. It couldn’t have been further from the truth but it flattered her by comparison and flattered him too, as though he had been somehow tamed but retained the capacity to run a little wild.
He emerged from his guilty reverie to find himself staring at the seminar room clock and suddenly knew that all that mattered to him would be waiting in the disabledparking spaces down below. Tolerance stretched to its limit, he stood in such a hurry the plastic beaker that had held his juice clattered off his table to the floor. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered as colleagues and drug reps looked round. ‘Sorry. I’ve just got to er…’ And he slipped out. He’d plead a migraine, a stomach ache.
The lift stopped at an intervening floor, then at another. He cursed and pushed through a swing door onto the stairs and ran down them, dodging slowcoaches and apologizing to startled faces he encountered as he lurched around each twist in the stairwell.
The disabled parking bays Laura favoured were tucked into an unpromising side alley, the kind of lost courtyard that endlessly extended and adapted hospitals must have created the world over, which only the initiated would have any hope of finding. He sprinted out into the internal service road that led to it. Then he froze, panting ludicrously, and quickly backed into a doorway before she could spot
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