When they got to Balmer the two students offered to pay their share but Alex insisted and they thanked him curtly before getting out and disappearing quickly into the college, concerned perhaps that he’d try to tag along. He paid and walked in the other direction, cutting between buildings to the Psychology Department.
Ruth looked to the door as he swiped his card, seeing him through the glass. She smiled but looked puzzled.
‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he said, as he walked in.
‘Did you have an episode? You look like you did.’
‘Why, how do I look?’
‘Like you had an episode,’ she said, smiling.
He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘It wasn’t anything to speak of. I just didn’t feel much like sleeping afterwards. I went out for a walk and then I decided to come and see what you were up to.’
She pointed at the monitoring equipment and said, ‘Just one volunteer, second time he’s been in for me. He wakes of his own accord at the end of each REM, has a full recollection of his dreams, which are nearly always lucid.’
‘And you’ve only had him in here twice?’
She nodded regretfully, acknowledging that the volunteer in there was the kind of opportunity that came along once in a lifetime.
‘Not for want of trying. Unlike us, he seems to have a pretty successful social life.’
Alex took his coat off, caught up in a resurgence of enthusiasm for his subject.
‘Have you interviewed him at any length yet?’ She nodded. ‘He hasn’t trained himself to wake? Doesn’t keep a dream diary?’
‘No. In fact, until he came in here last time he wasn’t aware that it was unusual.'
‘Lucky him. You mind if I look at your notes?’
‘Of course not.’ He sat down and looked over Ruth’s notes but now that he was sitting he felt tired again and couldn’t concentrate on the words in front of him. He put on an act of studying them but he could feel the world slipping in and out of focus and when Ruth spoke her voice had the echoing acoustics of the slide into sleep.
‘Alex, you look really tired.’
He sat upright with a jolt and looked at her, smiling, about to deny it but conscious of how he must have looked, his eyes heavy, a drunk’s demeanour.
‘I suppose I must be.’ He sighed heavily with the thought of going back home.
Ruth could obviously see his reluctance, perhaps even sensing what was behind it, and said, ‘Why don’t you crash here for a couple of hours? It’s probably all you need, a couple of hours.’
He looked at the door to the bedrooms and said, ‘You’ve been wanting to get me into bed for ages.’
She laughed and said, ‘It’s what I dream about, Dr Stratton, it really is. But seriously, no wires. Just crash for a couple of hours.’
‘Will you wake me?’ She nodded and he got up smiling and walked through, struggling against tiredness to take some of his clothes off before crashing onto the bed.
He was too tired even to worry about having another attack, but he felt secure there, a place he’d made his own, more than he had his own house. That was a place he’d ceded to Emily Barratt, as though she’d wondered the town until she’d found him and then claimed it for herself.
The taxi journey and the surly students replayed as he drifted into sleep, and Ruth’s voice, as it often did. No dreams followed that he could recall but he didn’t seem to sleep for long. He checked his watch when he woke, just after seven. He got up and went to the bathroom, then went back through to Ruth.
She wasn’t there. He guessed she was in with her volunteer so he went through and put the kettle on for coffee. When he came back through she was there, going over her notes. She looked tired herself now, blood-drained, the cold of early-morning beginning to get to her.
She looked up and smiled, relieved to have some company perhaps, and said, ‘Did anything cross your mind?’
He smiled too, the standard sleep researcher’s question to the woken volunteer.
‘I haven’t been much good to you, have I, Ruth?’
‘Are you kidding?’ She looked genuinely amazed. ‘You’ve been great. You’ve always been there when I needed help, you’ve let me do my own thing when I haven’t. What else could you have done?’
‘True, I suppose. I just feel I could have been more supportive.’
‘Alex, you haven’t slept long enough. Seriously, studying with you has been one of the best opportunities of my life.’
He raised his eyebrows, a self-deprecating smile, saying, ‘I’ve made coffee. Do you want one?’
‘Yes, please.’ Before he could walk away though, she said, ‘You know, I get the impression you’ve kind of lost faith in what you do over the last year, maybe even lost interest, but you shouldn’t downplay the stuff you’ve done in the past, ground-breaking stuff, and it doesn’t matter what your reason for doing it was. You did it, that’s all that matters.’