She sat up straighter.
“I was the only person in my year at school to apply for Oxford. I’m the first person in my family to come here too. In fact, my dad doesn’t even have a degree—he’s a builder who left education when he was sixteen. I didn’t volunteer to feed underprivileged kids in my gap year or spend my summer digging wells—I spent my summer working in a supermarket. As you may have guessed, I don’t always feel like I fit in here. But I’m determined to prove I belong.”
Dr. Myers said nothing for a long moment. But then he sat back in his chair and began clapping, slowly but steadily.
“Bravo, Hannah Jones,” he said at last. “Bravo. I think we’re going to get along very well, you and I. Very well indeed.”
* * *
AT THE END OF THE hour-long tutorial Hannah felt a strange mixture of drained and elated. Dr. Myers had taken her painstakingly back through her A-level syllabus and then gotten her to itemize the further reading she’d done in her own time, drawing out her opinions on everyone from Jane Austen to Benjamin Zephaniah.
As the tutorial drew to a close, she had the sensation of having undergone a pummeling mental workout as tiring as anything in the school gym.
“Until next week, then,” Dr. Myers said with a smile. “And when you come back, I’d like you to give me a thousand words on the role of social anxiety in any of these novels. There’s a list of books and essays you may find helpful on the reverse.” He handed her a piece of paper, and Hannah glanced down at it, and then turned it over to read the other side. She had read all the novels cited, but none of the critical theory essays listed on the back of the page. She had no idea how she was supposed to find the time to do all of the further reading between now and next week, but she could worry about that later.
“Well, goodbye, Hannah Jones,” Dr. Myers said. “Fare thee well, and we shall meet in a sennite.”
Hannah nodded and turned for the door. When she let herself out into the corridor, the porter who had helped her find Dr. Myers’s room was still there, leaning against a wall. It was the man she had met on her first day—not the grandfatherly one, the other, the one who had given her the keys.
“Got the right room this time?”
Hannah nodded, suppressing her puzzlement. Had he been outside for the whole tutorial?
“Yes, thanks. I don’t think I would have found it without your help.”
“All in a day’s work.” His voice was just as off-kilter as it had been before, high and reedy in comparison to his stocky, six-foot frame. It sounded as though it belonged to a much smaller, frailer man. “Where are you off to now, then?”
“Um…” Hannah hadn’t really thought about it. “I don’t know. The library I guess.” She glanced at the list of books Dr. Myers had handed her.
The porter nodded.
“This way, then.”
“Oh!” Hannah flushed, realizing that he intended to take her. “No, I mean, I know where it is. Honestly. You don’t need to walk me.”
“Can’t have the students getting lost on my watch,” the porter said, and Hannah found herself flushing again, her cheeks hot. She felt annoyed—angry at her own stupid embarrassment, but also at this porter for being so weird and patronizing, and for not taking the hint that she didn’t need his help. Was he really going to accompany her all the way to the library? Why?
“I don’t need you to walk me,” she said again, but the words sounded feeble and hollow, particularly as she had no choice but to follow him down the stairs from Dr. Myers’s room, there being no other exit.
In the end it seemed easier just to let him tag along however strange she felt, being escorted across the quad and through the cloisters by a fifty-something man in a porter’s uniform. When they got to the door of the library she said goodbye with some relief, silently vowing to leave by a different exit. Thank goodness there were several.
“Thank you. Honestly, you didn’t have to.”
“My pleasure,” the porter said. He put out a hand. “John Neville. You need anything at all, you just ask for me.”
“Okay,” Hannah said. She took his hand in spite of a twinge of reluctance. It was cold and soft and a little damp, like touching raw bread dough. “Thanks.”
He held her grip just a little too long. When at last he let go, she tried to walk with dignity into the library, rather than fleeing unceremoniously. But when she got up to the first floor she could not stop herself going to a window overlooking the cloisters to check if he was still there.
To her relief he was not—he was walking away, across the lawns, back to the Porters’ Lodge, and Hannah returned to the vaulted reading room with a sigh of relief.
For the next few hours, she was kept busy, tracking down books and navigating the library’s unfamiliar shelving system. But something about the encounter had shaken her, and as she sat down at the polished oak desk, the books piled up around her, it came back to her—the sensation of his cold, soft fingers on hers, and the sound of his reedy voice in her ears.
She was being silly. He was probably just a lonely middle-aged man with no talent for taking a graceful brush-off. But one thing was for sure: she had absolutely no intention of asking John Neville for help, ever again.
AFTER
“Decaf cappuccino and a brownie?” the server calls, and then, when there’s no response, “Half-fat decaf cappuccino with cinnamon, and a hazelnut brownie?”
“Oh.” Hannah shakes herself out of her reverie. “Yes, that’s me, thank you. Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”
The boy puts the coffee and brownie down on the table along with the receipt. Hannah picks up the cup and takes a sip. It’s good—the coffee at Cafeteria always is—but when she glances at the bill, she puts the cup down. Seven pounds forty. Was Cafeteria always so expensive? Maybe she shouldn’t have ordered that brownie. She isn’t even hungry.
Her phone rings, vibrating its way across the table with a suddenness that makes her jump. It’s probably another bloody reporter, calling from an unregistered number. Picking up the caller that morning was a mistake—she would never have done it if she’d been paying attention.
But when she digs the phone out of her bag, the caller ID gives her a jolt of surprise.
Emily Lippman.
She picks up.
“Em! This is unexpected.”
It is. She hasn’t heard from Emily for… maybe two years? It’s not that they haven’t kept in touch, exactly. They’ve been Facebook friends since uni, so Hannah knows about Emily’s flourishing academic career—she and Hugh are the only ones who really lived up to the promise of those early days. She’s read the impenetrable academic maths papers that Emily posts with a faux casual So… wrote a thing that belies the intense ambition Hannah remembers from Pelham. And for her part, Emily responds to Hannah’s infrequent posts with what seems like genuine affection. Let me know next time you’re down south! she wrote, last time Hannah posted a picture from Dodsworth.
But posting on Facebook is a false kind of intimacy, and in real life they haven’t seen or spoken to each other for a long time—not since Ryan’s wedding. In fact, she wasn’t even sure Emily had this number, though she remembers passing it round last time she swapped.
“Well, I saw the news,” Emily says now. Her disconcerting directness at least hasn’t changed, and that realization gives Hannah a reassuring feeling of familiarity. “You okay?”
“Yes,” Hannah says, with more certainty than she feels. “I mean it was a shock—but yes.”
“And I heard from Hugh that you’re pregnant. Congratulations!”
“Thanks.” The news that Emily is still in touch with Hugh is somehow a surprise. She’s never thought of them as firm friends. “I didn’t know you kept up with Hugh.”