The last fraught hours disintegrated in his mind. There was nothing left now but a shaky residue of shock.
‘Please, yeah,’ he said, drawing himself up straight again. ‘Tea would be great. I might have some sugar in it actually. I seem to have gone back to having sugar in my tea today.’ He reached over and took Adam’s toast, bit it, gave it back. Relief cut through him. He felt easy, light, as if the world were after all a place where he could be, as if this problem that had existed in him so urgently had in vanishing washed away all others with it. If Adam was his friend, and was not the Ripper, if the Ripper could be caught and locked away, if Phyllis loved him, then everything else would fall into place. He would finish his degree, move in with Phyllis and start the rest of his life.
* * *
But on 1 September, just before Christopher began his third year, the Yorkshire Ripper struck again: Barbara Leach, not a prostitute but another student, this time from Bradford University. Christopher documented her death in the usual way, felt its sordid details run over his skin like sweat. He waited and watched for news of more attacks. At night, he looked out for anyone who fitted the description, stared at couples walking arm in arm, became alive to the rare sound of females on the street. But there were no more murders reported that academic year, which in the end went much as the second year had.
Christopher studied hard, worked his shifts, went out sometimes with Adam and the boys. He listened to Adam’s tales of his romantic conquests with a mixture of amusement and confusion and spent his nights alone with his right hand and his dreams of Stevie Nicks. He did not see Angie – at the thought of her, guilt flooded into him like coffee too hot, too bitter, and so he tried not to think of her at all. Phyllis he did think of, all the time, even when he was studying. He visited her as often as he could, and when he went to her his lungs filled with air, though it felt like something more than oxygen that swelled his chest and made him run the last yards to her front door. Whatever it was, it was enough to fray the rope that for so long had tied itself too tightly around his heart. Without that rope, he could breathe.
One evening a week or two before the final exams, Adam burst through the front door, which gave directly onto the kitchen of the two-bedroom back-to-back terrace they had rented in Autumn Avenue, and said: ‘Christopher. Mate. I’m in love.’
He mock-staggered across the thin scratchy carpet and collapsed onto the sofa, where Christopher had been reading Progress and Poverty The Industrial Revolution. Adam threw his feet over the edge of the sofa and laid his head on Christopher’s lap. He blew at the pages of Christopher’s book, tried to put his nose in the gap between the spine and the cover.
‘Christopher,’ he sang. ‘Chri-i-i-istophe-e-er.’
With a shake of his head, Christopher put his book aside.
‘Mate,’ said Adam, the smell of ale on his breath.
‘Well?’
Adam closed his eyes and knotted his hands over his chest, the pose like the stone lid of a knight’s tomb.
‘She is heaven, man,’ he said.
‘What’s her name, then, this heavenly creature?’
‘Stephanie.’
‘Stephanie, I see.’
‘I am going to marry her.’
‘I say, she must be an angel,’ said Christopher.
‘She is.’
‘So how did this meeting come about?’
But Adam was asleep. Christopher had to slide from under him, holding his head and laying it on a cushion as he stood. He made for his bedroom to fetch a blanket but had only got as far as the living-room door when his friend called to him.
‘Where are you going, man? Don’t you want to know the details?’
Adam had met Stephanie at the Headingley Arms and had fallen into conversation after she had dropped her earring, which had wedged itself between two floorboards.
‘I dug it out with a paper clip,’ he said, smiling toothlessly like an idiot. ‘She said I was her knight in shining stationery.’ He laughed. ‘That’s not her best joke. She’s funny and clever and sexy as hell.’
‘She sounds marvellous.’
‘She is, man. Bloody marvellous with a capital M. And beautiful. I love her. I’m in love with her. I’m going to marry her. She is the one, I’m telling you. She is. The one.’
* * *
Despite Adam’s relative indolence until the eleventh hour compared with Christopher’s relentless diligence, both graduated with a 2:1. Christopher applied for and was accepted onto a teacher-training course in Aigburth, which he had chosen for its proximity to Runcorn – he would live with Phyllis and the family and look for work nearby once he qualified. Adam got a job as a junior electronic engineer with British Aerospace and planned to move down to the outskirts of Stevenage.
‘Stephanie’s agreed to come and live with me,’ he said when they came to say goodbye to each other and to the tiny house they had shared. ‘Give me six months to work on her. You’ll be my best man when the time comes.’
‘I’ll hold you to it.’
Adam had already loaded his cases, his record player, his guitar and his mirror into the Mini. Wiping his hands on his jeans, he stepped up onto the pavement, where Christopher was waiting to wave him off. The moment of parting had arrived and it silenced them. They stood in the grey Leeds light and said nothing. They had felt this moment coming these last weeks, and now here it was. The memories of all they had shared flashed through Christopher’s mind: Adam’s silly entrance into their shared room in halls that very first day, the first time Christopher had witnessed his room-mate’s virtuoso skills as he smooth-talked Alison, his pep talks – chutzpah, mate, that’s what you need – their conversations late at night before the hissing gas fire, both tired but neither willing to go to bed. Most of all, he would miss Adam’s kindness, how like a light it was. This was what it meant to be loved: to feel the light of another person shine on you, a light under which you could grow. Adam had this light. Phyllis had this light. But he could never tell Adam all that he meant to him, could never put it into words. If he did, Adam would tell him to fuck off.
Instead, he met his friend’s eye and smiled. ‘So this is it.’
‘Come here, you lanky bugger,’ said Adam.
The two men held each other, slapped each other’s backs.
‘You’re my best friend,’ Christopher said, his voice choked, his mouth close against Adam’s left ear.
‘And you mine, mate,’ said Adam. ‘And you mine.’
* * *