Chapter 22
It’s been over a fortnight since that class. She thought then that the professor might have asked her to stay behind and explain to him what she meant. But he watched her walk out of the seminar room without any attempt to hold her back.
Ben hasn’t talked to her either, not since she walked straight past him at the end of the class. It’s as if she’s surrounded by a forcefield, or something at her core that repels all the other students, although Lucy sees them watching her when she turns her head suddenly and catches them staring.
She doesn’t care about the other students.
She’s isolated, not lonely. The workload is steep, no time for dwelling on things.
At least forty hours a week, and that’s with only selective reading from the list. Lucy is reading everything, not just the books on the list, but the books referred to in the footnotes, too, and all the articles.
Perhaps she should be worried that the professor hasn’t tried to engage further with her, but she’s not. She knows that he’s hooked, that he wants to know what she meant, what she was talking about. It’s only a matter of time.
Sure enough, as the year edges into early spring, her moment comes. At the end of the seminar, he asks for volunteers for a research assignment, a paper he needs to prepare unexpectedly for a conference at the weekend.
‘A keynote speaker is ill,’ he says. ‘So they’ve asked me to step in.
I’m going to need some help, though. It’s nearly my area, but not quite, so there’s some work to do.
I need someone to provide a synopsis of all the main points of any relevant research.
Could be a couple of all-nighters, but you’ll learn a lot. ’
Lucy shoots her hand up before looking round the room to see that nearly everyone else has, too. Not like school, when volunteers had to be dragged kicking and screaming to read aloud, or even answer a simple question. Every student is as keen as she is. Though not quite.
She sits still, an image of what’s going to happen clear in her mind. He’s going to look round the room, and after a show of hesitation, he’s going to lean over and—
‘Lucy, you said something in your application about the Nordic model of incarceration, if I’m not mistaken.’
She nods, unable to speak. It’s exactly as she’d hoped it would be.
‘I think this will be right up your alley. Stay after class and we’ll discuss.’
Daggers from round the room, but they bounce straight off her, the forcefield around her now glowing gold.
‘Come over to my office,’ he says at the end of the session. She’s the last student left at the table.
‘Now?’
‘I’ll show you what I need you to do,’ he says.
They walk through the quad together, their shoulders nearly touching as they approach the narrow arch that leads to the building where his personal office is situated.
Lucy jumps back at the proximity, stumbling as he gestures for her to go through.
She might be twenty-two, not some squeaky undergraduate, but now that the moment’s come and she’s in his presence, she’s all thumbs, her feet stuck on the wrong way.
As he unlocks his office door, Lucy’s cheeks start to warm.
He gestures her through but she steps back – no, after you.
She wants to get her blushing back under control.
It really is like it was at school when she had such a crush on Alan Mackenzie, who was in her history class.
They snogged once after a disco one Friday night and every time she saw him after that, she turned red as a tomato, much to her friends’ glee.
Shouldn’t she have grown out of it by now?
She could kick herself for the stupidity of it. It’s time to stop undermining herself.
He’s noticed her. He knows she could be the other half to his whole, the partner in his already illustrious career that he doesn’t know he needed. The work they’ll do together, the advances in prison reform . . .
‘Come on through,’ he says, and she lands back down on earth, shaking her head free of the nonsense of it all. She follows him.
‘It’s these,’ Edgar says, handing her a sheaf of printouts. ‘I need to get these summarised as soon as possible, so that I can see if I should address them in the paper.’
Lucy takes them from him, starts to leaf through them.
‘It’s more general than my usual area,’ he says. ‘More of the criminology aspect, less of the specific prison considerations. Of course, I keep up with all of this, but it’s good to know what peers are proposing.’
Lucy nods enthusiastically, like a bloody dog.
Nothing useful to say for herself. Now she’s alone with him, the idea of bringing up anything unsolicited feels almost impossible.
He sits down behind his desk and turns on his computer, the light catching his cheekbones, emphasising the clean lines of his profile.
Objectively speaking, despite his age – perhaps even because of it – he is ridiculously handsome.
It’s not just his reputation; in some ways she knows she’s responding to that, too, in her blushing and her fluttering and the way that she keeps touching her hair, flicking the strands across her eyes.
He catches her gaze and looks away, his expression resigned. It must happen all the time, students flinging themselves at him. Lucy is filled with a sudden urge to blurt out that she’s not like them, she’s different.
‘You said something about your mother,’ Edgar says, breaking the silence.
Oh God. Not here. Not yet. She’s not ready to talk about it. Her mouth can’t form the words.
‘She died?’ he prompts.
‘I . . .’ She can’t say it. He turns his face away, but not before she’s seen something pass across it, a shadow, so fast she’s not even sure now that it was there.
‘Never mind,’ he says. ‘No need to discuss anything you’re not comfortable with. Tell me about your first degree. Manchester, wasn’t it?’
Now she’s on more comfortable territory, the words start to flow. She tells him about her studies, her first, the fact that she had visited Strangeways every week as a volunteer in a literacy charity throughout her degree.
‘That’s fantastic,’ he says. ‘My wife’s interested in literacy in prisons, women after their release, that kind of thing. Maybe you could volunteer with her organisation?’
Her nails dig into her hand. She’d known he must be married, but it’s difficult to hear. ‘I’d love to,’ she says after a moment. ‘It’s great that you both work in the same field.’
‘To a point,’ Edgar says. ‘She volunteers from time to time, that’s all. Though at least she has views about prison welfare. It would be tricky if she were completely uninterested. I mean, it’s . . .’ He doesn’t finish his sentence.
He looks at Lucy with such intensity that she almost quivers, his gaze searing through to her core, as if he can see the very heart of her. His charisma level is almost through the roof. She’d thought she would have the upper hand as a young woman; she was wrong.
‘I’m glad you’re able to help me with this,’ he says, and for a moment he stands close to her, his blue eyes locked to hers, and it’s hanging in the air between them, the question will they won’t they, and even though Lucy knows how much there is to say, and how much this is not what this is about, all she actually wants is for him to lean forward and—
‘Do you think you’ll be able to get the work done in time?’ He turns away from her and the moment is broken.
‘Yes, it’s no problem. I’ll have it done by Friday morning.’
‘No boyfriend or anything to distract you?’
‘No.’ She blushes again, glad that he’s got his back to her now.
‘Good. Sensible. Devote yourself to your studies.’
She shuffles the papers together and puts them into her bag. He’s sitting at his computer, absorbed by something on the screen. She raises a hand in farewell and he tilts his head towards her without looking.
She’s dismissed.
But she knows when she returns that the door will be open for her, and that he will be waiting. Next time, she’s going to be ready.