Siobhan #3
His response comes a minute later. Probably better in person.
I don’t feel comfortable talking about this stuff on the phone.
Can you come to Glasgow this week? I’m swamped at work but we could have a drink.
Siobhan stares into space. He works in advertising or something now, Nora had said, for some big agency with Nespresso machines in the office and company retreats to Venice.
Online content creation, something like that.
She wonders whether he can bear to look down a camera lens anymore, or whether it’s only her who is that weak.
A second message arrives before she has chance to respond.
Or maybe just coffee. Shiv, I need you to know I haven’t changed my mind.
After we talk, I don’t want to meet again.
Siobhan rubs her fists into her eyes, a dull headache starting to form.
She types, That’s okay, I love you, then deletes it and replaces it with, I get it.
I’ll come on Thursday. He doesn’t respond after that, but she copies his number and saves it in her contacts.
She does it more slowly than she needs to.
Typing ‘Theo’ into the name field feels like new skin closing over a wound.
* * *
The sky is a bleak white and there’s a dusting of snow across the top of Arthur’s Seat as Siobhan makes her way to the university.
It’s November now, the heart of the autumn term, and so the campus is busy with students.
It’s always obvious which ones are freshers, books clutched to their chests as they mill between classes.
Siobhan hasn’t been back here since she graduated, and she’d almost forgotten how it felt: the safe cloak of academia, the reliable structure of terms and exams and coursework to lean back on.
The last time she’d been here, she’d barely even heard the words Hex House, never as anything more than a story, a fairytale, a joke.
It’s obvious to her now how clearly she has demarcated her life into before and after.
Everything before the house has a rosiness to it.
She wishes she could slip between the years and find herself as a fresher in this very courtyard.
She’d say that life can be so much more unforgiving and awful than she knows.
She’d tell herself to take all that heady ambition and aim it as far away as possible from Hex House.
Instead of going straight to the library, she finds herself heading for the film department.
She remembers a time when her life was composed of seminars and lectures, long, leisurely hours talking and thinking about the craft of film, analysing colour palettes and learning how to make things that might matter.
Siobhan takes the stairs to the staff offices, walks the slim hallway and peers into the open doors at the brimming bookcases, messy filing systems, lecturers typing away at keypads.
She stops when she sees the sign reading ‘Professor Owen Jameson – Programme Director’.
His door is closed, but there are voices coming from inside: Owen’s, and another – younger, female, presumably a student.
Siobhan had a one-to-one with him in this office once, towards the end of her degree.
He’d told her to watch some films by an obscure Ukrainian filmmaker who’d also done a lot of work in women’s violence shelters, and she remembers nodding, yes she would, knowing all the time that she wouldn’t, because her project was already finished and she didn’t want to make any changes to it.
She’d been arrogant, had believed that she’d already seen all she needed to see, knew all she needed to know.
Impatience is what she’d felt, sitting in that office.
She’d found Owen dull and the room too hot, had been keen to stride forward into whatever came next.
Now, she waits outside with her heart beating quickly, leaning her head close to the door so that she can pick out snippets of conversation.
“… is really a representation of desire, and simultaneously a rejection of the domestic,” Owen says.
His voice is different in this context: deeper, more authoritative.
Siobhan tries to reconcile it with the man who burned the pasta sauce and kissed her neck like a teenage boy, but the voice won’t fit the image. He’s more capable here.
“That’s really interesting,” the girl is saying, and Siobhan imagines her scribbling in her notepad, trying to keep up. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Owen says something else that Siobhan can’t hear, and their conversation rumbles on for a few more minutes. Then, the sound of a bag being zipped, the squeak of a chair. The voices grow louder as they approach the door.
“Thanks, Amber. Really exciting stuff. You know, you should think about applying to my production company when term ends. You’d be a real asset.”
Siobhan’s stomach churns. She steps back as the door opens.
A short girl with a thick fringe and thin lips comes out, adjusting her backpack and giving Owen an awkward wave as she sets off down the hall.
Owen stays in the doorway and watches her, eyes flickering down her body.
Siobhan clears her throat. He turns to her.
His eyes widen but he recovers quickly, his smile warm and without reservation.
His cheeks flood with colour. He’s always giving himself away, Siobhan thinks.
Does he know that? Owen coughs then looks again down the hallway behind her, seeming relieved to find it empty apart from Amber’s retreating back.
“Can I come in?” Siobhan asks.
Owen hesitates. He’s wearing a simple white shirt, dark jeans, glasses. Understated and dignified. “Okay,” he says eventually. “I don’t have long though.”
They enter his office, and Siobhan shuts the door behind them.
She sits down in the seat that’s still warm from Amber and glances around the room, which is small and narrow.
Above the desk are mounted shelves, loaded with what looks like a dangerous number of books.
There’s a series of Star Wars prints on the wall opposite, and next to his computer is a framed picture of two dark-haired children Siobhan assumes are his niece and nephew.
Owen takes a seat in front of the desk and begins to clear away the papers in front of him.
Siobhan glimpses the name ‘Amber Stevens’ on the top of a marked essay.
“The female characters in this film are subject to the male gaze,” she reads flatly from the first paragraph. “Wow. Amber is a savant.”
“Don’t be mean,” Owen says, but he’s smiling. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Siobhan shrugs. “I was in the area.”
He furrows his eyebrows quizzically, but then a ping from his computer makes him turn. Siobhan watches his eyes run back and forth over the screen. “Hmmm,” he says softly, hand on the mouse. “Two seconds. I just need to respond to this.”
Siobhan leans back and watches him. She likes seeing him here, his practised fingers skating across the keys, skin healthy and tanned against the whiteness of his shirt, biting his lip as he concentrates.
He had said she was in control, that the shifting thing between them could be whatever she wanted it to be, but she wonders if that still applies in this environment.
While he’s still typing, she stands. She uses her knee to nudge his chair so it moves a little, away from the desk and towards her.
“Siobhan,” Owen says, laughing, still trying to type, but he goes quiet when she places a knee either side of his hips and climbs up so that she’s sitting astride him.
His eyes fix on hers then wander down to her lips.
“Wait,” he says, but Siobhan kisses him, the way she wants to this time, firm and hard, pressing him back into the chair.
He hesitates for a second then responds, one hand on each of her hips, pulling her into him.
Outside the door, footsteps approach then recede. The sound seems to wake him up.
“Siobhan,” he says again, this time pushing her shoulders away. “We can’t do this here.” His mouth is red and almost sore-looking where it pressed against hers. She wonders whether it’ll bruise.
“Fine,” she says. She dismounts his chair and returns to her own, inspecting her ragged nails, as if bored. There’s a flush of anger rising up her neck, hot and urgent.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” he whispers. “Believe me. It’s just,” he gestures to his computer, the stack of papers on his desk, “I’ve got meetings to go to and essays to mark. Student tutorials to arrange.”
Siobhan looks over Owen’s shoulder, out of the window, where the bare branches of a large tree are just visible.
She’s envious, suddenly, of those students and their tutorials and all the things they have coming next.
She wonders how many of them will go on to have shiny careers, job offers at Owen’s company, or at SunWolf.
“You should arrange a tutorial with Sylvie Fournier,” she hears herself saying.
Owen had been cracking his knuckles against his knee, but now he stops, peering at her. “What? Why?”
“Because she’s talented, remember? You said so, the other day.”
Owen opens his mouth then closes it again, shaking his head gently. “Sylvie hasn’t asked for a tutorial, Siobhan. Why do you keep bringing her up? Is there something going on?”
Siobhan shrugs. “Sylvie’s my friend, that’s all. I think she might benefit from your guidance.”
“I don’t really understand what’s going on, Siobhan.
Talking about Sylvie with you feels a bit…
inappropriate, to be honest.” He bites his lip.
There’s a tiny bead of blood where the skin’s been ripped off.
I’m still in control, she tells herself, and it makes her fingers tingle where they’re wedged under her thighs. Even here.
“What’s inappropriate about it? Don’t you have tutorials with every student on the module at some point?”
“Well, yes, but usually…”
“Has Sylvie had one yet?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, then. There’s nothing inappropriate about offering some extra support.”
Owen pauses, sighs.
“It would make me happy. Really happy.”
She can see how powerful those words are. They tighten everything about him. “If I offer Sylvie a tutorial,” he says carefully, “can I take you out for dinner next week?”
“Sure,” she says.
Owen hesitates. “Fine,” he eventually concedes, holding both his hands up as if Siobhan is aiming a gun at him.
“There can’t be any harm in it.” He swivels back to his desk, writes a two-line email and clicks send.
The computer emits a quiet little ‘whoosh’ as the email is fired into the ether.
“Happy?” he asks, when he turns back to her.
“Very,” says Siobhan.