Fifteen years earlier
Do we start with once upon a time; is that how we’ll do it, my love?
Once there was a girl who knew nothing of love or lust or the peculiar sense of freedom you bestowed upon her.
She had arrived at university with her brand new Samsonite suitcase and her matching Cath Kidston bedding, an only child, indulged, adored, who’d existed in a helium-pumped triumvirate for all of her eighteen years.
She began to make friends, one of them her future husband, as the story goes.
Everything came easily: a fellow English student who metamorphosed seamlessly into a best friend, a position on the student newspaper, a trio of A grades that exempted her from exams. Six weeks into her second year, just as the trees were beginning to show off with their golds and crimsons and banana yellows, a boy blew into her tutorial, unexpectedly, earth-shatteringly.
The boy was you.
There were five or six of us in the tutorial that day in a circle of shabby, mismatched armchairs, listening to Professor Hardman describe Milton’s portrayal of Satan as a military hero.
He had a flat, soporific voice, this professor, and the blue-white skin of the exhumed, and he spoke with his eyes closed, one hand cradling his left breast as if he suspected an imminent heart attack.
The door flew open and you came through it wearing yesterday’s crumpled clothes and with your hair standing on end, though nothing could hide your beauty.
Every single student in the room knew your name.
‘Ah, Mr Wilkes. Good of you to join us. Perhaps you’d like to sit next to Miss Elliot,’ the professor pointed to the empty chair next to me, ‘and then you can start reading for us.’
Your voice was deep and beautiful and you read with the preternatural self-assurance that always seems to belong to your kind.
Professor Hardman closed his eyes again as he listened to your unhalting description of Satan, and it was a full five minutes before he raised his hand and said, ‘Beautifully read, thank you. But what do these opening pages tell us about Satan?’
I could feel the rest of the group collectively willing you to stutter or stumble or come out with the same kind of vague inanities that they would produce under pressure, but instead you said you found Milton’s portrayal of Satan as a hero unconvincing.
You outlined his flawed descriptions of the devil in Book IV and V, which showed that, unlike the rest of us, you’d read the entire poem and made your own judgement on it.
In the moment’s silence that followed, I knew that the whole room hated you, for your looks, your confidence, your rumoured wealth and now for this display of fierce, unfettered intelligence.
But even then, right at the beginning, I felt the first tug of admiration.
Afterwards we filed out of the tutorial, across the courtyard and onto the street to the satisfaction of seeing a traffic warden writing out a ticket for the pale blue Austin-Healey we all knew to be yours.
‘Oh shit,’ you said, and then you grabbed hold of my arm.
‘Will you wait here for a second while I deal with this. Please? There’s something I wanted to ask you.
’
Your eyes, the first time I looked properly into them, were jade-coloured, pale and piercing at the same time.
I couldn’t hear what you said, but I watched in amazement as the traffic warden listened to your defence, a slow smile spreading across her face.
As you walked back towards me, she ripped the parking ticket in two.
‘Next time I won’t be so kind,’ she called, and you waved your thanks, though your eyes never left my face.
‘Do you always get your way?’ I said.
‘I try to. Talking of which, I’m taking you for lunch.
Right now. Mystery location, prepare to be amazed.
’
‘Sorry, I can’t.
’
I began to turn away, but you caught hold of my arm again.
‘What’s wrong? Why are you being so …
’ you struggled for the word, then found it, ‘stand-offish?’ You were so surprised, I couldn’t help smiling.
I doubted girls turned down your invitations to lunch very often.
‘People to see, places to go, work to do. The usual.’
‘Oh come on, you can spare an hour or two for lunch, surely?’
‘The thing is, I’ve just started seeing someone.
’
I felt foolish saying it and my cheeks flamed.
But you just laughed.
‘Well I don’t know what you had in mind, but I was only thinking of lunch.
Some seafood, maybe a glass of wine.
Where’s the harm in that?
’
I stood there immobilised, wanting to go but knowing I shouldn’t.
Thinking of Sam but wanting to be with you, the shape of my future if only I’d known it.
‘Not today,’ I said, as if I was refusing dusters from a door-to-door salesman.
You’d read my internal struggle, I saw that with your final smile before you walked back to the pale blue car.
‘Let’s try again tomorrow then,’ you said.