Chapter 2 #2
My voice is even. Low. The words of a man answering a technical question in a lecture. The pressure underneath is different, and I’m not hiding it as well as I’d like.
He tilts his head a fraction. ‘Be more specific.’
‘f is trapped between two functions that both agree on where they’re going. So f has to end up in the same place. It doesn’t get a say. The bounds squeeze it down till the only value left for the limit of f at a is L.’ A beat. ‘It’s the squeeze. It’s in the name.’
Somewhere in the front row, a bloke laughs—small, nervous, he thinks I’m being cheeky with the lecturer, and he’s half-right.
Haldrey doesn’t move.
‘And what do we need, for that to work?’
Here. This is the bit.
‘Both bounds have to approach the same value,’ I say.
‘From the right and from the left. If they don’t agree, if one’s coming in from above and the other’s coming in from below and they don’t meet, then f isn’t trapped, sir, it’s somewhere in the middle of a gap.
No limit. You’ve got to give it somewhere to land. ’
Approach, from above, from below. Agree, trapped. Somewhere to land.
I’ve selected every single one of those words.
I stop, bite it back, look at him. He’s got the marker in his right hand, held still against the tray at the bottom of the board, left hand flat on the lectern.
The tendon at the side of his neck moves once—a swallow, small and disciplined and entirely visible from the back row if you know what you’re looking for. And I’m looking.
He says, ‘That’s correct.’
Two words, Lancashire vowels, unhurried. The correct sits in his throat for a beat longer than it needs to.
‘Technically complete,’ he adds. ‘Informally phrased.’ A pause. ‘Useful instinct.’
He turns back to the board.
My hand comes down. The theatre goes back to its glazed expressions. Femi’s gone completely still beside me. He heard every word underneath the words.
Haldrey writes the theorem on the board in the same tight hand he writes everything in, and then he talks for forty-five minutes about it. My pen stays still. He holds himself like a held breath.
The lecture ends.
People start gathering their things. Haldrey doesn’t look at the back row again. He could have, but he chose not to. That’s information too.
Femi closes his notebook. Hasn’t written anything on the page. He’s grinning and barely containing it.
‘You absolute slag,’ he says. Low. Delighted.
‘Shut up.’
‘Trapped between two bounds. From above and from below. Squeeze.’ He mouths from below with theatrical slowness. ‘Ewan. My brother in Christ. In front of two hundred people.’
‘It’s the terminology, Femi. That’s literally what the theorem is called.’
‘Sure. Sure it is.’ He’s packing his bag like he’s been handed gold. ‘And the sir?’
‘What about the sir.’
‘The sir, Ewan.’
‘Shut up, Femi.’
I’m not looking at him. He’s loving this too much.
Femi has been out since twelve, I have been out since thirteen, and Femi is reading me in the queue at enrolment like gay men know each other in any line longer than four people.
Femi sat through the running commentary of every lad I’ve pointed at in this city since Monday of freshers’ week.
‘He’s our lecturer,’ Femi says.
‘He’s a lecturer with a pretty face. I’m not blind, Femi. And I’m not suicidal.’
‘Exactly. So drop it.’
We file out with the rest of the theatre.
My hood’s still up. Haldrey’s at the lectern with his back to the room, wiping the board, one long, slow sweep of the eraser across the theorem.
The pull of the cotton between his shoulder blades.
I track it from my seat to the aisle, then force my eyes to the floor.
In the corridor outside, Femi says, ‘Right. Canal Street tomorrow. Non-negotiable.’
‘Was already planning to.’
‘Good. Allan’s meeting us at ten. He’s booking a table.’
‘A table. On Canal Street.’
‘I know. I know. He said, let’s get a table first, then see where the night goes, like he’s forty years old and owns a Volvo. I nearly cried.’
‘You’re so gone.’
‘I’m so gone.’ Femi’s grinning at his phone, where presumably Allan has texted him something like can’t wait with a sun emoji.
‘Come for one drink. Say hi properly. Then peel off and do whatever it is you do,’ he waves a hand at the whole concept of me, ‘and I’ll stay with Allan and try not to propose on the first round. ’
‘Deal.’
‘And you,’ he says, side-eyeing me, ‘are going to burn off whatever that was back there.’ He jerks his thumb at the theatre behind us. ‘With some lad you don’t know the name of. Aren’t you?’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘Thought so.’ He exhales. Cataloguing. Femi knows my Fridays-into-Saturdays by heart: the hookup pattern, the routine.
Has held my hoodie while I’ve snogged strangers in smoking areas, has texted me home safe?
at three AM and has always got a thumbs-up back.
Femi trusts me, which is a generous reading most days and an inaccurate one today.
Tomorrow night I’ll find somebody tall. Dark hair.
Glasses, if I can get them. I’ll take him somewhere strange, and I’ll burn this off me, and I’ll come back on the first bus Sunday morning with my neck sore and my head clear and a weekend’s worth of distance between me and the back row of that theatre.
That’s the plan.
My phone buzzes in my pocket as we hit the doors. Ronan. Settling in okay?
The message stays.
I walk to the bus stop with fists in my hoodie pockets and the word correct in his Lancashire vowels looping behind my eyes.
Eleven days till Tuesday week.
I start counting down.