Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Monday. Before Deakin’s assembly. The phone vibrates on the desk at ten past eight. A vibration at ten past eight on a Monday is statistically either Mum or nonsense, so the screen stays dark.
An email. Manchester purple banner at the top. From: Dr H. Salgari. Subject: Semester One results: a quick chat.
One paragraph. Dear Mr Carrick, I’ve been looking through the first-semester marks for Mathematics for Economists, and I’d like to have a brief chat with you about your trajectory in the programme. Please drop by my office sometime this week at your convenience.
Kind regards, Helen.
Helen. Dr Salgari, the colleague. The woman whose heels once receded down Laurence’s corridor at nine in the morning while I was still in his office pretending not to exist. The woman who’s been in the foyer and the back of the lecture theatre and the corner of every departmental space since October.
I read it twice, three times.
Brief chat. At your convenience. Kind regards. Three layers of politeness. Every syllable is weighted.
Could be nothing. It could be that she wants to suggest I switch to maths proper because a ninety-six on the analysis paper is a suspicious score for an economist who does not apparently study.
It could be the other thing.
The trouble with being the student who turns in ninety-six on a proofs paper is that somebody has to mark it. The trouble with his marking is that the department notices. Helen Salgari, especially.
I draft a reply, delete it, draft another. Delete that one. The cursor blinks at me with the patience of a cursor that has watched a lot of boys in Fallowfield draft a lot of replies to a lot of emails they did not want to receive.
I close the laptop.
Deal with it later.
Professor Deakin has the delivery of a man reading court minutes.
Hands clasped. Spectacles on the end of his nose.
The departmental assembly is sixty students and twelve academics crammed into a room designed for forty, and the heating’s been broken since October, which means we’re all wearing coats indoors.
The building has given up. We’re respecting that.
I’m half-asleep in the back row. Femi is beside me, notebook out.
Paying attention. The agenda is projected on a screen that cuts off the last three letters of every line, turning ‘semester examination schedule’ into ‘semester examination sched’ and ‘departmental social event’ into ‘departmental social even.’
‘And finally.’ Deakin adjusts his glasses. ‘The International Congress on Applied Mathematics will take place in Vienna from the fourteenth to the eighteenth of March. The department is sending a delegation.’
Vienna.
My spine straightens. Didn’t tell it to.
‘Places are limited, and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Students wishing to attend should email my office by Friday.’
I stop listening.
Vienna sits in my mouth. Four days, another country. Another city where nobody knows my name or his or what happens when they’re said in the same room.
My eyes find Laurence, front row, end seat. Professional. Neutral. Composure that wouldn’t crack in an earthquake.
But I notice.
The stillness of his hand on his knee. Too still. Eyes forward. I know he wants to turn. I know because something shutters across his face. Fractional. The control I’ve felt him exert a thousand times.
‘Will I be eligible?’ Femi whispers.
‘What?’
‘The trip. Do you think my marks are high enough?’
I look at him. At the genuine hope there. At the notebook where he’s already written VIENNA in capital letters and underlined it twice.
‘Your marks are fine,’ I say. Because they are. Femi studies like breathing depends on it.
The words don’t come out. My marks look impossible for an eighteen-year-old who never studies. Anyone looking too hard will either call me a genius or assume coaching, and both paths lead to disaster.
Vienna is the one place the man I’m sleeping with could touch me in daylight, and that’s everything.
‘Applications by Friday,’ Deakin says. ‘Email my office.’
Friday. Two days.
I look at Laurence again.
This time, he’s looking back—half a second. A wire pulled taut across the room.
Then he turns to the colleague beside him, logistics, and he’s professional, and I’m sitting in the back row with my blood doing things that have nothing to do with applied mathematics.
I’m probably the first student to apply for Vienna, so I get in. The confirmation lands in my inbox at six.
There’s the programme. A PDF. Forty-two pages. Speakers, panels, schedules, a map of the venue, hotel information, and a section about Viennese coffee that sounds written in a dead language.
I scroll.
Speakers. Panel A, Panel B.
The name is on page eleven.
Dr Hugo Lockhart, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge.
Keynote: ‘Topological Invariants in Non-Linear Dynamic Systems.’
I stop scrolling.
Hugo Lockhart, at the conference. In Vienna. Where Laurence and I will be.
My thumb hovers over the screen.
Everything narrows; only page eleven matters.
Hugo.
Photographs boxed under towels, never discarded because that would mean they mattered.
Will be presenting in Panel B on day two, while I sit in the audience in my Lewisham hoodie and eyeliner, wondering if this is what it feels like to be a rough draft.
I put the phone down. Pick it up, put it down.
The desk at Cambridge, the grin. The frame.
I’m not stupid. I saw the photo. The office, the leaded glass, the younger man on the desk. A thing I wasn’t ready for.
Now it has a keynote.
Laurence hasn’t mentioned it.
Laurence checks his email like other people check pulses. He’s read Hugo’s name. He knows Hugo will be there.
And he hasn’t said a word.
I wait because the silence is a test I didn’t plan, and I can’t stop running.
Tuesday. Nothing.
Wednesday. We fuck on his kitchen floor, urgent, graceless, my back against the tile, lips at my throat. After, I lie there with my t-shirt bunched under my armpits and his come on my stomach and the programme on page eleven sitting behind my eyes like a, like evidence I’m choosing not to submit.
He makes coffee and hands me a mug. Talks about the conference panels he’s attending. Mentions three speakers by name.
The omission is surgical. Clean. The precision of it fractures my chest.
I drink the coffee, say nothing. He traces circles on my knee with his thumb. Automatic. Affectionate. He doesn’t know I’m watching it.
Thursday. Nothing.
Friday. I check the application list outside Deakin’s office. Eighteen names. Mine’s fourth. Logistics, not victory. Room numbers, alibis, and how many doors are between his room and mine.
Laurence texts: We should coordinate schedules. Meet me at the flat tonight. We coordinate. Sitting at his kitchen table with the programme between us, highlighters, and a shared calendar. The skip is so smooth it could be accidental. It isn’t.
I make a note of Panel B, day two, 14:00. Don’t circle it. Don’t mention it.
It has a twin now—his silence about Hugo, my silence about knowing. Two omissions face each other.
The question is available: Hey. Your ex is keynoting at the conference. Shall we talk about that, or are we doing the thing where we don’t?
I don’t ask it.
Because asking gives him the chance to explain, and explaining might make it reasonable, and reasonable might defuse the bomb, and part of me wants to see what happens when it goes off.
It’s a test. I know it’s a test. The caring doesn’t exist to stop me.
Mum texts at half eight on a Tuesday morning in February.
Happy birthday, my love. 19, make it count.
The fridge has the cake. Love you. The love you is a Carrick woman’s love, written because she can’t say it on a doorstep.
I send back the heart emoji I’ve been sending since sixth form. It doesn’t cover it. It never does.
Nineteen. It doesn’t fit right. I’m still fresher enough to forget I’m not eighteen for the first three days of a new number.
I spend the morning in the library because the library is the only place in Manchester that doesn’t know what date it is.
Everything else has decided to assault the city with red and pink, like somebody somewhere is getting a commission on hearts.
The shop windows in Piccadilly Gardens. The Boots in Rusholme.
A lad on the tram with a bouquet that cost his lunch money and the panicked eyes of someone learning too late that flowers are the simple part.
Femi finds me around one. I know it’s him before I see him. Femi, in a library, is a man trying to respect a space he clearly resents, complete with shuffling apologies for existing.
‘Carrick.’
‘Keep your voice down.’
‘I will not. It is your birthday and I am your friend from the Global South, which comes with specific obligations. Come.’
He stops at my desk. Holds out a paper bag. Heavy. I take it.
‘What’s this.’
‘Open it outside. They’ll shush me again and I’m at my limit.’
Outside. Rusholme rain on our collars. I open the bag.
A box of fresh samosas from the place on Wilmslow Road his cousin swears by.
Still warm, and a card. Handmade. A writing on the front of a folded piece of A4 that says TO THE SECOND-FITTEST BOY ON THE ECONOMICS DEGREE, and inside, in Femi’s capitals, the fittest one is me, obviously, but you’re close.
nineteen suits you. Find your creepy lover and let him feed you proper food.
It’s Saint Valentine and it’s your BIRTHDAY! love, F.
I look at him. He’s trying not to grin. Failing.
‘Femi.’
‘Don’t start.’
‘You’ve never said his name.’
‘I’m not saying it now. The card has intent, the intent is: go. Be a bloke with a birthday. I’ll see you tomorrow and I’ll ask nothing.’
The samosa in my hand has grease coming through the paper. The rain has opinions about my hair. Femi is wearing the waterproof jacket that hates wind, and his face is doing that thing it does when he wants to say words softly.