CHAPTER 2
Among the tourists buying University sweatshirts, among the scramble of bicycles in its arteries and the punts gliding along its veins, the City sensed the life in one small square. Within the embrace of Gabriel College, a girl was hurrying across a flood-silvered lawn.
Women—as recently added to the intellectual life of the University as they were—were always thinking or reading or walking the City’s paths now. The sight was no surprise to it. Nevertheless, it paused a moment before its attention rolled onward to the river.
For a girl whose posture did not betray an obvious longing for the spotlight, Emma Curran possessed features that demanded to take up space.
She was built on taller lines than the average, with sharp shoulders and long, sturdy legs.
Her nose and brows were striking rather than delicate.
The strength of her features added a character to her little moon-circle face that time had not yet given.
Everything else about her looked bare and fresh.
And, at the moment, a little damp. The last spatters of rain were blowing off the river, straight into her face.
But at least her feet were dry. The waders were perfect.
She splashed on across the marshland that had once been Gabriel’s croquet lawn.
A stray sunbeam lit the turrets above, striking gold from the weathered stone.
And Emma’s heart swelled, as it always did when she looked at her home.
Gabriel College, crumbling and magnificent.
Low of coffer but great of heart: its tapestries moldering, but its ducks the best fed in the city.
It was where Emma’s soul came to roost and had done since the day she arrived.
The college was the northmost of those lining the river.
Beyond its august walls lay only the University Meadows and the Guilder Wood.
Their paths were her favorite haunts. Curlews stalked the grasses; shadowy copses hid the elusive Guilder deer.
Emma had even glimpsed a pair of otters at the bend in the river by the North Gate.
But she had no time to watch now. Emma checked the zip of her bag again, convinced it might have opened itself while she wasn’t looking.
It was tightly fastened. Not a drop could leak onto the papers inside.
She tugged down her hood and slipped out of the North Gate.
The floodwater in Gabriel Passage was only ankle-deep.
Another good omen. The High Street was bound to be passable.
As Emma waded on, she saw signs that the colleges, so tightly shut during the flood, were coming back to life.
Portly Granville College, lounging across two blocks of the city.
Lady Margaret’s, with its eerie twisted towers.
Cheerful Sussex and austere Wessex. This place was like nowhere else.
It called to her, an enchanting song of beauty and history and something beyond that, something she’d never been able to name.
Everywhere, doors opening, college bedders sneaking cigarettes in the archways, the chatter of students piping among the chimneys.
Water was sluicing down the High Street, draining down cobbled lanes that sloped to the river.
A procession of porters waded through the churn, bearing spadefuls of frogs.
The floodwater rippled up around their calves and ankles like a preening cat, throwing out bewitching glints.
It was almost mesmeric, watching it. Emma felt her breathing slow, her nerves drift.
Then the porters flipped their spades. Frogs splashed into the tide and were swept, croaking, back to the river.
Startled from her daze, Emma jerked up. She’d been leaning toward the water, her hand almost brushing the surface.
She didn’t remember why. A porter tipped his bowler hat to Emma, and she waded on.
Her bag started ringing. Emma rummaged inside for her phone. She saw the caller and smiled. Madagascar was three hours ahead. Her mother would be having lunch in the research station canteen.
“Have I caught you before the interview?” Her mother sounded cheerful, as always.
Something in Emma’s chest loosened. “On my way now.”
“Oh, good. Sorry, we’ve had a mare’s nest of a morning. First the water in the lab backed up, then we found a lemur nibbling the power cables outside.”
Emma’s mother was an academic. “A fertility expert,” she liked to say at parties.
“Only for plants, not people.” And people laughed.
They usually did, when she was around. Dr. Diana Curran was a square-set, petite woman with strong hands, often covered in soil.
Thanks to her mother’s trailblazing research career, Emma had grown up in six cities, four field stations, and eight different countries.
She’d been told she didn’t sound properly English, as a result.
Her mother had always said that was a good thing.
For now, her mother was heading up a research station in Madagascar. Emma had been promised a rainforest trip for the Christmas holidays, so she was a fan of this latest posting.
“How’s things at Gabriel? Still flooded in?”
“Just going down. People have gone mad, though, being shut inside. Everyone is talking about the fuss in the kitchen. One of the chefs is threatening to quit. Apparently, someone’s been sneaking the desserts from the fridge overnight and leaving a crock of petals in their place. So Nat says, anyway.”
Her mother chuckled. “Must be the students, surely. I’ve seen enough practical jokes in my time. And how is Nat doing? Did it go well, telling his parents? You never said.”
“Turns out he didn’t do it. Spent the whole summer working up to it, too.
He says his family have just about come to terms with him dating boys, but him throwing over a decent career for a life on the stage would be, in his words, ‘like hurling a grenade into a cage of poodles.’ It’s all a bit weird still with the traditional parts of his family, anyway. ”
“Oh, that’s tough. But what does his father think he’s doing all this time, outside of class?”
“Volunteering at the church, like he was supposed to.”
“Well, tell him from me that it’s best to be honest. Now, back to you, ladybug. Nervous?”
“A little.”
“You don’t need to be. You can do anything you set your mind to, and don’t forget it.”
Emma hung up, feeling a warmth in her chest. Not for the first time, she wished she had the assurance that came so naturally to her mother.
Her fierce mother, whose only lapse in insight had been a brief, careless liaison with a man of more charm than principle.
Who had brought forth her unplanned baby a week before her PhD viva, with no father in sight.
The only thing that man had ever given Emma, she liked to say, was the surname on her birth certificate.
Emma Pelham. And even that they never used.
She had been Emma Curran to the world from the day her mother brought her home.
Diana Curran had marched in front of a panel of academics alone, baby Emma strapped to her chest, and delivered a blistering PhD defense. She had left destined for one of the brightest careers in her field. She would not have been afraid of a few questions at an interview.
Nerves thrummed in Emma’s belly. By the time she turned into the forecourt of the Science Department, she felt her pulse in every part of her body.
Emma followed the signs to a corridor lined with plastic chairs, and shed the waders.
A single poster stuck to a glass door read “Colefax-Lee Foundation Interviews: Wait Here.”
The lines of seats were empty. The other candidates were running late, she supposed. Emma chose the chair nearest the door, hid the waders underneath, and waited.
Purposeful steps echoed down the corridor. Emma’s head jerked up.
The cool, oval face was one Emma knew well. At least by sight.
Julia Colefax-Lee’s eighteenth birthday had been captured in lavish detail in Tatler.
Her mother, it was rumored, was a paternal cousin to Princess Diana.
Her godmother was a former lady-in-waiting to the queen.
She had emerged from Swiss boarding school with the expected poise and accomplishments.
She had also acquired a gracious smile that made those in its path feel included and special—however quickly its giver hurried away afterward.
Like Emma, Julia belonged to Gabriel College. Emma had seen her returning to her room, surrounded always by a cloud of girls with hand-painted highlights and whippety torsos. They had never spoken.
The cool gaze took her in with a hint of surprise. “You’re not here for the foundation, are you?”
“Th-the interview?” Emma stammered. “Yes.”
“Mmm.” Julia’s gaze was dancing somewhere above Emma’s shoulder. “Well. I’m sure the rest will be here soon. The other interviewers are running a little late too.”
Emma couldn’t coax her eyes away from Julia’s dress, an exquisitely tailored confection of cream silk.
It looked as though it had been designed for the boardroom of a California tech company.
Emma darted a look down at her own plain white shirt and sole pair of smart trousers. They had seemed lovely in her room.
A redhead charged into the corridor, a sodden umbrella streaming in her wake.
“Jules! Bloody nightmare getting here. And Venetia nowhere to be seen, of course.”
Julia sighed. “I’d wanted to wait for her, but—there! Beautiful girl!”
The object of her raptures stalked down the corridor, not visibly moved. She had a perfectly symmetrical face, delicately pointed chin, and long blond Alice in Wonderland hair. Not a drop of water clung to her skintight leather dress or the red bottoms of her boots.
“God, the taxi driver took forever. Well, if we’re doing this, let’s get it done.”
Centuries of boredom oozed from that one small voice.
“Of course, darling. Let’s set up. We’ll leave some time for the candidates to arrive.”