CHAPTER 42
Emma adjusted the angle of the photo frame.
Satisfied, she dropped onto her bed. The college had offered her a bigger room.
But this one, an attic overlooking the Gabriel College bell tower on one side and the Meadows on the other, had won her heart on sight.
It was full of nooks and odd angles. And best of all, its battered door opened onto a living room, opposite a matching door that led to Nat’s bedroom.
It had been the last set of connecting rooms available at such short notice, the bursar had said.
“But of course,” he had stammered, “exceptional circumstances, we all know your, ahem—situation.”
She was still getting used to being front-page news. The stares and whispers were unsettling. But there had been one major benefit to being a nationally famous kidnap victim. Whatever she asked for, the University seemed happy to provide. Very happy. Almost anxious to please.
This, of course, had nothing to do with any statements the chancellor had issued during her supposed eighteen-month hostage ordeal. It did not denote any embarrassment on the part of the establishment.
In fact, the University’s press officers had become decidedly vague in the face of inquiries as to why the chancellor had arranged press calls for Richard and his friends on University property.
Or the possibility that he had described the country’s newest criminal celebrity as an “exemplary young man,” undeserving of “the cruel disruption” to his studies from “baseless, discriminatory rumors.” Meanwhile, with much muttering and chain-smoking, the press office were spending their weekends scrubbing every photo of the chancellor with his arm around Richard from the internet.
Emma sat up as Nat appeared in the doorway.
“Hee—hiiii—phhh—” He clung to the doorframe, panting. “Six flights of stairs, Emma,” he mourned. “Six. It isn’t right.”
“That was the deal,” she reminded him. “Remember, these are—”
“The Last Rooms Left,” they chorused.
It was what they’d said when they discovered that the radiators were purely decorative.
Or that the only bathroom was two floors below.
Or that the eerie whistling noise in the living room came from a Victorian speaking tube that nobody had bothered removing.
They already loved their set of rooms with a passion bordering on obsession.
“And at least this high up,” Nat sighed, dropping into an armchair on top of her carefully folded shirts, “nobody can hear us if we scream. Hm. Is that a good thing, in our situation?”
“Nothing has tried to kill me for a week and a half.” Emma rescued her stack of new textbooks from their current role as Nat’s footstool. “I’ll count that as a win.”
Nat held one up. “Ah! So it’s all sorted?”
“Yep.” Emma grinned. “Confirmed today. I start on the natural sciences course in September. I’ve already picked all the zoology modules. I did the required sciences at school, so they didn’t have much more to say about it.”
“Welcome back to the University.” Nat adopted a lordly air.
“Now, as the resident senior academic in these rooms—studying, as I shall be, for a master’s in English—Ow, Emma.
I’ll stop. I was only about to say”—this in an injured tone, evading Emma’s hands—“that this calls for a cooking night to celebrate. My auntie’s just sent me a new recipe.
All in Yoruba this time, so let’s see how good I’ve gotten. ”
“Spicy?” Emma asked, hopefully.
“The bishop has strenuously warned against making it, which bodes well. My adored father finds bread sauce too peppery. I can’t imagine how he coped before he moved to England. But that reminds me—wasn’t your father meant to be here?”
“He called. He wanted to stop by for lunch. Between business trips, of course,” said Emma. A wry note had entered her voice. “He said he was worried when I went missing. That he felt badly, not being there when I was growing up. But—”
“Go on.”
“I’m very proud of myself about this part.”
“I’ll make a big fuss of you,” Nat promised.
“I told him not to bother. I’ve done without him all this time. I don’t need him. I realized”—Emma took a deep breath—“it was my mum I really needed to talk to.”
She turned a textbook over in her hands.
“I’d never told her, not properly. How I feel about all the moving. How I’ve always felt. Leaving my home and my friends, even when I begged her to stay. It felt like I didn’t matter. Or just not as much as her work.”
“And did you?” Nat leaned forward. “Tell her?”
“I called her this morning.”
It had been a strange conversation. Emma’s heartbeats had seared her chest. Her breath had felt just as frantic, as hunted, as when she’d run from Richard or fled the Boar.
But she hadn’t known how much better it would feel, once the words were out there, spoken.
She’d said all of the selfish things she’d hidden for so long.
And her mother had listened, as though they weren’t awful or shameful at all.
As though she saw all of Emma, even the hard, vicious, angry parts, and loved her anyway.
“She said that she was the selfish one. That she’d persuaded herself I was coping fine, because she needed to believe it. Because she wanted those jobs; the moves to exciting new places. And it does sound hard, Nat. Being a mother and your own person at the same time.”
Emma’s mother had told her other things, too.
That deep down, she’d been trying to give her daughter the life she’d always dreamed of.
Travel, independence: all the things she herself hadn’t grown up with.
More than that, she’d wanted to be the best in her field because of Emma.
To be the kind of parent Emma would look up to.
Because she worried she wouldn’t be enough of a parent, by herself.
Without Emma’s father. That she couldn’t fill in the gaps.
Emma shook her head. “I never knew.”
Nat raised an eyebrow. “And how did you feel about it all?”
“Fine,” she said. “I told her I was already proud of her. That I never needed another parent. And that what I wanted right now, more than anything, was to have her with me. Not in a research station across the world.”
Nat applauded.
“It felt so selfish to say. But it was kind of freeing, being selfish out loud.” Emma felt the grin lighting up her face.
“She phoned back a few hours later. She said that I always came first, no matter what. And Nat, she’s moving here.
As in, right here, near the University. She’ll live in town until l graduate.
She called the University about it at lunch.
Apparently, they offered her a job on the spot. ”
“On the spot?” Nat repeated, stupefied.
“She’s that good. The University Plant Sciences Department’s been after her for years.” Emma couldn’t keep the pride from her voice. “It might take her a while to sort out a house in town, so it’ll be just you and me staying at the University this summer, just like we planned.”
“Just as it should be.”
“Although,” Emma amended, “that’s partly because I’m not sure I can go anywhere else right now. There were lots of terms of that bargain I’m not clear about. And we may have to be here for our presentation to the Court, whatever that is.”
They traded grimaces.
“Your parents really don’t mind you staying here over the summer?” Emma asked.
“Oh, they weren’t happy at first. But they want to let me ‘do what feels right for me’ at the moment, which is delightful.
I cannot believe I spent years working myself up to telling my extremely traditional Nigerian father that I planned to give up my bright future to become a penniless actor, and all I got were hugs and great long speeches of unconditional love.
Not a single thunderous passage. Not even a tiny bit of disinheriting. I could have done this years ago.”
“You know,” Emma said, “your smile is a good three inches wider since you came out of that room with them.”
“So obnoxious, isn’t it?”
A throat cleared. “Um—hello? Anyone here?”
A pained expression crossed Nat’s face.
“I’m going to have to try not to laugh at him, aren’t I?” he said. “You’re going to make me.”
“I am.”
Jasper edged into the room, in pink chino shorts and boat shoes. He bounced on his heels. He appeared to be looking for something to say. “It’s very small in here.”
“I like it that way,” Emma said.
“Oh, me too. I was just thinking, it’s about the same size as the cabin on the Phoebus Laurel. We’re getting her fitted up at the moment—cupboard for my darkroom, everything. You might’ve read about the crew we put together, we’ll probably race at—”
Nat made a strange, hiccoughing sound.
“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Jasper scraped back his golden curls. “I’ve heard the rumors.
My head’s not exactly straight about it all, I still can’t believe Richard would”—he caught himself—“not that I’m saying you’re lying.
But people are saying he kidnapped you, the night you went missing.
And held you prisoner for a year and a half? ”
Emma nodded, keeping her face carefully smooth.
It was the story she’d decided to stick to.
Richard was in no state to contradict it.
He had been blank as a sleepwalker when the police cuffed him in the Library.
Later, he agreed placidly to every charge put to him, though in a flat vacant voice that gave even his defense counsel the shivers.
Now he sat in a cell awaiting trial, with no apparent interest in life beyond staring at a wall.
“And the things they’re saying—he really kept you in a storeroom in the Library?”
“I don’t know,” Emma said. She was getting practiced at evasion. “He kept me pretty drugged up.”
“Yes,” Jasper said sagely. “My father’s investigators said your blood tests came back very strange.”