hands and knees, defrosting some vital piece of plumbing with a kettle.
With the undergraduates all home for Christmas, and the thick snow like a layer of cladding on the ground, college was almost eerily silent. When one of Theresa’s colleagues tapped her on the shoulder, she almost jumped out of her skin.
‘Jesus, Harry, you frightened the life out of me. I never heard you coming.’
‘I know. Brilliant, isn’t it, the snow? Makes me want to skip about like a ten-year-old.’ Harry Tremayne grinned. A sprightly sixty-year-old classics scholar, he was a throwback to another, gentler era, before graffiti and football hooliganism and internet porn, before ugly bendy buses belched their fumes onto King’s Parade and undergraduates stripped topless every May Week and had their photographs published in The Sun. On a day like today, though, Harry’s Cambridge felt within reach. Theresa could have hugged him. ‘You look cheerful,’ said Harry.
‘I am.’ Theresa glowed. ‘I feel inspired. At least two thousand words today, I think.’
‘Marvellous,’ said Harry. ‘I’m so pleased you aren’t letting that vile ex-husband of yours dampen your spirits.’ He started to walk away, but Theresa grabbed his arm.
‘My ex-husband? You mean Theo Dexter?’
Harry looked puzzled. ‘Do you have more than one?’
‘No.’ Theresa blushed. ‘No. I just wondered what made you mention him, that’s all. I mean, why would Theo be dampening my spirits? We haven’t spoken in years.’
Harry’s face fell. He looked like a little boy whose brand-new model aeroplane had just crash landed and was beyond repair. ‘Oh dear. You haven’t heard.’
‘Apparently not.’ Theresa felt her stomach lurch, like a plane suddenly losing altitude. She was both surprised, and irritated, that the mention of Theo’s name could still do that to her. ‘Come on, Harry, spit it out. It can’t be that bad, surely?’ ‘Well, no. It’s not. I mean it doesn’t have to be,’ Harry mumbled awkwardly. ‘And, of course, I may be wrong. But I heard on the grapevine that Dexter’s applied for the St Michael’s job.’
Theresa laughed out loud. Well that was a relief! Clearly someone was playing a practical joke and dear old Harry Tremayne had fallen for it. ‘Theo? Come back to Cambridge? Goodness me, Harry, I don’t think so! I can hardly see Dita Andreas propping up the bar in the Senior Common Room at St Mike’s, can you?’
‘It is a rather incongruous picture, I’ll admit,’ said Harry. ‘Oh well, I dare say I got the wrong end of the stick. Good luck with the inspiration!’ He walked off smiling, treading carefully to avoid the slick patches of ice that lurked beneath the snowy paths. Theresa went up to her rooms. Switching on her computer, she settled down to work, but her encounter with Harry Tremayne kept bothering her. Of course he’d made a mistake. It was the only explanation. Cambridge was her world, not Theo’s. Even when they were married, Theo used to go on and on about how happy he was to have ‘escaped’. How much happier must he be now, ruling the roost in LA with his gorgeous film-star wife? No, Theo was already living his dream. What interest would he have in stealing hers?
Her phone was ringing. She must be distracted, normally she always turned it off when she was working. She was about to do so now when she saw it was Jenny Aubrieau. Thinking she could use hearing a sane, friendly voice, she picked up.
‘Jen?’
‘Oh, thank goodness you answered. I was worried about you. Are you OK?’
The hairs on Theresa’s forearms stood on end, as if a ghost had walked over her grave. ‘Yeeeees,’ she answered warily. ‘Should I not be OK?’
‘He’s a real bloody bastard, isn’t he? I mean he just won’t go away,’ Jenny ranted. ‘He’ll probably pull out at the last minute anyway. Some movie he has to shoot or some hapless third-world country he and Dipstick Andreas have to buy. Anyway, everyone at St Michael’s hates him.’
Jenny’s words faded. Everything inside Theresa’s head was muffled, as if the snow were falling inside as well as out. So it’s true. Theo really has applied for the Mastership! She could hardly have felt more heartbroken if someone had told her that Lysander had been squashed by a car. Except it wasn’t her beloved cat who’d been squashed, it was her. Her life, her hopes, her peace of mind, snuffed out in an instant.
Theo had applied for the Mastership. The elections would be held in the spring, which meant he’d be here by then. Theo would be here, IN CAMBRIDGE. Even if, by some miracle, he didn’t get the job at St Michael’s, he would still be here, living here, with Dita and his children. I’ll have to leave. There’s no other way around it. I’ll have to leave Cambridge, sell Willow Tree Cottage … her eyes clouded with tears. Dimly, she was aware of Jenny’s voice, still talking to her.
‘T? Are you all right, lovely? Do you want me to come over? I’d offer to pick you up but of course the car won’t start. I could jump on a bus though?’
‘No.’ Theresa’s voice was dull and flat. ‘It’s OK. I’m fine.’
‘Well, will you at least come to ours for supper tonight?’
‘Sure,’ said Theresa, though she knew she wouldn’t. ‘I’ll call you later.’
Horatio Hollander leaned morosely on the bar at the Mitre, staring into space.
‘This is a pub, Horatio.’ Jack, his friend and roommate, had a job behind the bar. ‘The general idea is that you come here to buy alcohol. Some people even come here to have fun.’
‘I bought alcohol,’ said Horatio. ‘I bought this pint.’
‘Yeah, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth,’ said Jack, looking disdainfully at the dregs in his friend’s glass. ‘You’ve been standing there for over an hour. What do you want?’
‘Fine,’ grumbled Horatio, emptying both his pockets of change and dumping the contents noisily onto the polished wood of the bar. ‘What’ll that get me?’
‘About half a pork scratching,’ said Jack, scooping up the coins while the landlord glared at him, disapproving. ‘For God’s sake, I’ll buy you a whisky myself but you have to promise to snap out of it. You’re scaring away the paying punters.’
Jack was right. He was in a funk, and he did have to snap out of it. But it was easier said than done. It was all right for Jack. He had a girlfriend, Kate, who was mad about him. He also had rich parents who lived in Cambridge, which meant a warm, festive house to go back to every night, and a decent holiday job at the Mitre. Horatio, on the other hand, was living in an unspeakably dismal youth hostel until term started again, with no job, no money and, most depressingly of all, no girlfriend.
He could have had a girlfriend. Could have had any number of them, as Jack was fond of pointing out: Louise Halabi, Caitlin Grey, Jenna Arkell. All pretty, accomplished, fun-loving girls, all eager to show Horatio that there was life beyond the professor who barely registered his existence, still less his love. But to Horatio, that was like saying he could have gone home for Christmas. It implied he had control over his own actions. That he was the sort of person with willpower strong enough to tear himself away from the city where he knew Theresa would be; where he stood an off chance of bumping into her occasionally, or even arranging to meet over a mince pie on the pretence of developing his thesis.
It wasn’t that he didn’t hope his love for Theresa would lessen. Ever since she’d turned him down last spring, he’d been waiting for reality to sink in. He woke up every morning determined to get over her. But then he would catch sight of her again, papers fluttering out of her grip as she stumbled clumsily through college, like a beautiful mole unused to the sunlight, and it was all over. One taste of the sweet hopelessness, and he was lost, shipwrecked on a vast ocean with no land in sight.
‘Get that down you.’ Jack slid a single shot of whisky across the bar. Horatio