Sasha wondered if she’d imagined the news report. There was no hint of guilt or apology in his voice.
‘I saw you. On the news. Five minutes ago.’
‘Oh.’ There was a long pause. Irrationally, Sasha’s spirits soared. This is where he’s going to explain everything. It’s all some sort of ghastly mistake and he’s going to put it right. ‘Listen, all that stuff about Theresa…I had to say it. She’s been so low recently, and she was desperate to be a part of all the excitement. You understand, don’t you?’
Sasha shook her head in disbelief. This was getting more surreal by the second.
‘Theresa? What are you talking about, Theo? You stole my theory! I just saw you on the BBC bloody news, telling people my thesis was your idea.’
‘I think you’re a wee bit confused, sweetheart.’ There was an edge to Theo’s voice that hadn’t been there before. T’ve been working on this theory for years. Long, long before I met you. Now, granted, you developed a couple of my ideas further than I had. Your paper really got me thinking
‘Liar!’ Sasha exploded. T didn’t develop your ideas! They were my ideas and you know it.’
‘Come on, Sash. This is nonsense. I don’t know anything of the kind. Listen, I’m jumping into a cab now. Can we talk about this tomorrow, when you’ve calmed down?’
Sasha hung up on him.
When Don Miller walked into the garden ten minutes later, he found his daughter pacing the stone path, mumbling to herself like a lunatic.
‘Sash, love? What is it? Your mum and I are worried about you. Won’t you tell us what’s happened?’
Sasha stopped mumbling, stared at him and burst into tears.
When she finally stopped crying, she told him everything. Her affair with Theo, how it had started, his marital problems, the secrecy, and how it had alienated her from her friends and family. Finally she told him about her theory, a simplified version but Don got the gist. How she had trusted Theo to advise her on it and he had stolen it and was trying to pass it off as his own work.
Don Miller listened in silence. When Sasha finally finished talking, he said gently, ‘I see. So what are you going to do?’
‘Do?’ Sasha looked at him blankly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean what are you going to do? I hope you’re not thinking of letting this wanker get away with it. Are you?’
‘But Dad, it’ll be his word against mine.’
‘So?’
‘He’s a fellow, a respected, professional scientist. I’m just a student about to start her second year.’
‘So?’
‘So no one will believe me.’
Don Miller took his daughter’s hand. ‘I believe you, Sasha. You’ve got right on your side. The truth will come to light in the end, but not if you don’t fight for it. Mum and I will be behind you all the way. We’ll get you a lawyer. We’ll sell the house if we have to.’
Sasha was so touched she started to cry again.
‘I loved him, Dad.’
‘No, love. You just thought you did.’
Her dad was right. She couldn’t just sit back and let Dexter get away with this.
I’ll take him to court. I’ll win back my theory and expose him as a liar and a fraud.
Theo Dexter was going to curse the day he underestimated Sasha Miller.
Sasha squeezed both her parents’ hands as the members of the Regent House filed back into the room. The Regent House was the official governing body of the University of Cambridge. Usually it only ever met in the grand, neo-classical Senate House on King’s Parade to award degrees, or to elect a new chancellor. But today, sensationally, the Master of St Michael’s had summoned a special congregation – Cambridge’s equivalent of a court martial – to settle the increasingly embarrassing and bitter dispute between Professor Theo Dexter and his second-year pupil, Sasha Miller.
Of course, today was only the university’s decision. Theoretically, Sasha could still pursue Theo in the British courts. But the six-hundred-pounds-an-hour lawyer Don Miller had engaged was blunt about her chances.
‘If the university goes against you, it will be very difficult to win a civil case. I hesitate to say impossible. But if you pursue Dexter and you lose, the court will most likely award him damages and costs. Add that to your own legal fees and you could be looking at a bill running into millions of pounds.’
‘We’ll do whatever it takes/ Don said defiantly. But they all knew it wasn’t an option. Everything rested on today’s decision. Up until a couple of hours ago, Sasha had been sure she was going to lose. In the last two months, since the British press had got hold of the juicy story about the hunky Cambridge professor and his teenage undergraduate lover, Sasha had seen her good name raked through the mud. Like flies swarming round a turd, the university establishment had rallied around Theo Dexter. No one, other than Sasha’s student friends, had agreed to speak up for her.
Until this afternoon.
Harold Grier, a senior American physicist on secondment from Harvard, had been one of Sasha’s lab partners at the Cavendish. Grier had witnessed much of Sasha’s early research work on what was already now being referred to as ‘Dexter’s Law’. If he spoke up for her, she had a shot. Unfortunately for Sasha, Harold Grier was also a pathologically private man and so shy he was borderline autistic. He had refused all her entreaties to testify at the Senate House. ‘I can’t be dragged into as…scandal. I’m sorry. My work is too important.’
Sasha had given up trying to change Harold’s mind weeks ago. But today, after the lunchtime recess, a miracle had occurred. Walking out of the ladies, she saw Harold Grier standing alone in the grand foyer of the Senate House with a sheaf of papers in his hand. Harold saw her too, and smiled.
‘Who’s that?’ Sasha’s dad asked her, watching Harold take his seat. Don noticed the way that the Dexter camp’s eyes had all turned to follow him as he made his way to the front of the court.
‘I very much hope that’s my knight in shining armour,’ whispered Sasha.
The Master of St Michael’s took his seat. ‘In curia nostra, hodie est dies juridicus. Sedete silentio si commodum est.’
This is it.
Theresa Dexter held her husband’s hand and kept her eyes fixed firmly on the robed figures in front of her. Sometimes the urge to turn around and look at Sasha Miller was so strong it made her neck hurt. But she knew that if she made eye contact she wouldn’t be able to restrain herself from running over and strangling the girl with her bare hands. Better to be here than down the road in the Crown Court, on trial for murder, Theresa told herself. In an hour this nightmare will be over.
The last two months had been the worst of Theresa Dexter’s life. It was August when Theo had come home, ashen-faced, and told her that he was afraid one of his undergraduates was going to try to lay claim to his theory.
‘But why? I mean, that’s ridiculous. How could she possibly lay claim to it?’
‘We worked together.’ Theo shrugged. ‘I trusted her. You know, she’s a bright girl, she showed a lot of promise. I thought it would be exciting for her to be involved with something like this. Something ground-breaking.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I suppose I was naive.’
Theresa had been outraged on Theo’s behalf, sympathetic and practical.