ii

The packing slowed me down. I stood for too long at the wardrobe, wondering who exactly I ought to be when I returned as an adult to Cambridge: pinstriped professional? Tweedy artiste? Not that I had much choice in the matter, since my best shirt had been nibbled by moths and my next best wasn’t clean. After a period of panic, I picked a slightly corporate-looking button-down, plus my special occasion socks (lucky charms of mine: I was wearing them the day of our first kiss) and stuffed them into my case alongside my trusty concert brogues. But my hesitation meant it was well into the afternoon by the time I pulled out of the driveway. Clouds gathered as I snaked through the suburban streets, eyes fixed on the GPS even though I could have found my way back to college without it, a man drawn by a dowsing rod.

Once I was on the motorway, I turned on the radio and was pleased to hear the sounds of Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony. As a kid, I’d been transfixed by the grim, sinuous opening, the frantic second movement, the grotesque waltz and desolate finale. Later, at Cambridge, I’d learned that the piece is filled with fragments of Shostakovich’s other works—bits from his symphonies, and from the opera that made him dangerously unpopular with Stalin’s regime. Also, his name. Using the notes of the musical scale, Shostakovich wrote his initials into the piece, and this little musical signature repeats throughout every movement. So the composer is not just the storyteller but the story itself, and the music is a reflection on his life. An elegy, for himself.

Raindrops shivered down the windscreen and the wipers’ bloodless thunk jarred against the fluid tempo of the music. I must have been halfway down the M6 when I heard something else. A soft scratching.

Shit. If there was a problem with the car, I wouldn’t have the first idea how to fix it. But it had only just had its MOT.

I turned the radio off and tried to separate the sound from the hiss of rain. Rather than coming from the engine, it seemed to come from inside the car, alongside or behind my seat. Low and rough. Almost like someone gently dragging a fingernail on leather. Using the rear-view mirror I glanced at the back seats. Nothing. I twisted briefly as if I didn’t believe the reflection, scanned the space behind me. Still nothing.

Rattled, I pulled into the nearest service station and got out of the car. Then I opened the rear door and rummaged around the seats, looking between the cushions and in the footwells as rain lashed against my arse. It was hard to work out what was going on amidst the not-quite-legally photocopied pages of sheet music, half-written reports, and bony music stands.

Then I spotted it, in the pocket of the car door behind the driver’s seat: a little rock, about the width of a pound coin. I nudged it with my finger, and it moved along the pocket with that distinctive scratch. Relief rushed over me, visceral as the rain. The rock must have been rolling up and down as I revved and slowed. I picked it up, felt it cool and smooth in my palm. Maybe I’d accidentally kicked it into the car when I was loading things into the back.

Rock in hand, I collected some of the rubbish from the back seat and took everything to the nearest bin. Then, settling back into the driver’s seat, I chastised myself. Silly, to be spooked like that.

No, only silly to be spooked so soon. The things I was afraid of, they would surely happen in Cambridge. Our old haunt. Ha.

When I started the car again, the final movement of the symphony was beginning. They say Shostakovich had a suitcase packed, so that when the regime came for him in the night he’d be ready to go. Pragmatic. But the strange thing is, although those in power denounced his music, though they declared him an enemy of the people, they let him live. Other artists disappeared. But for Shostakovich, nobody came to knock.

He couldn’t know he’d be spared, though. So he lived in fear for decades. People say he made nocturnal patrols of his apartment block, thinking, smoking. He probably shuddered at every slamming door, every creaking floorboard, wondering whether, this time, those footsteps were hurrying for him.

Nobody knows why they didn’t kill him. Perhaps Shostakovich, admired in the West, was too visible to be erased from history. Or perhaps the state enjoyed toying with the man who had dared to displease them. Because all that silence, all that waiting? Take it from me, that kind of punishment is as diabolical as any.

Over the following weeks, I got to know Alexa better as we walked frosty streets to and from orchestra rehearsals. I carried her violin case back to college, juggling it alongside my bassoon, when she was burdened with library books. We had a drink in the bar now and again, usually joined by Berenice.

It’s funny that I got on so well with Alexa, since we were as different as it’s possible for two people to be. She was privately educated, I was not. Her combat trousers and velvet chokers gave her a cool-girl edge, whereas I was entirely without edge (possibly just a bit rough). Initially, our bond was formed over a shared enthusiasm for certain TV shows—Buffy, Friends, X-Files—but I think it endured because of something else. I saw the way Alexa moved like a foal, gangly, as if unsure how to handle her natural elegance. I saw how, whenever she posed for photos, she would pull a stupid face as if embarrassed by her own bright smile. I spotted the chipped nail varnish and baggy jumpers, an attempt to disguise her prep school roots, and I realized: the expressions I’d taken as aloof were often merely uncertain, and the confidence I’d found so imposing was as fragile as my own. Maybe one of the biggest reasons we were comfortable with one another was because there was zero sexual tension—no expectation, no self-consciousness about what people thought when they saw us together. And so, thus protected, we were free to build something like friendship.

One night toward the end of term, Alexa and Berenice suggested that I tag along to a curry night. Wary of anything spicier than Coronation chicken, I almost declined—until Berenice happened to mention that Bryn would be there. So, at the allotted time, I met the girls outside the notorious Curry Prince, a venue clearly geared more toward mass catering than fine dining.

“Ready for this?” Alexa asked. “I hear Bryn’s imposing a ‘madras minimum.’”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’d better fill up on naan.”

I looked closer at the girls. Berenice was carrying a teddy bear, Alexa cradling a bust of Aristotle. “Forgot to say,” Berenice said, seeing my confusion. “We’re supposed to bring a prop that begins with the first letter of our name. Another of my cousin’s ideas, obviously. It’s no big deal.”

I felt suddenly petulant, my fingers moving subtly around something that wasn’t there. Always the one left out of the joke. Pretending not to mind, I followed Alexa and Berenice inside.

A waiter with saintlike patience showed us to an upstairs room, where at least thirty students already sat at a long table. I recognized a few. There was Jamie, dressed not in the cashmere and silk I’d seen him wearing around college, but in his prop: a tightly fitting rugby jersey, apparently from his school, causing much amusement. Beside him was Sarah, who had persuaded someone else to carry her improbable and ambitious prop (a stepladder). I also spied traybake girl—whose pencil case could be read as a P or a C—as well as several notable faces from our college’s dining societies. All glanced occasionally around as if waiting for a ceremony to begin.

I was busy pondering where Bryn might sit when Alexa forcibly directed me and Berenice to a couple of places at the quieter end of the table. Then she took her own place elsewhere, shrugging regretfully and mouthing “see you after dinner” as if this were the only possible seating arrangement. I was confused. And frustrated—not just because I was sure to be miles from Bryn, but because Berenice wasn’t as fun as Alexa. She was nice, but in the way a digestive is nice: sweet, but a bit dry. She gave me a broad smile, her lips glossier than usual, and I slumped into an unstable chair, pitying the couples about to share their date nights with a room full of rowdy students.

As we settled in, there came a commotion from the staircase. Heads turned, necks craned, and people began to nudge and point. It was Bryn. Just the back of him at first, reversing through the doorway and grappling with something enormous. As he emerged into the room, so did a gray statue—Bryn carried the head, someone else the feet. It was the size of a man, but with the head of a goat, and wings. And breasts. The incredulous crowd laughed and cheered.

Nodding at the chaos, I asked Berenice: “Who’s that?”

“It’s Baphomet,” she replied with a sigh. “Bryn’s brought a statue of Baphomet.”

“No, I mean the guy helping him. Is he another old schoolfriend of Bryn’s?”

“Oh. No, that’s Kenny. Second year from Selwyn. I think his mum was the Cavendish family’s PA or something. More importantly, his theater group has a minivan that is large enough to transport that … thing.”

I eyed this Kenny guy: the oversized glasses, the furry, faux-charity-shop jumper, painfully try-hard. An insufferable Cambridge thesp, then.

Calling reassurances to our agitated waiter, Bryn and Kenny set the statue down at the other end of the table. Then, to the sound of our cheers, they dropped exhausted into the seats beside Jamie and Sarah. And—I remember this very clearly—Bryn put his hand on the back of Kenny’s neck and shook him, a gesture somewhere between a mother cupping her baby’s head and a tiger worrying its prey. As the excitement at their arrival subsided, the two of them fell into an animated discussion, heads lowered to almost-touching. Wishing for the first and only time that I owned a van, I shoveled some onion onto a poppadom and stuffed the lot joylessly into my mouth.

Before long, waiters delivered plates and people reached for them absently, not remembering whether they’d ordered dopiaza or jalfrezi, not caring. Someone doled out some warm, vinegary wine, and I left mine untouched. While Berenice talked about her studies in an unnecessary amount of detail, my eye was drawn to the head of the table, where Sarah was loudly pressuring Kenny to eat a mound of luminous-looking pickle—and where, stately as the statue itself, Bryn reclined in his chair. Even when we were in the same room, he felt very far away.

“So, what do you think?”

Startled, I looked at Berenice, who was peering over her glasses at me like a teacher. “Sorry, what?”

“I was asking where we should go after dinner.”

“Go?”

“For dancing! I say Fez.”

“Won’t most people want to go to Cindy’s?”

She tucked some mousy hair behind her ear. “So? We could always go on our own.”

Perhaps the realization came slowly because, as a teetotal member of the wind band, I had never been much of a Romeo. But I finally got it. The make-up she never usually wore, her readiness to sit apart from Alexa? Holy hell, Berenice was flirting with me. If there was any spark between us, it was less like the fizz of fireworks, more like the tickle of licking a battery.

I was subtly inching my chair away when a pair of hands landed heavily on her shoulders.

“Bee!”

Finally, it was Bryn: ruddied by booze, beaming, glorious. I churned with delight.

“Having a good time?” he said.

“The meal was absolutely average, thank you.” She pointed dismissively at Baphomet. “I thought Sajid was helping you with that thing.”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“Is he upset?”

Bryn gasped, feigning offense. Then he looked at me. For several seconds he said nothing at all. Then: “Did you forget your own name?”

I stared, thrown. Then—oh. He was talking about my absent prop.

“Sorry, I didn’t know…” I hurriedly explained which props I would have chosen, had I known, being sure to pronounce my name clearly and emphatically. Then, careful in front of Berenice not to make this look like an introduction, I switched subjects: “What happened to Sajid?”

Bryn leaned so close that I felt his breath on my ear. “The other night, he saw something in his bedroom, crouching in the corner. Something … not natural. And he says it’s my doing.”

I didn’t understand. “He thinks he saw … a ghost?”

Bryn shrugged. “Ghost, demon. Whatever.”

Berenice sighed, exasperated. “I don’t suppose Sajid was extremely drunk?”

I thought of the Tarot cards at Halloween, the invisible visitor. The humiliating jelly. Something about it reminded me of a story a couselor told me, after my dad’s death. “I heard about some woman,” I said. “She had a panic attack every time she got home from work, because she was convinced that there was a killer clown waiting for her just inside the front door. Really, she was lonely. And terrified of going back to an empty house.”

“So,” Bryn said, “she invented something to fear, because reality was even worse.”

I nodded.

“Then again, what’s more likely,” Bryn said, “that a plonker like Sajid has the sense to be scared of anything at all? Or that he’s been successfully cursed?”

I frowned. At the end of the table Baphomet looked on, its long, caprine face impassive, its blind eyes flat and empty. Another image dropped into my head, then: of the thing I thought I’d seen beyond the bathroom window, the thing that seemed to have scaled the walls where Bryn lived. There was an idea in there, somewhere, but it didn’t quite land.

Then Bryn laughed raucously, and I joined in, thinking: Okay, I get it. Like Alexa said, this is all part of the show.

“Anyway,” said Berenice, “we’re going dancing.” She placed a hand on my shoulder, and I almost moved subtly to dislodge it. But Bryn smiled at his cousin’s proprietorial stance, and I let her hand rest. “Surely you can’t take your statue into town.”

“Nope,” Bryn replied. “We’re heading back to my room to worship him for a bit. According to the scriptures, he likes Bolly, so we’ll open a bottle or three.”

Wait, was this a fucking joke? Bryn was going back to his room to party with Kenny, some simpering am-dram prat dressed like a children’s TV presenter, and I was going to some sweaty club with Berenice? The whole point of coming out tonight had been to hang out with Bryn. There was so much I had to say to him—about how my own hero Peter Warlock was fascinated by the occult, how he once had an astrology reading that suggested “a Satanic influence.” But, already, students were massing and flapping, cawing drunkenly about who was going with who. Jamie was helping Kenny with the statue, having only just persuaded Sarah out of its lap.

Berenice waved at Alexa, who approached, swinging Aristotle by the neck, and I looked helplessly at Bryn. I was about to lose him again. But at the last moment he turned, pointed at me and Berenice, drew a circle in the air around us. “Cute,” he said, with a wink. Then he melted into the crowd like an apparition disappearing through a wall.

Berenice lowered her eyes, flushed a little. I pretended not to notice. But I wondered. It was good of Bryn to be so attentive to his cousin, nice of him to spend time with her. And, Berenice and me? Maybe we did look kind of cute together.

Our first date was a mixed bag. On Tim’s advice, I’d booked a romantic but relaxed restaurant in town offering something called “tapas.” On looking at the menu and being pleasantly surprised by the prices, I announced that I’d have the chorizo, but when Berenice suggested that I might need some other dishes to go with it I realized I was out of my depth. When I chose some other dishes, the waiter’s expression revealed that my pronunciation was unconventional at best. Just when I thought nothing else could go wrong, I left my menu too close to a tea light and burned the starters off.

Berenice handled it impeccably. “You know,” she said, “I was once on a date and, being flirty, I tried to feed this guy a spoonful of ice cream. Dropped it right into his lap.”

I winced. “That’ll put a dampener on it.”

“It really did,” she said. “Now, make me feel better and tell me some dating disasters of your own.”

I gave a panicked smile. I hardly wanted to admit that my love life had been limited to an infatuation with a cellist called Tina that, in truth, had little basis but for some text messages about a borrowed Mahler score. “Oh,” I said, “I don’t … kiss and tell.” The old-fashioned phrase sat on me, preposterous, like a bow tie on a child.

“Or tell me about your family. Brothers, sisters?”

“No. Probably best, my mum had enough on her hands.”

Berenice frowned. “In what way?”

Fuck. I’d only said that last part because I was awkward, babbling. “It’s just—my dad wasn’t around.”

“Oh?”

Somewhere, a woman laughed, a horrible, cutting sound. “Yeah,” I continued, not liking the way Berenice’s face was folding into concern, “he and my mum split up when I was eight. He died a couple of years later.” The words felt small amidst the rattle of cutlery. Talking about my dad felt wrong, like breaking a confidence or twisting someone’s words.

“Oh,” she said, reaching to touch my hand. “I’m so sorry.”

I waved the sympathy and her hand away, nearly toppling the fizzy water that Berenice had ordered instead of wine. “Don’t be. We weren’t close.” Picking some burnt-looking bread from a basket, I tried not to think about my younger self curled in the corner with the house phone, dialling his number over and over.

“Even so,” Berenice said, “that must be a lot to deal with.”

I tore the bread into bite-sized pieces, left them on my plate. “Honestly, I don’t think I even cried.” For a moment my body recalled the sensation: sinking to my scuffed knees, my jaw hanging open like that of a corpse waiting to be bound, unable to feel my mum’s arms around me (all the while bargaining with the universe: I’ll tidy my room, I’ll eat all my vegetables, I’ll do whatever you want if you’ll just bring him back. The old him, though, not the new him, be careful about that).

In the pause that followed, some small, scalding dishes arrived. Berenice explained that we were supposed to share, which was disappointing since she’d ordered weird things like squid and sardines, things I didn’t like, and we ate in silence for a while. Everything was too spicy, too oily. All the while I glanced at Berenice’s rounded cheeks, her downturned mouth, searching for a family resemblance with Bryn. But her eyes were the eyes of someone who went to sleep at a sensible time, not someone whose bed was largely ornamental. Her hands were hands shaped for folders and notebooks, not for palming pennies or casting spells.

“Your family is more interesting than mine anyway,” I said, with forced brightness. “What’s it like being at university with your cousin?”

“It’s funny,” she said, “I’ve met a few people at the same college as a family member—”

“I meant Bryn specifically. He’s practically a celebrity.”

“Oh. Right.” She pouted, as if she hadn’t thought about this before. “Frankly, my family was always a bit mortified by the Cavendish lot. I mean, Bryn’s dad is famous for being a TV magician whose nasty, Hammer Horror tricks were designed for teenagers and weirdos. The best thing about his show is that it hasn’t aired for fifteen years.”

A hint of jealousy, perhaps? “Bryn told me he got the magic thing from his dad. Are they close?”

Berenice tugged at some shellfish with her fingers, exposing the soft, pale flesh. She seemed to find the subject distasteful. “Louis Cavendish is a complicated man. And one of the few people who doesn’t act as if Bryn is the center of the universe.”

Christ, this whole family was bizarre. “And you honestly don’t like Bryn’s magic?”

Berenice set down her knife and fork. A waiter refilled her glass, making me feel inattentive. Eventually, she began. “When we were kids,” she said, “Bryn came to visit, and he wanted to show me a trick. I said, okay. So he put his hand in his pocket and took out a mouse. A real, live one, its whiskers were so sweet. Anyway, he put the mouse in a bag—about the size of your hand—and put the bag on the floor. Then he stamped on it.”

I flinched.

“I screamed and screamed,” Berenice went on. “Bryn stood, grinning. Then he put his hand in his pocket, and what was inside but a mouse.”

It sounded like a very cool trick to me. “That must have been freaky, for a kid,” I said.

She shook her head. “It wasn’t that. Afterward, I kept saying, tell me how you did it. Eventually he said: Berenice, it was magic. Deadly serious. Like he was almost angry that I thought otherwise. I found it really … unsettling. I don’t like pretence.” Then, looking me straight in the eye, she added: “That’s why I like you.”

I stuffed a piece of bread into my mouth.

Berenice maintained her gaze, open and unblinking. “Guys here, they swagger around like the universe exists to give them an audience. Like, they don’t actually have anything interesting to say. But they put on this … performance, as if they do. It’s infuriating. But,” she said, softer now, “you’re not like other guys in college.”

I didn’t respond. This wasn’t the compliment she assumed it to be.

“What I mean is,” she added, quickly, “you don’t pretend to be something you’re not.”

“So,” I said, switching subjects as if shy, “reading between the lines, you’re not planning on spending much time with your cousin.”

She shook her head. “The curry was fine, but more than enough for one term.”

I set my cutlery down in the way my mum had patiently taught me (she was determined that people wouldn’t judge me for silly things, that they would appreciate me for who I am). The restaurant was so fucking loud. We were interrupted by our waiter, who made a fuss of the food I’d left and, to my dismay, left us with a pair of dessert menus.

Perhaps thinking she’d come across as disloyal, Berenice changed her tune. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “Bryn is great. He’s protective of his family, that’s one thing. And he’s obviously scarily talented. I remember him singing at school—”

“Bryn’s a singer?” Of course. That voice.

An idea flared like a struck match. In the run-up to Christmas, I was due to play for the college fellows at some swanky dinner. I’d been preparing some solo piano pieces, but the fellows wouldn’t know or care if I updated the program. “That’s funny,” I said, “because I’ve been looking for a singer to perform with.”

“Hmmm. Good luck holding Bryn’s attention.”

I thought about my bank balance, gritted my teeth. “It’s a paid gig. A hundred quid.”

“Really? Still, he’s not exactly strapped for cash.”

“You know,” I said, being as real as I’d ever been, “I’m kind of desperate, Berenice. You said he was good to his family. Would he sing with me if you asked him, as a favor?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“So will you ask?”

“Of course, if you want me to.”

I beamed. She beamed back, and it made her look pretty.

I ordered the most expensive desserts on the menu, my treat, and when they arrived I joked that Berenice should keep her spoon to herself. “You know,” I said, “whatever you think of Bryn’s magic, it can’t be easy to palm a mouse, slip it into your pocket.”

From behind Berenice’s smile came a flash of something like disappointment. “No,” she said, “it would be easier to use two mice, one of which is disposable.”

A couple of mornings later, I found a note under my door.

Berenice explained your predicament. Practice tomorrow at 4? B.

Quite chummy, really. A mark of our burgeoning connection, the shift from vous to tu. I know a guy called Bryn; I’ve got a friend called Bryn. That “B.” Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. I folded the note neatly, tucked it into my pocket, and hummed the half-remembered melody as I made my way to breakfast.

One other thing I did that day: I spent hours listening to Warlock, to see what Bryn and I might play together. I even listened to those songs from Saudades with a new fondness for their naivety, wondering at the distance we must travel to find our voices. Perhaps there was a point to everything that had gone before. Maybe it all had to happen to bring me to this exact place and time.

As the clock crept toward the hour, I kicked balled-up pants under my bed and hid some embarrassing CDs (Smooth Classical II, Morning Piano Moods) in a drawer. I removed a book about Beethoven from my desk and replaced it with one about The Beauty of Maths and Music. Some snacks and clean mugs, “casually” arranged around my kettle, and I was ready.

Bryn arrived just after half past, and I clapped him daringly on the back as he stepped over the threshold. “A hundred quid for a few songs?” he asked, making for my piano and flicking through my pile of sheet music. “Sounds weirdly generous.”

Straight to business, then. “Er, yeah. It’s a special thing, for the fellows. They’re … not really advertising the payment.”

“A hundred each?”

“Yeah, yeah. Do you want a brew?”

He looked confused. I gestured at my instant coffee and he shook his head. “So. What are we playing?” he said.

I’d hoped we’d sit, talk, have some of the overpriced biscuits I’d bought. But this was turning out more like a supervision than a social. Okay, fine. It was good that he was keen, wasn’t it? Good that I was about to play through my favorite songs with my new favorite singer? I gathered myself, took a seat at the piano. “Peter Warlock,” I said. “Early twentieth-century English composer, wrote beautifully for baritone. Listen …” I played a few favorite passages, handling each perfectly constructed bar as if it were a freshly laid egg.

But within moments, Bryn was riffling through my music again. “Hmmm. Not sure. But I like the idea of something English, saves me learning lyrics in another language.”

Trying not to show my disappointment, I suggested other pieces. Finzi, Howells, Bax. But each time Bryn seemed underwhelmed. Eventually he held up a sheaf of stapled pages. “What’s this?”

I took the music from his hands. “A Shropshire Lad, six songs by George Butterworth. Same era, stuff about young men lost in the war.” I picked out fragments of the songs, tried with my reedy voice to conjure the blossoming cherry tree and the bustling country fair. Bryn listened, frowning.

Then, the final song of the set. “This one’s fun,” I said, “because you play two different characters. One verse is sung by a ghost. Then the next verse, by his friend who’s still alive. And they alternate from there. So here, the ghost asks: Do you still play football together, now I’m gone? And his friend says, yes, we’re still playing. How’s your sight-singing?”

Bryn tipped his hand from side to side, “So-so.” But, above my accompaniment, he put every note in its place, moving from the eerie question to its full-voiced reply:

Is my girl happy,

That I thought hard to leave,

And has she tired of weeping

As she lies down at eve?

Ay, she lies down lightly,

She lies not down to weep:

Your girl is well contented.

Be still, my lad, and sleep.

My body resonated with excitement like a string cleanly plucked. Jesus, the ease and richness of his voice was unearthly. My musicianship was the one thing I was known for, the quality shoring up my self-worth. But with Bryn, it was merely another thing to be pulled from his bottomless bag of talents. I was both delighted and chilled. “Shall we work on this one?” I said, grinning.

“Fine,” he replied, without enthusiasm. “Let’s do our best, given the state of this piano.”

At that moment, I saw my room as if through Bryn’s eyes, adding up each uninspiring element: the unloved instrument, with its dodgy tuning and twangy strings. The dog-eared music and the plastic metronome, my stupid biscuits and cheap coffee. No wonder he was listless. This was supposed to be an adventure, but it was a disaster—

Or maybe not. “I’ve got an idea,” I said.

Unlike New Court, which glowed like a winter sunrise, Old Court was small and closeted and somehow mean. I didn’t go there often, except to walk occasionally, hopefully, below Bryn’s window. The walls, blackened by age, did a surprisingly good job of dulling the rumbling traffic of the city beyond, leaving the courtyard in solemn stillness.

Bryn followed as I passed through a small door in the far corner, up a twisted staircase, and along a gloomy, uneven corridor. At the end was an unassuming door without a number. I’d read there was a piano here, gifted by a particularly generous alumna, and that the room was available for visiting musicians and occasional recitals. Hoping this was all true, I took from my pocket the key I’d just stolen from the porters’ lodge (surreptitiously swiped from the board while Bryn distracted the porter, a job he’d performed as faultlessly as expected) and slipped it into the lock. Glancing back, I caught a look of intrigue on Bryn’s face. He couldn’t know that, up to this point, my greatest crime had been sneaking an extra book out of the library when I was at my borrowing limit. If Tim had seen me here, he would have had a fit.

A click, and the door swung open.

Inside, light bled between two huge cherry-colored curtains, seeping into the rich hardwood paneling and gleaming across the polished floorboards. Books, harmonious in shades of wine and grain, covered the far wall. In the middle of the room, a wonder: a baby grand, its lid reaching like a great black sail.

“Well,” said Bryn, the trademark grin back on his face. “This is more like it.”

We stepped around the room, lighting enormous, fringed lamps as we went. It clearly pleased Bryn, to think of this hidden place so close to his own room, to think I’d revealed its secret. This was better, I thought. This might just work.

Stopping at a glass cabinet, Bryn announced: “Here we go.” Reaching inside, he retrieved two glasses and an ancient-looking bottle. Then he took a corkscrew from his pocket.

I tried to remain nonchalant. “That’s not … expensive, is it?”

“Nah. They’ve got cellars full of this stuff.”

“Are you sure?”

“Totally.” The cork was already out, the glasses full.

Bryn motioned at the piano, and I sat. Then, leaning on the gleaming spruce, he handed me a glass. I looked at the syrupy stuff inside, then back at Bryn’s irrefutable smile. “It’s fine,” he said. “Trust me. Here’s to us.”

“To us,” I replied, taking a large swig. The liquid was rich and sweet, intensely dark, with a hint of something burnt. Unable to wait a moment longer, I put my music on the stand and touched my fingers to the keys.

Musically, we were tentative at first, like people on a date who accidentally speak over one another and apologize unnecessarily. We each anticipated the other, blamed ourselves for little misunderstandings. But eventually we began to stretch the tempo here and there, intuitively giving space to special harmonic moments or melodic turns.

Bryn drank the majority of the wine—not wanting to make a twat of myself, again, I was determined to slow down—but soon we both became silly and excitable. We giggled at small things. My fingers occasionally stumbled over themselves. Bryn mixed up his words, and when he mangled the lyrics “heart and soul” into “shart and hole” I sank my head onto the keys, weeping with laughter.

Yes, this was fine now. Better than fine.

At some point, Bryn decided we should have a break. He retrieved a second bottle from the cabinet, refilled our glasses, and we each relaxed into a doughy armchair. “So,” he said, “you’re clearly finding your way around college.”

I didn’t feel the need to lie. “Not really,” I replied. “It’s still a mystery to me.”

“How do you mean?”

I thought for a while. “The dining hall? Before I came here, I’d never even seen a room like that. And now I’m meant to have my Bran Flakes there, as if that’s normal.”

Bryn considered this. “I guess. Our hall at school looked exactly the same.”

“And then there’s the gowns and the Benedic, Domine business.”

“Ah. We always said Grace, too. Although we had our own slightly ruder version.”

I smiled, sadly. “You know, in our first week, I got chatting to a girl in a lecture, and it turned out her family had owned coalfields in Northumberland. I told her, my grandad had worked in one of them. The girl made a joke about how she’d keep a position for me at the pit, in case the bassoon fell through. I know she was kidding, but … People must look at me—” I stopped. The idea that people had any kind of opinion about me was pure narcissism. But someone like Bryn must consider how they were observed, assessed.

I changed tack. “If you could find out what other people secretly thought of you, would you?”

He snorted. “Fuck, no.”

“Why not?”

“Why would I? Would it make you happier, knowing what other people think?”

“It’s not about being happy, it’s about knowing the truth.”

He shook his head. “Nobody wants the truth. We’re not built for it. Anyway, whose truth? You think other people know you better than you know yourself? Their version of you is just that: a version.” He stretched, drained the liquid from his glass, and stood. I picked at a loose thread on my T-shirt, feeling like a child getting lost in grown-ups’ conversation.

For a moment he ambled silently up and down the bookshelves, stopping to pull a cloth-bound title from its row. “Here’s a truth for you,” he said. “When I was younger, I took an overdose.”

My mouth fell open but no words came out.

He shrugged, no big deal, put the book back in the wrong place. “I was a bit out of control, taking … It doesn’t matter. Anyway, one night, I was out with friends and really, really wasted, and I felt disconnected. Not part of the world, somehow. And I became obsessed with the idea of knowing”—he searched for the right phrase—“what was on the other side.”

“What?”

“I know it sounds weird,” he went on, without hearing, “but I felt certain that if I took all the pills in my pocket, if I fucking died, I wouldn’t—“

He paused.

“—I wouldn’t stay dead.”

From beyond the window, the chapel bell moaned. I rubbed my arms. “What happened?”

“I woke up in hospital.”

“Jesus, Bryn,” I said, my stomach dipping as if I stood at the edge of a cliff. “That’s weird.”

“I can’t even remember what I took. Frances was there when I woke up, by my bed. That part was bad.”

“Frances?”

“My mother.” He spread his hands. “But what would other people make of that? That I’m unhappy, unbalanced? Because that’s not what it was. That’s the truth you’re talking about, other people’s truth. Anyway,” he said, “the main thing is, I can handle illicit substances a lot better these days.”

I managed an anxious smile, pretending to understand.

“And you know what?” he continued in a gleeful stage whisper. “The year after, when we were getting toward A levels, I’d done no fucking work whatsoever. So I told my headteacher I was feeling depressed, and she was so worried about me doing something stupid that she kept me off school until exams were over. It took her a couple of calls, but Cambridge made my offer unconditional.”

“Bryn, that’s terrible!”

“I know!”

We laughed raucously, and the mood shifted, eased. “So did you find out?” I asked.

“Find out what?”

“What was on the other side?”

And then: a creak from beyond the door. We froze. Another creak, like someone stepping softly up the stairs.

Bryn’s expression was a mixture of alarm and hilarity. “If that’s a porter …”

“Could we get sent down?” I whispered.

He shrugged. A cold flush of fear came over me, and I began to murmur feverishly: “Shit, shit, shit …”

Seeing my rising anxiety, Bryn made a show of tiptoeing to the door. There he listened intently, a finger on his lips. All the while he looked at me, and his sober expression gave me an inexplicable comfort: nothing bad can happen while he’s here. I held that thought right up to the point he sprang at the piano and began to pound the keys like a hooligan, howling with laughter above his shapeless, cacophonous chords.

“Bryn!” I said, my voice little more than a hiss. “What the fuck?”

His words were laced with laughter and his eyes had a delighted gleam. But I was pure panic. He kept swiping at the keys even as I tried to drag him from the piano stool.

The footsteps were louder now, regular. Coming our way.

Jesus. I pictured myself being instructed to pack my belongings, being driven away from college by my mortified parents, watching the burnished battlements through the rear window until they had disappeared irretrievably from view. My breath came sharp and shallow, and I think my eyes burned with furious tears. Finally seeing my petrified face, Bryn stopped his hammering and—still smiling—sprinted to the window, pushed it open. “This way.”

“Are you joking?”

“We don’t have any choice!” Then he sat on the windowsill and swung his feet up onto it. I merely stood, a deer with feet splayed in headlights, gazing around as if the ancient furniture might tell me what to do.

The footsteps sounded closer still.

Bryn threw open the window and peered at the courtyard below. He’d do it, I knew that much, he’d step out into the biting air. Dropping my sheet music, I dashed into a corner and squeezed myself uselessly between a desk and a bookcase, knowing that my arse would be clearly visible to anyone coming through the door. Crouching on the sill, Bryn turned to look at me.

And then, a moment when we were frozen in time, spellbound: one stuck with horror and the other with glee, our fates tied together in mad camaraderie by wine and music and a magical sort of danger.

Silence, from the corridor.

Silence, followed by the sounds of footsteps moving away, further and further away, then a distant door opening, closing.

I exhaled. Bryn leapt from the windowsill and slumped melodramatically to the floor, cackling at the ceiling. I crumpled to my knees and wiped sweat from my forehead. With relief flooding my body, making me feel almost drunk, my face relaxed into a smile. Actually, that was pretty fucking brilliant.

“I think,” Bryn said, “this might be a good time to leave.”

By the time we emerged into Old Court, I felt fiercely alive. I watched students moving beneath the starred sky, drawn to the soft lights of the dining hall and the hubbub of the college bar, and I felt a kind of synchronicity in my surroundings—as if I were a melody dancing lightly, the ostinato bass line of college firm and reliable beneath me. Bryn clapped my arm, heartily. “Well played. I think we’ve got something good, there.”

I smiled, sensing the touch of his hand even after it was back in his pocket. I was about to ask whether we might go to the bar together, but a voice drew my attention. Tim, waving enthusiastically, a small figure beside him. “Hey! Me and Casio are going up to hall, if you fancy?”

And by the time I looked back, Bryn was sauntering away, illuminated beneath the lamplight as if credits might begin to roll, as if he were taking the evening with him.

We came together a few nights later, fellows looking on, the saints gazing down from sunless glass. I have no memory of whether we were triumphant or merely tolerable.

Because, with Bryn, memory is slippery. Like, what color was his hair, exactly? I know it shone darkly, like new leather shoes. But while in some of my memories it has a reddish cast, in others it appears completely black. And what about his eyes? Not blue or green. Certainly not brown. In my mind, they’re the color of shadows moving across an icy field, darkening and lightening with the rise and fall of the ground.

And this isn’t down to the distance between then and now. My memory faltered even at the time. When Bryn disappeared for days, I had the feeling you get when someone dies: terror, that you’ll forget them. In his absence, I forced myself to recall his features, his voice, as if repeating a tricky passage of music. As if he were a skill I might lose without constant and devoted practice.

In those final days of first term, I spent a lot of time with Berenice, who was now officially my girlfriend.

Nobody knew better than me that I was punching above my weight. After all, Berenice was charming. Her eyes landed gently on the people around her, encouraging and warm. Her skin was clear, like the women you see in adverts for whitening toothpaste or washing powder, and, in her neatly pressed dresses, she carried herself with a quiet elegance.

She was also much cleverer than me. Don’t get me wrong, I was good at my subject. But mine was a simple intelligence, an accumulation of other people’s ideas. Where I assumed that lecturers and authors must surely know better than me, Berenice didn’t take their words at face value. She turned them over, like a chef might check apples for bruises. She rolled them, squeezed them, and when she finally accepted them you could be sure they were just right. I was struck that a person could have such mastery over their own thoughts.

This did mean that, in our conversations, I was wary of screwing up. Sometimes I’d go quiet, pretending to be pensive, when really I had nothing to add. Or, desperate to show some spark, I’d come out with a grandly stupid idea that Berenice would slice neatly into its individually stupid constituent pieces. When we showed up as a couple in the common room or at Christmas parties, I was nervy, deferential. Perhaps observers thought it was because of the scale of my love for her. Or maybe they decided that, in the balance between us, I merely saw that my side of the scale needed more weight.

In the end, I was almost glad when the Christmas holidays rolled around and I could run away home—to go back to wasting my time on shit reality TV, to making ill-thought-through arguments about news stories without having my logic justifiably challenged. To being the half-arsed person that, for the whole term, I had exhausted myself trying not to be.

During those holidays, my mum interrogated me about my new Cambridge life. As we lay on the sofa, half-watching festive films and stuffing ourselves with Quality Street, she asked hungrily about the modules I was taking, the friends I’d made. I didn’t mention Berenice, as it seemed too soon. But I talked about Bryn and our performance, about the pieces I was studying. All the while she glowed with pride like a string of fairy lights. Once, she remembered the teasing of my high school days, and shook her head—sorry for my former self, satisfied that the good guys win out in the end.

I also caught up with my old sixth-form friends. Gaz was doing History at Leeds, Ben was at Loughborough studying Computer Sciences. Reedy was working in his dad’s chippy while he waited to re-sit the A levels he’d flunked, which is where we usually met to talk over battered sausages and pickled onions. It might have been fun had the three of them not spent the whole time taking the piss out of my accent. Listen to you, you’ve gone all posh. Go on, say “beer.” Say “over there.” Why then did people in Cambridge still casually imitate my dropped Ts, my loose-jawed northern vowels? The teasing was a reminder that I was stuck in-between—sailing from one world, unsure when or if I’d ever reach another.

At one of our meetings, I performed a trick I’d just learned (from Beginner Magic: Easy Tricks to Amaze your Friends, on loan from the municipal library). I started by holding a pen lightly between my fingers. Keeping everything else still, I covered the pen with one hand. Then, when I moved that hand away again, the pen was gone. Shazam. Unfortunately, Reedy spotted the piece of elastic, running inside my wrist and up my sleeve, that had whipped the pen away as soon as I let go of it (I must have stood in the wrong place: I was yet to learn that perspective is everything). The lads seemed bored by the solution, and disappointed that, despite my time at Cambridge, I had not been imbued with special powers and had instead remained an ordinary bloke.

One other thing I remember. As Christmas Day neared, Mum asked me to get some table decorations from the loft. And when I clambered up among the cobwebbed suitcases and musty camping equipment, I came across my dad’s record player, a record still sitting on the turntable. The sight of it stopped my breath. For a beat, I was back on his knee, his hand gently covering mine as he explained why I mustn’t trace my chubby fingertip across the vinyl. I almost heard him telling me patiently that no, these grooves on the record’s surface were not a multitude of concentric circles as I’d assumed, but a single path running from the edge inward. Crouching in the darkness, I remembered the sound that had emerged when he lowered the needle—that unearthly crackle, so unlike the sound from the TV or the radio, so obviously from a distant time, a distant place.

When I climbed down and handed over the box of tinsel and other Christmas tat, I didn’t mention the record player. I wanted to forget it. I’d been more comfortable thinking that, after dad’s death, it had been—like the pen in the trick—magicked away. There was something deeply unsettling about the idea that it had been up there, with us all along.

Before the holidays were over, I gave up on learning magic myself. I was afraid of people seeing me copy Bryn so blatantly. In any case, I knew I had none of the showmanship on which a performance like his depended: making that contract with the audience, building their trust, concealing the deception until the very end.