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‘So that’s the bathroom.’ Helen Hart, Alex’s childhood friend and now grown-up landlady, pointed at the shower head. ‘It goes down to a freezing trickle if there’s a tap on anywhere else, so if you want guaranteed hot water let me know you’re getting in the shower.’ She stepped back into the hallway. ‘So that’s it really. My room’s through there. I think you’ve seen everything else.’
Alex nodded. ‘Thanks for this. Everything went a bit tits up at my last place.’ He paused. ‘A bits tits up’ was something of an understatement. What had actually happened was that his housemate had found Alex in bed with the housemate’s girlfriend, and started throwing Alex’s stuff out of an upstairs windows. It had seemed like a good time to move on.
‘That’s okay. I needed someone after Susie went.’
Alex remembered Susie. ‘Why did she move out?’
‘Got a job in Exeter. Post-doctoral research fellow in eighteenth-century domestic history.’
Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘Sounds right up your street. You didn’t go for it?’
‘I didn’t want to move away.’ Helen paused. ‘So do you need any help unpacking?’
Alex nodded and let Helen follow him into his new bedroom. He looked around. One suitcase of clothes. One box of books. A laptop, and two plastic crates of miscellaneous crap. It wasn’t much to show for twenty-seven years on the planet, but it fit into the back of his prehistoric Renault Clio, and he believed in travelling light – no commitments, nothing to anchor him down, no hassles, no fuss. He hauled one of the crates onto the second-hand bed, and rummaged through it. ‘There was something I wanted to show you.’
He found the crumpled photograph he was looking for and handed it to Helen. Two children, standing on the beach at Weston-Super-Mare, both clutching buckets, both stripped down to their pants. Alex guessed he must have been about six, which would have made Helen eight or nine.
‘Oh my god! Where did you find this?’
‘My mum sent it, when I told her we’d sorted out you renting me a room.’ Alex paused. ‘Are you sure your mum didn’t bully you into this?’ Alex and Helen’s mothers had been best friends since childhood, and were now both godparents to the other’s child. Alex could imagine his Auntie Paula being quite forceful in her opinion that Helen should help out her poor, homeless not-quite cousin.
‘I’m sure.’ Helen knelt down next to the box of books on the floor. ‘You want these on the shelf?’
The shelf, plus the bed and a rickety hanging rail formed the full complement of Alex’s furniture. He looked around. Clothes on the rail. Books on the shelf. It wasn’t as if he had a wide range of other options. He nodded and watched Helen for a second as she started to unpack his stuff. She held up a book. ‘Do you own any books that aren’t to do with your PhD?’
Alex shrugged. ‘I don’t like reading.’
He watched Helen splutter. ‘What? How can you not like reading?’
‘I prefer looking at the pictures.’ It was true. It was also, Alex admitted to himself, true that it was something he took great pleasure in telling serious, arty, academic type girls just to outrage them.
‘But, how can you be doing a PhD? It’s all reading.’
Alex laughed and picked up one of the texts in front of her. ‘I’m doing tenth-century peasantry. Seriously, there’s like hardly any written record and exactly four major text books. Why do you think I picked it?’
Helen looked at him. ‘Well, I guessed there weren’t very many people wanting to do it, so it was easier to get funding.’
‘Yeah. Yeah. That too.’ He chucked the book back over to Helen to stick on the shelf. ‘Anyway I’m teaching now. I’m gonna be rich.’
Helen sighed the world-weary sigh of the long-standing hourly paid lecturer. ‘How many modules are you teaching?’
‘One.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe one and a half.’
‘Samson’s modules?’
Alex nodded. Professor Samson had been his PhD supervisor for the last five years of a research project that had been supposed to last for three. They’d got along well. Professor Samson had adopted a pleasantly laissez-faire approach to monitoring Alex’s progress, and, in return, Alex had adopted an equally laissez-faire approach to actually making progress. But now, rather inconsiderately, Professor Samson had gone and died. On the downside, this had left Alex with a new supervisor who seemed quite adamant that this was his last year of student-life. On the upside, he’d got an hourly-paid lecturing job covering the prematurely-departed professor’s classes for the rest of the year. Every cloud and all that. ‘Did you hear how he ...?’ Alex’s voice tailed off.
Helen nodded. ‘Yeah. With the orange and the duct tape. He didn’t look the sort.’
Alex flicked an eyebrow skywards. ‘There’s a sort?’
‘Definitely.’ Helen shot a look in Alex’s direction. ‘Like you. If you were found tied to the bedposts in the Norwich Travelodge nobody would bat an eyelid.’
That was the sort of comment a person probably ought to take offence at. Alex shrugged. ‘Do you think they’ll advertise his job?’
Helen looked at him. ‘You want a permanent job?’ She crawled across the room and put her hand on his brow. ‘Are you feeling all right pet?’
‘Ha. Ha. I meant for you. I mean they’re not going to hire another medievalist are they? The modules they already do are way undersubscribed. They’ll want something trendy like all that gender stuff you’re into.’
‘We’ll see.’ Helen carried on unpacking the box. She held up a notepad. ‘What’s this?’
‘PhD notes.’
Helen flicked it open. ‘It’s mostly doodles.’
Alex grabbed the pad from her and turned a few pages. It was true. His library sessions tended to be more doodling than researching. He held the pad open. ‘But look. These pages are doodles of tenth century peasants.’
He was secretly quite proud of Anglo and Saxon, as he’d named the bearded peasant and his equally bearded wife, who cropped up in doodle after doodle. They added a certain personality to his notes.
His landlady shook her head. ‘Oh – are you around tomorrow evening?’
Alex shrugged. ‘Guess so.’
‘I’ve got some people coming round for dinner. You’re welcome too if you’re in.’
People coming round for dinner? At his previous address, the most formal thing anyone ever came round for was drink. Sometimes there would be crisps, if they were really setting out to impress. Alex’s own cooking skill level had stalled somewhere around breakfast cereal. ‘Who’s coming?’
‘You might know them. Dominic. Professor Collins. He’s a senior lecturer.
Alex nodded. Everyone even vaguely associated with the department of history at least knew of Dominic Collins. Collins was a Tudor historian, and the Tudors were the rock stars of English history. They were all beheadings and adultery and witchcraft and feuds with other rulers. That made the Tudor historians the golden boys of any history department, especially in a department where academic riches were spread as thinly as they were at the former teacher training college currently labouring under the rather unprestigious title of the University of the South Midlands.
‘And his girlfriend. Emily.’
Alex paused. ‘Midsomer’s brat?’ Emily Midsomer was departmental secretary and PA to the head of department. She was also, by utter coincidence the head of department’s much beloved only child. Alex had never actually met her, but the received gossip-based wisdom strongly suggested that she hadn’t got her job through innate brilliance and organisational skill.
‘She’s not a brat. We’re friends.’
‘Sorry.’ Alex grinned. ‘I’m sure she’s very nice.’
‘So you’ll be here for dinner.’
Alex nodded. ‘I’ll be here.’