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‘Hush. Hush. You’re okay.’ Dominic stroked his girlfriend’s hair on the pillow beside him.
Emily opened her eyes sleepily. ‘What happened?’
Dominic smiled. ‘You were kicking the duvet off. I think you were having a bad dream.’
She peered around the room for a second, and shook her head. ‘I’m fine. Sorry. Did I wake you up?’
Dominic shook his head. ‘I’ve been up ages.’ He held the clock up for her inspection. ‘If you want a lift to work you need to get dressed.’
‘I’m gonna go in later.’
Dominic raised an eyebrow. It was the first proper day back after the Easter break, and they had a full departmental meeting at nine. ‘I thought you were doing the minutes.’
Emily shrugged. ‘I’ve got stuff to do.’
Emily had had ‘stuff’ to do a lot recently. Dominic wondered if he ought to ask. It was two and a half months now since his father passed away, and since Emily had been lumbered with a new wannabe stepmother. He wondered if they ought to be talking more to one another about how they were feeling. There were only two problems he could see with that idea. He hadn’t been raised to wear his heart on his sleeve, and he didn’t have a clue what he was feeling anyway, about his father, about his future, about his career. Everything had crystalized to one moment in Helen’s hallway when he’d answered the phone and been told his father was dead. He gave Emily a squeeze which he hoped communicated more than he was able to put into words, and kissed the top of her head. ‘Are you okay?’
‘How do you mean?’
How did he mean? He wasn’t quite sure. ‘Just generally.’
She nodded.
‘Good. I guess I’ll catch up with you later then.’
The meeting, when he arrived, was an unusually long and boring one, in a life that seemed, to Dominic, to be increasingly filled with long, boring meetings. Professor Midsomer had already talked at length about the challenges facing the department, and the whole university, in the new funding model and the need to attract more students with higher A-level results. The Vice Chancellor was talking a good game on that point right now, with Theo nodding vigorously at his side. Dominic didn’t fancy their chances. Kids with As at A-Level didn’t pick the University of the South Midlands, unless they were taking a peculiarly subtle approach to teen rebellion against an Oxbridge educated parent.
A piece of paper drifted into his peripheral vision. It was blank apart from a series of dashes and a question mark at the top of the page.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ?
He grinned, and wrote the letter E at the foot of the page. That filled in two blanks. He remembered exactly when he and Helen had started passing notes during meetings. It had been a graduate seminar with a visiting professor. About fifteen minutes into the professor’s presentation Dominic had noticed that the man’s fly was undone. Approximately eight seconds later a piece of paper ripped off Helen’s pad had appeared in front of him. The message simply read: I can see his pants. As a comment on the argument in front of them it was neither big nor clever. It was, however, accurate. Since then Helen’s hastily scribbled comments had tended toward the more academic, but that first one stuck in his memory. The note passing had quickly progressed into puzzle setting, especially when Helen was as bored as him. It kept them both awake if nothing else. He looked at the game in progress, and followed the E with an S. One more blank completed. T and A got him the upright and the crossbar of a gallows, but a lucky guess at I, followed obviously by N and G got him back on track.
_ E _ _ I N G _ E _ _ S?
It still didn’t make sense. He raised an eyebrow at the puzzle setter sitting next to him.
The door crashed open at the back of the room. ‘Sorry!’
It was Emily. He glanced at his watch. In an odd sort of way he had to admire her brazenness. She’d been awake when he left for work, and still managed to roll in a clear two hours late. That, he supposed, was the benefit of working for your dad.
She bowled across the room, and plonked herself into a seat next to her father who smiled indulgently. The Vice Chancellor’s lips pursed slightly, and the poor doctoral researcher who’d been stuck taking minutes slid their pad and paper across the table to Emily. She waved at Dominic across the table. He nodded trying to hit a balance between professional and affectionate. Dating at work was a minefield. Dating the boss’s daughter was worse. Part of him wished Theo disapproved terribly. Then they could keep the whole thing secret. It would be easier.
Dominic looked back at the pad in front of him. R, T, O and U took him further down the road to the hangman’s noose, before L and D filled in enough gaps for him to finish the puzzle. He wrote the W and B straight in.
WEDDING BELLS?
He paused for a moment, wondering what she was driving at. Theo was getting married soon, but everybody knew about that. Most of the department were going. It was old news. He glanced at Helen, who shifted slightly in her seat and pointed her biro towards Emily.
He pulled the sheet of paper back towards him.
WHO SAID THAT? He scribbled.
IT’S TRUE?
He paused, wondering if his brain would present a clear answer to the question if he allowed a sufficient period of silence. Nothing came. Dating for fourteen months. She had a drawer in his bedroom and a spare toothbrush and selection of potions in his bathroom. He wasn’t twenty-one any more. It was getting to the point where he was expected to put a ring on it. And why not? He liked Emily. She was exactly the right sort of wife for the life he had. But he hadn’t actually popped the question yet. Something was holding him back. What was the phrase they used for relationship statuses online?
IT’S COMPLICATED.
‘Professor Collins?’
Theo was looking directly at him.
Dominic smiled broadly. ‘Yes?’
Next to him, he could hear Helen stifling a giggle. It must be obvious that he had no idea what was happening in the meeting. His only hope was that nobody else was following things closely enough to notice.
‘You were going to share some thoughts on the issues with the second year elective timetabling?’
‘Right.’ Dominic looked around the room at his colleagues. Not an attentive face amongst them. He’d be better off putting the whole timetabling plan in an email for them to ignore at their leisure, rather than forcing them to come together and ignore him en masse. Nonetheless, they were here, and like it or not, he was a full professor now. ‘Committee rooms and drinks parties’ – that’s where his doctoral supervisor had told him academic careers were made. Dominic wondered if he needed to start paying more attention at both.
He rambled valiantly for a few minutes about second year timetables, before inviting opinions from the floor. Given the fact that nobody appeared to have been paying the slightest attention, a surprising number of opinions were forthcoming, and the first two or three were actually relevant to the subject. As the debate degraded into the traditional moaning about the quality of the coffee in the senior common room and the arcane rules about photocopying allowances Dominic zoned out again.
‘There was one thing before we finish.’ Theo was calling the discussion to halt. Dominic dragged his attention back into the room. ‘As you all know, Professor Samson passed away recently...’ Theo paused to allow the customary murmurings about the whys and wherefores. ‘That does mean that we have an academic vacancy in the department. Just to confirm that we will be advertising that vacancy during the coming term with a view to having someone in post for the new academic year.’