Elliot was annoyed when he left Hoyt’s room. They didn’t know him. They didn’t know what he’d been through. He didn’t measure his life by their yardstick. He hadn’t come to Oxford to study physics out of love. He’d come because it was easy. For all his many faults, Ben had given him a grounding in the subject that was beyond compare, and Elliot had never lost his ability to see solutions others considered impossible. He’d left Hoyt one such example as a riposte to her criticisms of him as a scientist. It was a solution he’d puzzled out while considering the abstracts of gravitational theory and causal dynamics. She would make a fuss, of course, and want him to publish, but what did it matter if the stars were deconstructed a little further? He preferred them beautiful and mysterious.
He was no longer in the mood to join his crew, so he headed for the library to collect his books. He walked through the lodge and turned left up Turl Street, aiming for the old church that had been converted into the college library.
With each step his mood soured. Nothing was ever enough for these people, and while they would always ask more of him, none of them could help him achieve the things he wanted. Despite what he’d said to Hoyt and Gardner, he was interested in truth.
Ben had made him a promise once, and he was desperate to know if it was true.
Elliot approached the wrought-iron church gates, which were set in a high fence, and he opened the one on the right. He stepped into the old stone churchyard and walked towards the grand library.
He pulled one of the huge wooden doors, stepped into a tiny antechamber, produced his library keycard from his pocket and ran it over the reader beside the glass security gates. The sensor beeped and he pulled one of the gates open and stepped inside.
The librarian wasn’t at her desk, so he climbed the wooden steps into the main vaulted chamber. A run of long, broad tables formed a spine down the centre of the room, and a dozen students occupied well-spaced chairs. High shelves flanked the central table and between each pair were carrels, many of which were unoccupied. Elliot nodded at a few familiar faces. As captain of boats, he was well known within the college, but not always well liked because of some of the rowdier antics of the rowing crew.
His books were where he’d left them, in a carrel at the very rear of the church, but the space next to him was no longer empty. It was now occupied by Jessica Sealey, a girl he’d had a crush on since fresher’s week. The cloud of his encounter with Hoyt and Gardner lifted at the sight of her, and he forgot his anger.
Their timing had always been off. She’d been with someone, and then he had, and despite what seemed an obvious mutual attraction, they’d managed to go almost three years without getting together. Had she seen his stuff? Had she asked around to find out where he was sitting? Or was it coincidence?
His heart tripped into a higher gear as he walked behind her and took his seat. There was no way he was leaving until she did.
She removed her headphones and said, ‘Hey. Good session?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied, wishing he’d gone back to his room to shower. ‘Studying hard?’
What a stupid question, he thought immediately. Studying hard?
She smiled. ‘Yeah.’
The headphones went back in, and she returned to her books. He’d have to do better than that to win over this otherworldly woman. Her skin glowed, her red hair tumbled and her brown eyes shone like stars. She seemed more elfish than human, and if she’d told him she was really from Lothlórien, he might have believed her.
He opened his book on optical measurement of subatomic particles, but couldn’t concentrate on a single word. He pretended to read the pages, but in truth he was just turning them so as not to appear weird.
They spent hours sitting side by side as though locked in a competition to see who would betray their union first. Night fell, and the massive stained-glass windows sprang to life with rich colour, illuminated by spotlights that hung outside the building. Glazed saints performed wondrous deeds all around them.
Elliot heard a steady stream of people leave until he was sure he and Jessica were the only people in the building. He checked his phone. It was a little after ten, but the sidelong glances and lingering looks told him he needed to stay.
Finally, when the grand old church was still, and he felt he couldn’t breathe air that was so heavy with expectation, she removed her headphones and said, ‘So, I was thinking we could go and hang out in my room. I have some wine.’
‘OK,’ he replied instantly, and a moment later he kicked himself for not playing it cool and taking his time to respond.
But she didn’t care and was grinning at him almost as foolishly as he was at her.
They left their books and walked through the library side by side. Their fingers touched and he was shaken by tremors of excitement, which developed into a full-blown quake when she took his hand. They said nothing as they passed the high shelves laden with books, and still no words came as they skipped down the stairs and hurried into the churchyard outside. The cool night was still, as though the world was holding its breath.
The gate was always locked after ten, and students had to get out through a maze of corridors that ran through the college. A door in the north-east corner of the churchyard offered access to the corridor, and they were about to start along the path that lay between ancient gravestones when Elliot sensed movement out of the corner of his eye.
There, beyond the high wrought-iron fence, on the other side of Turl Street, was a face he hadn’t seen for years, and the time that had passed wasn’t enough. Standing across from him was the man he’d once loved, but over the years had come to hate.
The man whose face he had almost forgotten: Benjamin Elmys.