‘And I’ve contaminated it.’
‘Every result you get from now on, people will wonder. Was it real, or did I give it to you? Did you earn that mark, or did you earn it in my bed?’ His voice is steady and burning. ‘I’ve put an asterisk next to your mind. Your mind, Ewan. The thing that was entirely, unquestionably yours. And I can’t take it off.’
I open my mouth, close it. The argument is there,my results are clean, the proofs are self-evident, Whitmore’s panel will confirm—but the argument doesn’t address the thing he’s actually saying. He’s not talking about the panel. He’s talking about the permanent doubt that will follow my name through every transcript, every letter of recommendation that someone writes while thinking:Ah, yes, the one who was sleeping with his lecturer.
He’s right.
My work is mine; the contamination isn’t the point. But the asterisk. The asterisk is real and permanent, and it will outlastus, outlast this flat, outlast whatever happens in the next five minutes, and the knowing is?—
‘I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.’ His voice drops, Lancashire breaking through, the accent he keeps managed suddenly breaking free. ‘And the worst part is you can’t see it.’
‘That’s not?—’
‘It is.’ Final. ‘You can’t see it because you’re nineteen and you think love is enough and it’s not. Love doesn’t remove a disciplinary record. Love doesn’t unask the questions the panel is asking. Love doesn’t fix everything.’
He stops.
‘Don’t come back.’ His voice. I don’t recognise it. ‘Don’t call. Don’t text. This is over. You need to distance from this.’
The words sit in the air like numbers on a board, the variables arranged, the proof incomplete, and my brain won’t accept the answer because the answer, ‘You don’t mean this.’
‘I’ve never meant anything more.’
‘Laurence. I understand what you’re saying but?—’
‘Please.’ Thepleasebreaks, cracks down the middle. ‘Please don’t make this harder than it is.’
The old Ewan would fight, would push, seduce, argue, deploy every weapon until he broke. The old Ewan would cross this table and kiss him and fuck the speech and fuck the key and fuck every rational argument because the body knows things the brain refuses to. I can’t move.
The chair, the kitchen. I put the key on the table between us. His red eyes and the flat that was mine, my mug, my trainers under the bed, my shampoo in the shower, and it isn’t anymore.
I stand. The chair scrapes, too loud. Wrong.
My hand doesn’t reach it.
I look at it.
I walk to the door. Open it. The hallway smells of other people’s cooking and the stale warmth of a shared building in the evening. Behind me: his breathing, ragged now. The holding together is over.
My eyes move forward. Looking back would keep me here, and staying would prove his point.
The door closes behind me. How did he close it when Ron left? Controlled. Chosen.
Stairs, one flight. Two. The building’s stairwell, the concrete, the graffiti on the landing—someone’s drawn a heart withS + Linside it, and the irony is so vast and so specific that I almost.
I almost?—
I walk. Don’t know where. Every direction is away from the green door, the key, and him. From the moment he handed back the only thing I’ve ever.
The tram stop. I sit. Don’t wait for a tram. Just sit on the wet metal bench and look at the tracks and let the rain do what it does.
My phone, screen dark, no notifications. The blankness of a screen that used to light up withget home safeand now has nothing, and the nothing is the cruelest shape I’ve ever?—
I ride the tram without remembering boarding it. Fallowfield. The halls. The corridor with the thin walls and the fairy lights under the connecting door, and the bloke next door still maintaining his midnight schedule.
I lie down. Don’t undress. Don’t pull the covers. His face when he saidpleaseand thepleasewas the worst sound in the world.
Empty from all the one night stand nights, the leaving was easy because there was nothing to leave. That emptiness was a void I’d chosen. A comfortable, practised hollowness.
