I don’t really admit it out loud but I know how easy it is to lose yourself when you’re safe and cosy, going along with life with no signs of change or escape on the horizon. Letting opportunities slip by becomes your new normal and after a while you barely notice it, not until everyone your own age suddenly seems to be escaping and excelling, leaving you behind.
Anyway, I’m already thinking about how long I need to stay here before I can ditch this cape and hood thingy that I’m all trussed up in and we can pile back into Dad’s van and head home where I’ll be able to get back to re-readingPersuasion.
Jane Austen is one of the greatest loves of my life – alongside our bakery’s iced Copenhagen slices, my pyjamas, and of course Mack. I’d left off at the good bit where steady old Anne Elliot thinks Captain Wentworth is drooling over the impulsive Louisa Musgrove, and Louisa’s about to toss herself off the Cobb at Lyme Regis and brain herself trying to impress him and…
Mum interrupts my dreams of getting my Austen on at home. ‘Well done, sweetheart,’ she says, suddenly planting a kiss on my cheek from nowhere. Dad’s got his camera to his face again and is clicking away, capturing it all.
‘Say cheese,’ he calls.
That’s when I glimpse them, over Dad’s shoulder, Mack and the woman – actually, I’d call her a girl – and they’re walking so close it looks like he’s towing her. They’re nipping round the back of the auditorium, and I’m sure she’s tipping her head coyly and twirling her hair in her fingers. Her giggle reaches me all the way across the quad, and just like that I find I’m following them, stalking through the happy crowds in hot pursuit with Daniel’s voice, cautioning and grave, ringing out behind me.
‘Jude? Jude. Don’t! Just, please stay here…’
Somehow, tiptoeing after them, I know my narrow little life is about to get even thinner. I know that whatever I see when I round this corner is going to hurt.
She’s still giggling and, wait… Mack’s joining in?
And on my graduation day, when I’d finally reached the top of my game. When only an hour ago I was beaming with pride and achievement.
As I prepare to turn the corner and confront them, holding my breath, dreading the sight that awaits me, I think back to when I was waiting in the wings inside the auditorium and what had been my Big Moment begins to take on a sadder, slightly pathetic, appearance in this new light.
An hour before
I’m next. This is it! I’m going to sail across that graduation stage like a swan. My heart’s thumping because it’s just hit home I’m about to be the centre of attention for the first time in my life; one thousand eyes will be fixed upon me and everyone’s going to hear my name, but I’ve had six years to prepare for this and I am doing it.
‘Jude Crawley,’ calls the Dean of Arts over the speakers, and I’m off, up the steps, and I’m definitely fighting back big, proud sobs. ‘Bachelor of Arts in English Literature.’
I can hear Mum and Dad whooping at me from their row but I daren’t look around, and if I were to catch Gran’s eye I know I’d dissolve completely.
The Chancellor’s holding out my certificate rolled in a red ribbon and all I have to do is nod at him, grab it and not stumble in these heels.
‘Jude Crawley also accepts the Chancellor’s award for academic achievement,’ the Dean booms and my parents burst into another fit of whistling and yelping.
I’m bowing and he’s handing me an actual award, a Perspex star with my name on it. This isjustlike that bit inAnne of Green Gables, one of my favourite childhood reads, and I’m Anne Shirley finally getting her Bachelor’s degree in spite of nineteenth-century prejudices, only she’s got a teaching career ahead of her and her belly button isn’t showing because of a damned cloak and hood thing yanking up her shirt and half choking her. That doesn’t matter though, because this ismymoment and I’m beaming through my tears. All that work, six years, and it’s finally here.
I try not to glance over to where Mack is sitting amongst the stage party, here in his official capacity as Head of Philosophy: Doctor Rupert Mackenzie-Aubyn – also known as my secret boyfriend, Mack.
‘Secret boyfriend’ makes it sound sort of illicit. It isn’t really. We’re only a secret because he’s on his way to becoming a professor and although Mack assures me student–staff relationships aren’tstrictlyagainst the rules when you’re in different departments and the student in question’s a mature student, they’re not exactly encouraged.
I shake the Chancellor’s papery hand. He’s congratulating me on my success and I have no words other than a whispered, slightly snottery ‘thank you’.
I can’t resist a little peek at Mack to see his reaction and to get another eyeful of him looking all distinguished and owlish in his suit with that brown tie and his little round glasses that make him look like William Butler Yeats, one of my all-time favourite poets.
He’s not looking at me. In fact he’s staring down at… is that his phone? Nobody smiles at their own crotch like that, not in public with the Chancellor six feet away anyway, so he must be texting.
Well, that’s one way to play it cool. Nobody would ever know I’ve spent many evenings over the last eight months listening to him reading Camus and Machiavelli – and not understanding much of it – as I laid my head across his lap and he ran his fingers through my strawberry-blonde bob.
I remember one time, right at the beginning, when he counted every single freckle on my face and kissed each one, and I’d stopped hating my freckles after that. That was only a few weeks after our first meeting, when he’d first approached me among the library stacks and, after a bit of flirty chat, told me I was welcome to peruse his bookshelves at home if I fancied. I’d blushed and we ended up talking for ages and I missed a lecture so we could go to a bar off campus.
He’s not even clapping.
I leave the stage, a little wobbly on the stairs, clasping my scroll and my star award, and feeling a little deflated, if I’m honest.
I know things will be different from now on, though. Now I’m a graduate there’ll be no more secrecy, and I can visit Mack on campus and openly bring him his lunch, instead of sneaking into his office under the pretence of being a philosophy student looking for advice about interpreting Plato or whatnot.
Only, the thing is, I’d hoped – in fact, I’d fantasised – that the secrecy would endtodayand he’d be grinning at me from the stage and applauding hard. Maybe he’d be misty-eyed, overcome with pride and relief that now we’re out in the open.
I know I’m not the only one thinking these things as I make my way back to my row through the packed auditorium and I see Gran, tiny and adorable in her best dress, little pink jacket and matching hat, sucking on a Murray Mint, her eyes boring into Mack up on stage.
