‘My little brother died. He had cancer. It was too much for her. She started drinking to numb the pain of that, got hooked in.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Edgar says. He sounds sincere. ‘Why did she get sent to prison?’
‘Shoplifting. Repeat offending – she kept trying to take booze from the supermarket. No sooner was she out of court than she’d get nicked again. She needed help, though. Not prison.’ The words tumble out of her, a little pile of vomited stones she’s pouring on to Edgar’s lap.
‘That’s terrible,’ he says. ‘Everything about it.’
He reaches his hand out to her from the steering wheel and puts it on her arm. It’s warm. Her heart jolts in her chest at his touch.
‘I . . . Oh, shit.’
Lucy jumps at the exclamation. She’d almost forgotten they were driving, but thankfully Edgar hasn’t. The cars ahead have started moving, someone honking at them from behind.
He lets go of her arm, grips the steering wheel. She stops talking. There’s nothing else to say.
27
As soon as they arrive, they’re swept up into a throng of delegates for the conference. Edgar seems to know almost everyone who passes them – not just superficially, but enough to have any number of in-depth conversations about the status of X’s grant application, or Y’s upcoming publication in a prestigious journal.
The enthusiasm is infectious, as is being in the orbit of such a star. Lucy is sparkling in his wake, introduced to any number of people as his brilliant MSc student who’s done such a great job helping him prepare for this. Every time he says it, she grows pinker, more flushed, buzzing with the excitement of being a part of this.
At last, he makes his way to the podium, and Lucy flushes again with the excitement of the thought that out of everyone here, she is his student, studying directly beneath him. There’s a ripple of anticipation in the auditorium, as if to say here he is, the one we’ve all been waiting for, and Lucy watches with amusement as half the women in the room start flicking at their hair as he passes.
Not that she can talk. The reactions he’s eliciting have changed her perception of him, no doubt. She thought he was attractive before, charismatic; now it’s turning into something even more profound.
Edgar quotes from the articles that Lucy herself summarised – she recognises the information. He’s so passionate about the subject, though, it’s as if she’s hearing it all for the first time, with a new clarity as the pieces fall into place: her mum’s mental-health issues, the addictions, the crimes committed to fuel her habit once her relationship with Lucy’s father broke down. They had all tried to help her, but she was beyond any assistance they could give.
A tear trickles down Lucy’s cheek, another, the horror of it, the tragedy of the waste fully hitting home, before Edgar’s speech reaches its crescendo and she’s filled with a hope, an inspiration she’s never known before. She’s found her vocation now. She’s not alone – the room rises to its feet in a standing ovation, a ringing endorsement of the prison abolition that Edgar has outlined as the starting point of his vision for the future, and now Lucy is standing too, her hands stinging as she claps them together to join in the applause.
The rest of the day passes in a blur. Even the keynote speech by Alison Liebling, brilliant as it is, fails to have the same impact on Lucy as Edgar’s did earlier, the power of it still reverberating through her. It’s plain it’s had the same effect on most of the other delegates, too, and the hair-flicking increases wherever he moves.
At last they get to the end of the lectures, and Edgar takes her by the elbow, leading her through to the bar where the delegates are congregating. At nearly every step, he’s sought out, women stopping him to congratulate him on his work, his speech, his research. Some men too, though fewer of those, Lucy notices. Despite the attempts to distract him, Edgar shows an admirable level of determination to get to the bar, replying to each new greeting only with a nod and a smile, his grip on her arm unchanged as he uses her almost as a battering ram to make his way through.
Now they’re at the bar, leaning against it. It’s still a crush behind her, but at least there’s no one standing in front of Lucy now. She takes in a deep breath, relishing the head space.
‘What do you want?’ Edgar says.
‘Red wine, please.’
He orders her a large glass, the same for himself, and when the drinks are poured, he holds his glass out to her as if in invitation. She raises hers, a little hesitantly, and he clinks his off the side of it.
‘Cheers! Thanks so much for your help.’
‘I barely did anything.’
‘That’s not true,’ he says. ‘I can see how much work went into those summaries. You got to the heart of each of the articles in a way I haven’t seen done for a very long time.’
She’s about to argue, dismiss her contribution further, but she stops herself. A man wouldn’t minimise the work he’d done, so why should she?
Mind you, he might not be leaning quite so close if she were a man, nor looking quite so intently at her. She knows she should object to it, but she can’t help responding, leaning in closer herself, flicking her hair in exactly the way that she’s been observing in the other women around him. It’s different in this case, though; he is genuinely interested in what she has to say about the speakers they’ve heard today, laughing at her jokes in exactly the way she’d hoped that he would. She doesn’t need to attract his attention – she’s got it. The room might be crowded, but it could be empty for all it matters to them, enclosed as they are in a bubble that excludes everyone else.
She can smell the red wine on his breath, a hint of cologne, and underneath that, a scent of sweat, warm and earthy. She’s moving in closer and closer, ignoring the chatter around them, people coming over occasionally and attempting to pull him free, defeated by the magnetic bond between them. Lucy has never felt so understood, so heard, as she does this moment, the intensity of Edgar’s gaze not intimidating her but instead drawing her even further out of herself. At this moment, there’s nothing she wouldn’t share, no fantasy too dark, no secret too buried—
‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,’ he says, and she thrills at the words.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a project I’ve been working on,’ he says. Her heart sinks a little, rises again. Work is his passion, after all. The rest will follow.
