She passes me the computer, open to the list of presenters at a conference a decade ago. There he is, presenting on the topic ‘Creative Sampling: A Critical Analysis of the Columbia Law School Library’s Music Plagiarism Project’.
I stare at her. ‘So he’s an expert in his own crime?’
‘Fraser, this is perfect. He steals students’ music, but he’s a leader in the field. They assume what he’s doing must be within the realms of normal, because look at this—he’s an international specialist on the topic, and what would they know? They’re barely out of high school—not even, in Parker’s case.’
‘Like when pyromaniacs turn firefighters. Or when police are corrupt.’
Rachael is still scrolling and reading, shaking her head. ‘There are so many similar cases. Academics stealing students’ ideas and publishing them in articles or book chapters. This one professor in the States stole his student’s medical invention and sold it to a pharmaceutical company for millions!’
Anger stings. I’m enraged at the injustice, infuriated that Audrey never got the chance for justice when she’d been so driven for it, at the end.
‘Let’s see if the group wants to pick this up again. They deserve compensation, even if it’s too late for Audrey.’
‘Shall I open an email?’ Rachael props big plastic glasses on her nose as if she’s ready to take dictation.
‘Tell them I’m sorry I halted the case. If they’re still keen to talk, we can make a time. Let them know I’m prepared to throw money at this for legal representation.’ Maybe Josh will pitch in to ease his guilt.
She starts typing while I switch the kettle on and watch her, vibrating with the excitement of having a new project together, watching her work, all her mannerisms so familiar—the way she pins her fringe behind her ear, where it never stays, the fact that her glasses prescription isn’t quite right, so she’s constantly nudging the sky-blue frames up and down her nose to bring the screen into focus. How she plays with Audrey’s pendant while she thinks. All of it is as close as if we’d been living together for years, and when I imagine her on the other side of the world, it’s just … well, it’s impossible.
She snaps the lid of the laptop shut. ‘Right. That’s done. Now I’ve got a favour to ask …’ She leans beside the couch and retrieves her handbag as I bring her tea from the kitchen. Next thing she’s pulling out a white envelope and a series of small photos of herself.
‘My passport has expired,’ she explains, matteroffactly. ‘I need you to be my guarantor.’
I don’t want to be her guarantor.Everything I’ve just felt—all the rage and anger and fury about Ridges—takes a back seat in the face of this new threat.
‘Do you have a black pen?’ She’s looking up at me from the couch while I stand here helplessly, with her cup of tea in my hand.
‘I think we need to do two, but maybe sign four while you’re at it.’
Does she not know what she’s doing to me?
I put the tea on the coffee table and get a pen from the desk, sit down, and take the sheet of photos.
‘They’re not meant to be beautiful.’
She’s mistaken my expression for criticism. I turn them over and click the end of the pen. ‘What do I have to write?’
‘This is a true photo of Rachael Elizabeth McKenzie. And sign your name.’
As I do the first, my entire body seems to ache with the effort. It feels like I’m signing my life away.
My whole life.
‘My God, Fraser, you’re asloth! What’s the problem?’
I look at her sitting beside me, all bright-eyed with the promise of Ireland, lining up her ducks. And it strikes me, terribly belatedly, that I am not one of those ducks. Worse, I am almost certain that I used to be. And I can’t let her go.
‘Rach, before I sign this …’ I put the pen down, a crystalline timeline of the next fifty years materialising, as fresh and glittering as it feels familiar. This is not aninstead ofsituation. It’s analways was. It’s anas well. ‘Can we circle back to something?’
She’s losing patience. Keen to get this done and submitted so she can get out of this holding pattern I’ve had her in and take charge of her destiny. ‘Circle back to what?’
I clear my throat and reveal my hand, scared I’ve left this far too late, knowing she has every right to reject me, but if I don’t ask, I’ll never know: ‘Can we revisit the bit when you were my fiancée?’
56
AUDREY
Whenever I imagined attending a Hollywood-esque table read—which was never—it wasn’t a forty-minute flight from home, and it definitely wasn’t without having gone to a hairstylist beforehand. Yet here I am, in jeans and a simple green swing top, imitation Birkenstocks, and wild hair, having left it to air-dry this morning while I got sucked into my music.
