I write a problem on the board. Neat. Laid out how Laurence used to lay them out, clean lines, no clutter, the question visible from the back row. I learnt this from watching him. Didn’t know I was learning. Thought I was staring at his arse.
‘Just to see where you are. Have a look. Take your time.’
The back row, last seat, far left. A kid. Hood up, chin on fist. He’d rather be anywhere else. He’s not looking at the board. He’s looking at the space between his shoes and the floor, and he’s decided in advance that nothing in this building is worth the effort.
I know this kid. I know the angle of the slouch and the set of the jaw and the flavour of intelligence hiding behind the performance of not giving a fuck. At eighteen, in this same room, that was my seat. My slouch. My curated indifference, the posture that saysI could do this, I don’t want tobecause wanting means caring and caring means, He glances up. Catches me looking, looks away.
I smile, small.
He’ll either find it or he won’t. But the problem is on the board. The door stayed open.
After, Merton walks me to his office. Tea, biscuits. The chair that creaks.
‘You’re good at this,’ he says. ‘They listened.’
I think of Laurence in that lecture theatre. A problem on a board. A boy in the back row who saw the answer and didn’t say it. That silence: the beginning.
‘I had a good example,’ I say.
Merton looks at me over his glasses. Recognition.
‘You should apply for the PhD programme,’ he says. ‘I’ll write the reference.’
The tram to Chorlton. September light through the windows. I know this route like my own pulse, every stop, every turn, the corner shop, the terraces, the cracked pavement.
The green door, my key. The catch and release.
Home.
Laurence is in the kitchen, the glasses slightly different, the shirt sleeves already rolled because he’s cooking. He’s been on campus all day. Research fellow, applied mathematics. A department that knows his name for the work, not the scandal. He carries it, the scar of what happened, but it’s lighter now—most days. There’s whiteboard ink on his index finger. He never notices. I always do.
Music, low, a record turning. The flat’s hum.
‘How was your first day, Professor Carrick?’
Professor. Aspirational and absurd, and the joke works because the distance between a third-year demonstrator and a professor is roughly the distance between Manchester and the moon. Still, Laurence says it like it’s already true, and the saying is a kind of faith.
‘I had a kid in the back row.’ Dropping my bag. Crossing the kitchen. The four metres of hardwood. ‘Hood up. Terrible attitude. A genius.’
‘Sounds familiar.’
‘He didn’t raise his hand.’
‘Neither did you.’
I stop. The boy in the back row who couldn’t be arsed. The man who saw it and didn’t look away.
‘I turned out alright,’ I say.
‘Debatable.’ He’s smiling—the real one, the one I spent a lot of time excavating from under the professional mask. Time hasn’t dimmed the inconvenient effect it has on me.
I kiss him. Quick.
‘Dinner’s in twenty minutes,’ he says against my lips.
‘Noted.’
The frame under the shirt. The grip on the wooden spoon.
