But the douching, the plug. The second shower. Four checks in the mirror, three t-shirt changes: this is different. This is me, who doesn’t give a fuck, giving all of the fucks about whether a thirty-one-year-old mathematician thinks my body is good enough.
Strategy, obviously. Just strategy.
I’m seven minutes late. Calculated.
The bar is in Chorlton, far enough from campus that Haldrey would have computed the odds before booking it. Flat whiteswith latte art, exposed brick claimingwe’re independent, four-quid coffees that saywe know you’ll pay it—that place.
He’s in the corner. Already seated, already nursing a cold drink, already checking the door every fifteen seconds, he arrived early for a meeting he’s been telling himself isn’t a date.
I see him before he sees me. Use the seconds.
Outside the university, he’s different. The shirt is softer, navy, and open at the collar. No tie, no jacket. The sleeves rolled up: a conscious choice, like he considered his forearms and decided to use them. There’s a watch on his wrist that I’ve never noticed on campus. Silver, simple. He’s never worn it there.
He looks younger, less constructed. More like a man and less like a man playing a role, and the difference tightens my stomach the same way the plug has all morning.
I stand in the doorway of the café for a beat longer than I need to. I want to know what he looks like when he thinks he’s alone. He looks like someone you’d walk up to in a pub. Someone you’d stop for directions. A whole category of man I’ve watched him refuse to be in front of students for six weeks.
A girl says, ‘Excuse me,’ behind me. I step out of the way. He still hasn’t seen me.
His left hand was on the spoon. Turning it. A quarter rotation, then another. The handle catches the overhead light and throws a small, bright shape onto the table. He notices his own thumb moving and sets the spoon down, flattens his palm against the wood. Two seconds before the thumb betrays him again, tapping.
He doesn’t know how to sit still in public for me. I could watch this for an hour.
Instead, I walk over, and he looks up.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’ He gestures at the seat opposite. Rehearsed.
I sit. Order a black coffee because I’ve seen him drink his black, and I want him to register the mirror. Petty. Effective.
He starts talking, and I let him.
‘I wanted to be clear about something.’
He’s looking at his cup. The spoon beside it is aligned with the saucer edge. Of course it is.
‘The reason I suggested meeting here is because the office environment was becoming?—’
He stops.
‘Complicated.’
Complicated. Dr Haldrey, reaching for it like a talisman.
‘I have a responsibility,’ he continues. ‘A professional one. And even if nothing inappropriate has happened, private meetings can look wrong from the outside. Gossip can do damage before there’s anything to deny.’
He looks at the spoon. Not at me.
‘The university’s policy on personal relationships between staff and students is unambiguous where teaching or assessment is involved. I’ve read it.’
A pause.
‘More than once.’
As in: he went home after last Tuesday and pulled up the policy and read it like a man reading his own autopsy report.
‘You see other students in your office,’ I say.
