On Saturday morning, after checking my behind in the mirror (speckly purple pattern across the middle of both cheeks) and getting dressed, I find an unwelcome item in my pigeonhole.
“Dear Miss Newland
It is now six weeks since the balance of your Hall fees was due. As stated in the two reminder letters sent, you owe the sum of £350.
I must advise you that this money must now be paid by Monday or you will face eviction from your Hall of Residence. Please make cheques payable to the University of Wessex.
Yours sincerely
J.J. Beresford, Warden of Cliveden House.”
I stomp outside and light a cigarette. Shit, bollocks, shit, fuck, shit. It never rains but it pours. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Insert cliché of choice.
I can’t approach my bank manager, who has promised seven shades of doom if I ask her for another penny before the end of term. I’m overdrawn to my utter limit, and there are four more weeks to run before the Easter holidays.
“Doesn’t the Union have some kind of contingency fund?” mentions Emily, who has stood me an emergency pint in the Biko Bar at lunchtime.
“That’s for genuine emergencies,” says Dearbhla, doing an inverted comma gesture around ‘genuine’.
“And this isn’t?” I moan. “It seems genuine enough to me. I’m genuinely sleeping on the streets next week if I can’t cough 350 big ones.”
“You have to admit, you’ve been haemorrhaging cash this term,” says Dearbhla disapprovingly. I love her dearly, but that Voice of Reason tendency can grate. “You’ve been to every gig in town, you hardly ever eat in Hall, and those hundred pound shoes…”
“They were Blahniks! They were on sale! It would have been rude not to buy them!”
“Tell it to Beresford,” says Dearbhla bluntly. Her face softens at my appalled O-shaped mouth. “You can sleep on my floor as long as you like.”
“Thanks. But I need a plan. How much do you think my body would fetch?”
“About three fifty,” giggles Emily. “As in…three pounds fifty.”
Har-de-har.
*
I am on tenterhooks on Sunday. Half of my brain is wrapped up in delicious previews of tonight’s encounter with Sinclair, the other half with my parlous financial situation. What can I do? What will he do? The dual questions rattle through my head all the way through my afternoon Opsoc rehearsal. I am so distant that Seb, the director, has to constantly bring my attention back to the scene at hand. If I actually were on board H.M.S. Pinafore I’d have fallen into the briny by now.
James Winthrop, a fresh-faced Ralph Rackstraw to my Josephine, asks me if I’m feeling all right.
“Oh, I’m fine, James, thanks,” I assure him. “Bit, uh, strapped for cash.” I give him a speculative eye. Emily thinks he has a crush.
“Oh…sorry to hear it. I could lend you a tenner?”
“No, no, honestly.” I laugh with embarrassment. “It’s OK.”
I skulk off to get changed for my dubious date with the perverse Professor. Mindful of the painful heft of his right palm, I stick a pair of big knickers over my thong and then wear the heaviest denim jeans I own. I mean, he didn’t definitely say he was going to spank me again tonight…but hope springs eternal…
Leaving my room for Sinclair’s abode, I wonder if it will be my last night in the utilitarian square box I call home. Goodbye thin curtains, goodbye thinner walls, goodbye positively anorexic single bed. I hurry through the eerily quiet Sunday dusk, hugging my cord jacket around me. It is early March and there is a cutting wind that makes me twinge. I try to spot signs of spring in the gardens of the lavish mansions I pass but most of them have been given over to gravel and hardy perennials.
I have a swoony, nervy thing going on inside me that is not unlike severe nausea. Perhaps I should have eaten first. Couldn’t face it though.
The picture windows loom yellow and enormous from the crepuscular half-light like the malevolent eyes of an enormous beast. I wonder what Sinclair is doing in there as he awaits me. I imagine him lounging elegantly in his bathrobe, gin and tonic in one hand. “Ah, Miss Newland, I’ve been expecting you…” Nice.
When I walk through into the living room he is not even in there though.
His voice appears before he does. “Sit down; I’ll be a few minutes.” I can hear furious tippy-tapping coming from another room. A study, presumably. I park my arse on the sofa and take a good long look at Sinclair’s living space. It is mutedly tasteful, quite modern but classic at the same time. I imagine I am doing an in-dept
h piece for an Interiors magazine.