“He’s very busy…”
“It’s…an….emergency,” repeats my lover, his eyes boring into the unfortunate woman.
“I’ll just buzz you through,” she says, almost in tears. While she busies herself with the intercom, Sinclair snatches the Daily Mail off the desk and throws it into the bin. I hear the other students gasp and stifle giggles. Then the doctor’s light flashes and we march into his office like royalty.
*
Pill prescribed and collected, we return to the flat, already growing used to the way the crowds part for us like the Red Sea for Moses wherever we go. Oh my God, it’s Sadist Sinclair and his Student Submissive, the whispers seem to hang in the air above us. I catch an awful lot of sibilance anyway, whatever they are saying. A black curtain of baying journalists surrounds the car on our turning into the driveway, but they are not permitted to enter the grounds of the block, so they fall away once we are on the gravel. Flashing lights accompany us to the front door and then we are safe again, just us in our own private space.
Well, almost. An elderly lady in one of the ground floor flats curls her lip at us when we come in and asks Sinclair how long she can expect to have that circus camped on her doorstep.
“Until they lose interest,” is hi
s only reply and I shrug apologetically at her before Sinclair’s hand clamps around my elbow and pulls me up the stairs behind him.
I get myself a glass of water and pop my pill. In the living room, Sinclair is plugging things in and switching them on, moving through to the office to turn on his computer as well.
“This is where the fun really starts,” he says grimly, and before I know it, all manners of ringtone blast into the air. The answering machine is blinking fit to bring on an epileptic seizure, and both our mobile phones compete against each other for harmonic mastery. Sinclair’s bleeped ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ just about pips my Mozart piano concerto.
I switch my phone back off again – it won’t be anyone I want to talk to – and collapse on to the sofa, watching Sinclair as he frowns at his mobile then answers it.
“The VC,” he explains to me before putting it to his ear.
“Yes….I know….No, no…that part wasn’t true….Well, yes, of course….I understand that….tomorrow then…yes, goodbye.”
“Short,” I comment. “Sweet?”
Sinclair is digesting the gist of the conversation, but he turns to me eventually and says, “Probably fine. He wants us to meet tomorrow morning. His chief concern seems to be the slur that I have preyed on students as a matter of habit. I think I can convince him that that is not the case.”
“But what about me? Would that be enough to get you into trouble?”
“I hope not, Beth. I’m hardly alone in what I’ve done…though most manage to keep things quiet until graduation. I only have myself to blame for it. I wasn’t exactly discreet.”
“No,” I say, thinking back to that glorious shopping day in the Village. “You weren’t. Why not?”
“For the same reason I don’t think I’ll lose my chair here. I’m high profile; I attract funding and patronage to the university, and generally speaking, for a poorly resourced subject like History, no publicity is bad publicity. It’s not as if I’m a holocaust denier.”
“No,” I agree. “And I am legally an adult. It’s not professional misconduct in the way a schoolteacher with a pupil would be. You don’t even teach me, strictly speaking. You don’t mark my essays, even if you do help me with them.”
“In an unofficial capacity,” he reminds me.
“Yes,” I muse. “Completely off the record.”
He cannot settle though, and paces the room, listening to answerphone messages. Dozens of them. Mainly journalists looking for a quote or an interview. Then Dex Gifford, a famous publicist, asking if Sinclair needs representation. Then the producer of History Matters requesting an urgent ‘face to face’. Then Rob and Mel, in a fury at their video being all over the media. Silly arses. Then some incoherent slurring that Sinclair pounces on and fast-forwards through, his face twitching. Then his secretary with a thousand questions about the running of the department in his absence. Then…oh….Dr Blakey.
“Eliot..” (wince) “…I’m so sorry. I really didn’t know all that about your past; I never meant for all that to be dragged up.”
We both stiffen, hackles rising, and listen more closely.
“I’m just…I feel terrible now. I only meant to teach you a lesson, I suppose…that you can’t go around treating people the way you do, especially young students. But…well. Oh dear. It wasn’t me that contacted the press, by the way, though I did speak to them when they called me. I think it was Rachael West – you were seeing her at Oxford, I gather? She’s an old school friend of mine; I bumped into her at a reunion over the Easter break. We, er, compared notes and…well, she’s the only person I can think of that would know all that about you. I’m so sorry. I just thought it would be…a mild sort of sex scandal. Please don’t hold it against me. I’m going to look for another post; I don’t think I can work with you any more. Goodbye.”
He sits down heavily next to me. I take his hand and he squeezes me painfully.
“Oh dear,” is all I can think of to say.
“That solves that little mystery,” he says numbly.
“But what about the video? I still don’t understand how they got hold of that. Or the photo of your office.”