We started out as friends, as oft the story goes. Sharing a love of equations, of mathematical probabilities and how far each concept could be stretched and explored. But being a mathematician, a rationaliser, didn’t stop me from appreciating beauty. It made me look at a flower and see its inherent structure, allowed me to imagine it on a cellular level. It meant I saw how it was designed to make itself attractive to insects, how nature has a way of getting what it needs. Add to that the lessons I had learnt from Elle and it meant I understood the world in a way others could not.
So I gave him the time he needed to realise I was different. Because life is nothing more than a series of interconnected moments. Just the passage of time that we anoint with purpose and meaning, only distinguished by what we do with our intentions.
It was the night of the summer ball. The end of the beginning, or perhaps the other way around. I was dressed in midnight satin, my hair caught up in filigree hair slides, lips stained the same colour as a robin’s breast. Patrick and I were sitting at the edge of the river under a heaving silver sky, as music from the main quad spun over the walls along with the drunken mating calls of our peers.
‘It seems strange to think our time here is nearly over.’
‘In what way?’ I looked over at him, at the thin line of red on his chin. No doubt the result of a shaving accident, his hands somewhat out of practice after weeks when time was reserved for poring over textbooks. Weeks fuelled by strong coffee and a somewhat narcissistic desire to be the best, the scholar, the one everyone else aspired to beat.
‘I make sense here,’ he said, gently bumping against my shoulder as I leant in to his touch. ‘So do you.’
He was talking about my move to London. About pursuing a career at a prestigious investment bank. A career he thought I was worth more than and, to a certain extent, I had to agree.
‘I want a different kind of life.’
He shifted his weight beside me. ‘Meaning money.’
He didn’t understand why I would choose money over intellectual prestige. Why I had no desire to build upon my existing knowledge of plants. To apply for a second degree in botany, stay here and use my brain for something altogether more worthwhile than making rich people richer.
Curling my bare toes into the grass, I watched as an ant climbed aboard my little toe. ‘You say that like it’s a dirty word.’
‘That’s because it is. You know as well as I do that money causes nothing but fear and loathing.’
Patrick came from money. Old money, handed down over generations, which meant he could afford not to care about it, or at least pretend not to. But I understood in a way he never could how intrinsic money is because of what happens when it is absent. What happens when your mother has to choose between putting food on the table or paying the electricity bill.
‘Money makes things easier.’
I could feel him watching me, could picture the slant of his brow as he decided what to say next, but I didn’t trust myself to look. Didn’t trust myself to do something that would ruin what I could sense was about to transpire.
‘Don’t you want to do something more with your life than filling a pot with gold? Don’t you want to be remembered for something: an idea, a concept future generations will read about and learn from?’
That was when I turned my face, looked up at him from under lashes laden with mascara and arched my back in the exact same way I had seen Elle do over and over again. He needed someone who would let him shine and not try to take away from his brilliance. He needed someone who was just as capable, who understood his ambitions, but had no desire to challenge him. We would make an incredible team because I would let him take centre stage. I’d had years of practice, of letting someone else bask in all the glory, but now it was time to claim my reward.
‘I never really thought about my future before I met you.’
He blinked. Once, then twice more. Lips parted and became heavy with intent before he sprang to his feet and threw his empty glass into the river where it promptly collided with the side of a punt. None of its inhabitants seemed to take any notice; too busy were they in grappling with one another and I remember hoping that at least one of them would topple into the water and drown.
‘Look at them,’ he said, flinging his arm in the punt’s direction. ‘So unaware of the privilege they’re experiencing just by being here. Such a waste.’
I loved him because he saw how unfair the world could be. That there were too many people who succeeded simply because of what they were born into. That it wasn’t just the ignorant who sucked the life from this planet, but the ones who assumed they were better than everyone else because they were rich.
I loved him because he too had a darker side. One I didn’t want him to lock away, because when I was around him the voices inside my own head seemed to still and I was slowly becoming open to the possibility of allowing myself to be happy.
For as long as I could remember I had wanted to do harm, both to myself and others. My stomach was littered with tiny silver scars that were testament to all the nights when I would sit in the shadows and ask the voices to leave me alone. To all the nights when my only release had been to feel the cut of skin, the slow slither of blood as my very essence seeped into the floorboards on which I lay. Because without it I knew my hands couldn’t be trusted not to carry out the twisted imaginings of my mind. Without that release, the voices would not stop.
‘Walk with the wise and become wise. For a companion of fools suffers harm.’ Standing at the edge of the river, Patrick watched the punt make its precarious journey towards the horizon as I sat and stared at his silhouetted profile.
‘Is that a poem?’ I asked.
‘Proverb,’ he said as he came back to me. ‘Seems my Sunday mornings weren’t a total waste of time.’
‘What is it you’re trying to tell me, Patrick?’
‘You’re the only woman I’ve ever met who really gets me.’ He placed his hands either side of my neck, the weight of him against my frantic pulse. ‘You understand that people like us have a duty to give back to the world. To do something with the gifts we’ve been given rather than squandering away our time.’
‘Did you know that the probability of our relationship succeeding is about the same as being struck by lightning?’ I could feel my entire body shaking, certain that if he were to let me go my spine would betray me and I would slip into the river, be taken into its depths and drift out to sea.
‘There’s always an exception to every rule.’
His mouth came down to mine, smothering my nerves, and I decided to give him everything because I thought it was what I wanted.
Peanut: To dream of eating a peanut is a sign of trying to uncover a hidden truth
Surrey, eight years ago
Finals were over, the hours poring over textbooks were behind us and the cellars of every student bar had been emptied during weeks of potent celebration. I was due to start work in just over a week and, despite my best attempts to dissuade her, Elle had convinced her parents to give me a proper sendoff at their home. They agreed, both because they knew my mother never would, and also, I suspect, as a thank you of sorts for my supposed good influence on their child. A child who always got what she wanted and loved any excuse to dress up and flaunt her wares at all and sundry.
‘So what’s he like?’