Unfaithful - Natalie Barelli Page 0,44
be almost true. I think the reason I don’t is because I hate to talk about that time of my childhood, when the Pentti-Stone conjecture represented nothing less than an instrument of torture.
“Okay.” She writes it down. Then she wants to know why I kept the research secret for so long. I hesitate.
“Is it because as a woman you were worried you wouldn’t be taken seriously?” she asks.
“Yes.” I nod, slowly. “That’s very perceptive of you.”
Then she asks: “Have you some supporting documentation, anything we can upload to the website to accompany your article, and that isn’t in the journal’s paper? Something you held back from Forrester.”
I cock my head at her. “Supporting documentation?”
“You know, your notebooks, work in progress, scribbles, doodles, anything you have that would be good visual material for the project. Visuals are great for this sort of thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s messy. The messier the better!”
I rub a finger on my forehead. “Okay, let me think. Um… I don’t actually have much.”
She chuckles. “But you must have notes. You didn’t publish a pre-print, right?”
“A pre-print. No.” It’s unusual to publish a proof directly like I did. Normally you’d have a draft version made freely available for others to provide feedback on. I don’t have a pre-print. Obviously. I didn’t need one.
“I… I threw a lot of things away when I moved office. You know how it is. I might have thrown my notes, too.”
She waits for me to say more, a cloud of confusion in her eyes. “But you submitted them to the Forrester Foundation.”
Something tugs at the edge of my brain when she says that. “What do you mean?”
She tilts her head at me. “It’s part of the rules. You know that, right? The Forrester Foundation will only award the prize if you submit all the notebooks. You have to show how you came to the solution.”
“Oh, right!” I blink, breathe a sigh of relief. For a moment I thought she meant… I don’t know what I thought. All I know is, I’ve already done that. I did that when I submitted the paper. “It’s all in the published paper.”
“Well, not really. Without supporting documentation, notebooks, workings, all that, they won’t give you the prize. I mean, these are the rules, you know that, right?”
I wish she’d stop asking me that. I laugh. “Of course I know that!” I raise my hand. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. I’ll dig up any relevant notebooks I have and bring them along.”
But I remember now. An email that came shortly after the Foundation confirmed my solution was accepted, something about sending them documentation. I ignored it, I don’t know why. I thought it was for their records or something. Now I wait until she’s gone to pore over the fine print on the Foundation’s website. And there it is. The submission must include the preliminary work that led to the discovery. Then a paragraph detailing what’s acceptable in terms of documentation.
I sit back. Push the palm of my hand between my eyes. I have a vague memory of knowing about this requirement, but I didn’t think it was compulsory. Did Alex and I ever discuss this? Of course one requirement was that a paper be published about the solution in a reputable journal, and I’ve done that, and that’s enough, surely. Who cares how I got there?
It was stupid of me to destroy the notebooks. I should have copied them first, so I’d have the workings in my own handwriting. I could have added rings from overflowing coffee cups, spilled red wine. Make it look like I’d been working late at night.
I wasn’t thinking straight back then. Never mind. It will be fine. Of course it will be. They wouldn’t have said I’d won the Pentti-Stone otherwise. I’m sure this so-called requirement is not absolute. I mean, I solved it, didn’t I? The whole world knows I solved it. They could hardly not give me the prize! And if they ask, I’ll just say… something. I’ll think of something. It’ll be fine.
The tapas bar isn’t very far and June and I decide to walk. We’re almost there when the weather changes abruptly and we wrap our coats tighter, raise our collars and squint against the icy wind. I take her hand to hurry her along and we almost fall into the restaurant, laughing, our cheeks red and our coats sparkling with melting crystals.
It’s early enough to score a good table near the window. We drop