by the fact that he wants to rip her life apart and by the fact that she may have the power to psychically cause harm. She’d reluctantly driven him to the hospital to be treated for the head wound she may or may not have inflicted, wishing she could have let him bleed to death on the floor instead. Except that it really wouldn’t do to have a death on the premises—bad for business—and she’d be the one to scrub all the blood from her floorboards afterwards. So she’d driven Wolfe to Addenbrooke’s A&E, breaking the speed limit, skipping several red lights, and ejected the capitalist pig unceremoniously onto the pavement and sped off, vowing to banish all further thoughts of him. So far, she’s failing rather spectacularly on that account.
8:08 a.m.—Bea
“What are you doing here?” Bea steps through the archway of Trinity College and onto the cobbled paving stones. The chubby bearded student whose name she can’t recall is sitting on the low stone wall enclosing the college’s front gardens. “Because this isn’t fate, it’s stalking.”
The student stands. “No, no,” he says, looking mortified. “Well, yes, I see it might seem that way, but . . . I was hoping you might help me with my homework. The, um, finer points of Principia Mathematica are eluding me.”
Bea hugs her books to her chest and scowls. “Your homework? What are you, twelve?”
“You’re funny.” He grins. “That’s why I like you.”
“You don’t like me,” Bea says, contempt curling her top lip. “You don’t even know me.” She starts walking.
“You’re beautiful too—stunning.” He hurries after her. “But that’s by the by. Funny tops beauty every time.”
Bea stops walking. “What do you want?”
“I told you—”
“No, not your cheesy pick-up lines,” Bea says. “I mean, what do you hope to gain with this routine—you’re hoping for a quick shag?”
At this, he looks both startled and slightly horrified. He pulls nervously at his beard. “No, no . . . I didn’t imagine, not in my wildest—well, perhaps in my wildest—but not in this world. No, I just wanted to know you.”
“Know me?” Bea narrows her eyes. “So you can try to—?”
“No, no, no.” He holds up both hands, stepping back. “No, not at all. I—there’s something about you. I’m . . . drawn to you. But not—not in a creepy way. I only want to, um, spend a little time with you, if you’ll let me. I want to know you, even a tiny bit better, that’s all.”
Bea regards him as if she couldn’t have imagined a more pathetic answer. She starts walking. “Well, I don’t want to know you,” she says, throwing the words behind her. “So please piss off.”
Only when she’s sure he isn’t following does Bea relax. Her shoulders drop and her view drifts up to the timbered Tudor buildings lining Trinity Street and the congregations of pigeons gathered on window ledges atop the elevated gargoyles and sculptures of eminent historical figures—every one of them, from their foppish stone hats to their stockinged stone feet, male.
For a moment, Bea imagines that she can hear the language of birds, that she need only listen closer to decipher their meaning: a bright twitter of delight, a low mournful caw, a twinkling flirtatious chirrup . . . But then tells herself to stop being so fanciful and hurries on.
4:31 p.m.—Liyana
“Married? She wants you to get married?” Kumiko slides to the edge of the bed. “To a man? That’s insane.”
“Well . . .” Liyana says, feeling defensive though she’s thought the same thing herself many times. “After all, arranged marriage is typical in lots of cultures, isn’t it? In Ghana it’s not uncommon, at least it used to—”
“That’s not what I meant.” Kumiko kicks her heels against the wood. “I wasn’t questioning the institution in general, just specifically, in . . .” She regards Liyana. “You did tell her about us, didn’t you?”
Liyana, sitting on the floor, fiddles with the hem on Kumiko’s rug, starting to plait the thin strands of black wool.
Kumiko narrows her eyes. “You didn’t.”
Liyana doesn’t look up. “Of course I did. And I told her I’d work night shifts in Tesco rather than seduce some gullible old duffer into bequeathing me half his kingdom.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said I wouldn’t last a week. She said she’d do the seducing herself, if she could. But . . .”
Kumiko slides to the floor. “But what?”
“Something about farts and tarts . . .” Liyana shrugs. “I don’t remember.”