The Whole World: A Novel - By Emily Winslow Page 0,18
on purpose?” Surely Nick was too stable to run away over a mere embarrassment. For all he knew I’d had stomach flu and it was nothing personal. This wasn’t my fault.
He leaned in, fascinated. “You don’t? What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you don’t think he left willingly.”
“He wouldn’t do that.” He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t let anyone down; he wouldn’t make anyone worry. The policeman folded his notepad and put it back into his pocket.
“You’ve been described to us as his girlfriend….”
“By whom?” I was indignant. I was on the offensive now.
“Various sources. It isn’t true?”
“No,” I said.
“Maybe he wanted it to be true?”
“No.” It was a lie, but it didn’t feel like a lie.
“Anything on his mind lately? Troubles with his work …?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
“All right,” he said, punctuating his words by clicking his pen closed.
“Are you worried about him?” he asked, as if it were a personal question.
I swallowed. “Yes.” If the police were involved, I was pretty sure we all needed to worry.
He waited, but I didn’t say anything else.
“All right,” he finished at last. “Thank you for your time, Miss Bailey. May I give you my card? I’d like you to ring me if you think of anything else. I’ll come by again.”
I’d hidden my hands inside my sleeves. Two fingers peeped out to take the card.
“He’s not really missing,” I called out to the policeman’s back. He turned around and stared hard at me. I realized what I’d said was ridiculous. “I mean,” I added in a whisper, “that this isn’t happening. Okay?”
The policeman nodded slowly. Allison stepped in. I think she’d listened through the door. “We have a lot of work to do,” she announced.
She watched out the window to see the policeman leave. She waited for him to pass the Porters’ Lodge before turning back to me. “Polly, you look awful,” she said, surprised. Then, to make everything better: “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
I burst out laughing. Now I know where my mother got it from. It’s not a personal tic, it’s just English.
“The police came to talk to me,” I told Liv. We faced each other cross-legged on my bed, in my room at the top of St. Peter’s Terrace. The ceiling was all jagged from the slant of the roof and the protruding window. “Well,” I amended. “One policeman. Singular.”
“What? About Nick?”
“Yes. Did someone talk to you too?”
She picked at the clasp of her bracelet. “No. Not yet. Why did they want to talk to you?”
“Somebody said I was Nick’s girlfriend.”
“What?”
“I know.”
“You’re not his girlfriend.”
“I said I know.”
“Why would somebody say that?”
“Because they’re stupid? Why does anybody say anything?”
“What did you tell him?”
“He wanted to know if Nick had problems. I told him that Nick was the last person in the world to be in trouble.” Nick had started life as a coddled baby, become a much-flattered boy soprano, and finished his childhood at fancy boarding schools. He easily attained an undergraduate “first,” the highest grade, at Magdalene, and currently pursued his doctorate there, much doted on by the faculty. He did what he did because he loved it, and had absolutely nothing to prove. I’d never met anyone with such a lack of unfinished business. “Nick is, like, the nicest person I’ve ever known. He’s just … he’s a sweet, gentle person, and I just—”
“You sound like a girlfriend,” she accused me.
“I’m not anybody’s girlfriend, okay? I’m not. And I know you like him. But I can’t make him like you back. Okay? He’s not even here anymore. What is it that you want me to do?”
She sprang across the duvet and hugged me. She did this crying thing that made her head bounce on my shoulder.
Then she showed me a card she’d made for Nick’s family. She’d folded a piece of parchment paper and sketched one of the arches of Pepys Library on the front. “They put those flower baskets up in the spring,” she explained. I felt like a little kid, needing to be told. I’d only been here two months, months too cold for flower baskets. Liv had seen them hanging from the arches last year.
I was surprised by the envelope. “His family is in Cambridge?”
“Sure. They moved here when he was a kid, when he became a chorister at King’s.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Liv sat up straight and smiled. “That’s okay,” she comforted me. “I mean, you’re not his girlfriend, right?”
“He told me about his sister. I just didn’t know she lived