скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Hmmm. Well, I suppose that’s fair enough. After all, I’ve already unwrapped my present.’ Will pulled Sasha to her feet and kissed her on the lips. She felt ready to burst with happiness.
Will Temple loves me.
Will Temple has made love to me.
I am a woman at last!
Chittenden was in the village of Tidebrook, about a ten-minute drive from Sasha’s parents’ cottage in Frant. It was just past seven o’clock, and the last rays of summer sun were still sinking into the woody, Sussex horizon. I love it here, thought Sasha, driving through the familiar countryside. I’ll miss it when I go away to Exeter.
In a few weeks Sasha would have her A-level results. Not that there was ever much doubt what her grades would be. Sasha Miller had been a straight-A student since she started school at four years old. By that age she could already read fluently, and knew considerably more about the solar system than her primary school teacher, Miss Rush.
‘I hesitate to use the word “obsession”,’ Miss Rush told Sasha’s father at her first parent–teacher meeting. ‘But Sasha is inordinately interested in space. I’m wondering if you could try to introduce some other interests? Just to create a balance.’
‘Such as what?’ Don Miller, Sasha’s father, was a keen amateur astronomer himself. He shared his daughter’s delight in the unknown world of stars and planets, and wasn’t sure he liked the cut of Miss Rush’s jib.
‘A lot of the little girls are keen on princesses.’
‘Princesses?’
‘Yes. Princesses. Mermaids. Even the dreaded Barbie!’ Miss Rush let out a tinkling little laugh. Don Miller shot her a withering stare.
‘It might help her make friends, Mr Miller. Sasha…how shall I put this? She doesn’t quite fit in.’
Sasha never did learn how to fit in. Princesses, mermaids and Barbies passed her by in much the same way that in later years drugs, nightclubs and celebrity culture remained a deliberately closed book. Thankfully, as she grew older, her teachers became more encouraging of Sasha’s ‘obsession’ with astronomy, and her emerging genius at physics.
‘Your daughter is a uniquely gifted scientist, Mr and Mrs Miller.’ Mrs Banks, the headmistress of St Agnes’s, stated the obvious. ‘We have high hopes for her at university.’ Don and Susan Miller had strained every financial sinew to afford their daughter’s private school fees. They had high hopes too.
‘What about Oxbridge?’
‘Well.’ Mrs Banks shifted uncomfortably in her high-backed wooden chair. ‘That’s certainly a possibility. Of course, Oxford and Cambridge both require interviews.’
Nobody doubted Sasha’s intellectual ability. It was her social skills that had always been the problem. Speaking in public was her worst nightmare. But even speaking in private could be a challenge, if the subject didn’t interest her. These days, Cambridge colleges were looking for more than straight-A grades. They wanted ‘rounded’ students. Pretty, confident girls who could hold their own at interview. Sasha was fine once you got her onto particle physics or the latest debates raging in game theory. But she had no facility for small talk. As for the dreaded UCAS form, with its two pages devoted to ‘Hobbies and Other Interests’, Sasha could only stare at it in bafflement. Why would somebody need to have another interest, when their specialist subject was the entire universe?
Sasha applied to the five universities with the best reputations in her subject. None of them required interviews. All five offered her a place. She decided that, if Cambridge rejected her, she would go to Exeter, and she did her best to look forward to the prospect. But deep down she knew that the Cambridge physics faculty was the best in the world. She desperately longed to get in.
The staff at St Agnes’s suggested she go to an interview coach to address her weaknesses as a candidate. ‘Even something as simple as wearing the right clothes can be crucially important.’ But Don Miller was having none of it.
‘Ridiculous. It’s a travesty. Sash wants to be a scientist, not a television presenter. It’s blatant sexism.’
He was right. It was blatant sexism.
Unfortunately, the school was right too. Sasha’s interview at St Michael’s College, Cambridge, was an unmitigated disaster.
On the drive back to Sussex, Sasha glumly ran through a postmortem for her dad.
‘They asked me about politics. What I thought about the latest G7 summit and whether I had strong views on globalization.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve no idea, Dad.’
‘Well, what did you say, love?’
‘I said “no”.’
Fair enough. Bloody silly question anyway.
‘What else did they ask?’
‘The Tutor for Admissions asked me what I thought I would bring to St Michael’s.’
Don Miller brightened. ‘And what did you say to that?’
‘Books.’
‘Ah.’
Oh well. Exeter’s a fine university. I’m sure she’ll be happy there.
The Millers’ cottage was a tiny, higgledy-piggledy tile-hung gem overlooking Frant village green. All Sasha’s classmates from St Agnes’s lived in far grander houses – houses like Will’s – but Sasha would not have traded her childhood home for Buckingham Palace. She loved everything about it: the hanging flower baskets dripping jasmine on either side of the front door; the minuscule leaded windows that let in almost no light, but that gave the house the look of Hansel and Gretel’s cottage; the long, sloping back garden, a tangled mish-mash of weeds and wild flowers, with the shed at the bottom housing Sasha’s precious telescope, her most treasured possession.
By the time Sasha parked her dilapidated red Golf beside the green, it was twilight. The church’s ancient Saxon steeple jutted proudly over the village roof tops, a benevolent giant bathed in the blue light of evening. As Sasha got out of the car, a single note of the church bell marked the half hour. Summer smells of warm earth, freshly mown grass and honeysuckle hung heavy in the air. Sasha breathed them in, dizzy with happiness. Will loves me.
Before tonight, she’d been nervous about leaving him in October. Will had gone straight from school into his father’s estate agency business – I never fancied uni, Sash. I’m not the type. The idea of leaving him in Sussex, prey to all the St Agnes’s girls in the year below, filled Sasha with horror. Especially as Exeter was so terribly far away. But now that they were sleeping together – Goodbye, virginity! I won’t miss you – she felt blissfully secure in the relationship. She would read books on the subject and become a fabulous, inventive lover. Will, consumed with desire, would hurtle down the A303 every weekend, desperate to be with her. Afterwards they would lie awake at night, staring at the stars, talking about…Hmmm, the fantasy got a little vague at that point. But anyway, it would all be wonderful and perfect and…
‘Sasha! Where have you been? We’ve been trying your mobile all day. Dad was about to call the hospitals.’
Sue Miller, Sasha’s mother, was a plumper, shorter version of her daughter. Her once black hair was now heavily laced with grey, but her pale skin was still smooth. More worldly and sensible than Sasha (not that that was hard; the family poodle, Bijoux, had more common sense than Sasha), Sue had no idea how she and Don had produced such an intellectual powerhouse of a child. Don reckoned it was his genes. But then Don was out of his mind.
‘Sorry. I must have switched it off. Or something…’ Sasha rummaged absentmindedly in her handbag. Where was that phone? ‘Is it birthday-supper time? I’m starving.’
‘Not yet.’ Don Miller appeared in the hallway. He was holding a large envelope. ‘This arrived for you in the afternoon post, Sasha. I think you should open it now. Get it out of the way.’
Despite herself, Sasha’s heart lurched when she saw the Cambridge postmark.
‘St Michael’s.’
She already knew she hadn’t got in. But the weight of the envelope confirmed it. Everyone knew that if you were accepted, they sent you a fat package full of bumf about grants and accommodation and reading lists. This, quite clearly, was a single sheet of paper.
Sasha wandered through into the kitchen. Don started to follow her, but Sue held him back.
‘Leave it, love. Give her a minute. She doesn’t need an audience.’
In the kitchen, Sasha stood with her back to the Aga, turning the envelope over in her hands. Sensing her anxiety, Bijoux heaved his fat form out of the dog basket and sat loyally at her feet.
‘Thanks, boy.’ Why did the stupid rejection have to arrive today? She wanted to remember this as the day Will Temple made her a woman. Not the day that St Michael’s Stupid College rejected her because she didn’t know about globalization and her cardigan was buttoned up wrong.
Wrapping her anger around her like a cloak, Sasha tore open the letter.
On the other side of Frant village green, the Carmichael family was enjoying a summer barbecue with friends when they heard the scream.
‘What was that?’ Katie Carmichael put down her beer and moved towards the garden gate.
‘Nothing.’ Her dad, Bob, turned over the last batch of Wall’s pork sausages. ‘Just some kids playing silly buggers. Any chance of another jug of Pimm’s out here, Kelly? It’s thirsty work, you know, slaving over hot coals.’
But Bob Carmichael’s wife wasn’t listening. She was standing at an upstairs window, staring open mouthed at the spectacle unfolding before her.
‘Oh my God!’ Katie Carmichael had reached the gate. ‘It’s Mr Miller. He’s got no clothes on.’
‘You what? Don Miller?’
Bob Carmichael dropped his tongs. Half the village was outside now, pouring onto the green. Some of them were taking photographs. Most of them were laughing, or screaming, or both. Everyone knew Don Miller. He’d run the local post office for the last fifteen years, not to mention heading the Frant Neighbourhood Watch Committee.
Now it was Don that the neighbourhood had come to watch. Stark naked, whooping for joy, he tore round the cricket pitch screaming. ‘She did it! She bloody did it!’
‘He’s flipped his lid.’
‘I don’t believe it. Don Miller!’
‘That’s put me right off me sausages, that has.’
‘Where’s Sue?’
A few moments later Sue Miller’s solid, dumpy figure could be seen waddling towards the growing crowd of spectators, most of whom were now cheering loudly. The last time Don had felt compelled to take all his clothes off had been the night of his twenty-second birthday when England had beaten the All Blacks at Twickenham. It was a sight Sue would never forget, and one she’d hoped she’d never have to see again. Don, however, was clearly having the time of his life, playing to the crowd with a series of pirouettes and other improvised ballet moves. His plié left nothing to the imagination.
‘I’m sorry about this, everyone.’ Sue Miller smiled sheepishly. ‘I’m afraid Don’s gone rather off the deep end.’
‘No kidding!’ Bob Carmichael wiped away tears of laughter. ‘It’s his birthday, isn’t it? Is he drunk?’
‘Not yet, but he will be. We just heard.’ Sue’s smile turned into a grin. ‘Sasha got into Cambridge.’
Three hours later, Don Miller was in bed, snoring loudly. The combination of the excitement, Sue’s homemade chocolate fudge birthday cake and at least a bottle and a half of the best red wine the Abergavenny Arms had to offer had finished him off, poor man.
‘I knew you’d do it. I jush knew it!’ he told Sasha repeatedly as he staggered upstairs, leaning on her for support like an exhausted boxer. ‘You’re going to be the greatesht scientist this country’s ever prd’ced. My daughter. You’re gonna change the world. I knew it.’
‘D’you think he’ll be all right, Mum?’ Sasha closed the bedroom door.
‘Don’t worry about your father,’ said Sue. ‘It’s the rest of the village that’s going to need counselling. Post-traumatic shock, I think they call it. I’m used to seeing your father’s wedding tackle swinging in the wind, but poor Mrs Anderson. She looked like she was about to have an aneurism. I mean, she is ninety-two, the dear old stick.’
Sasha got ready for bed in a daze. She’d had a few drinks herself, but that wasn’t the reason. In the last few hours, her life had changed forever. She’d called Will to tell him the good news as soon as she got back from the pub.
‘Great, babe,’ he yelled over pounding music. Evidently the party at Chittenden was still in full swing. ‘Cambridge is miles nearer than Exeter. That means I can still play rugby on Saturday afternoons once the season starts, then drive up and take you out for dinner. Wicked.’
If it wasn’t quite the reaction she’d hoped for, Sasha tried not to be disappointed. I can’t expect him to understand. He’s not academic. He has other qualities. And at least he’s making plans to come up and see me. That has to be a good sign, doesn’t it?
Pulling on a pair of scratchy cotton pyjamas she’d had since she was fourteen, Sasha turned out the light and crawled under the covers of her single bed. Above her, a solar system of glow-in-the-dark stickers shone a comforting green. It was a child’s bedroom and Sasha loved it. But I’m not a child. Not any more. I’m a Cambridge undergraduate! I’m Will Temple’s lover! She hugged her excitement to her like a priceless treasure. I don’t want to fall asleep. I don’t want today to be over.
Outside, the church bells struck midnight.
The day was over.
Sasha Miller slept.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_ce451f24-34ec-51fe-aeed-29bb1e2f6163)
Professor Theodore Dexter was having a wonderful day. The sun was in the sky. Cambridge, ever beautiful, had looked particularly lovely this morning as he cycled along the Backs into college, its spires and turrets bathed in early autumn sunlight. His rooms, the most beautiful in St Michael’s, had been newly cleaned and filled with vases of fresh flowers. (Professor Dexter’s bedder was more than a little in love with him. But then, who wasn’t?) And waiting in his bed was Clara, a German postgraduate student with the sort of oversized jugs rarely seen outside of specialist porn mags and a mouth that God had clearly created for the purpose to which she was now so gloriously putting it.
‘That’s right, sweetheart. Nice and slow.’
The blow job was so good it was almost painful. Clara was an average physicist, but thanks to her extraordinary oral abilities her PhD thesis on galactic anisotropy was rapidly edging its way to the top of the class. Trying to prolong his pleasure, Professor Dexter moved higher up the bed so that he could see out of the window. His rooms in First Court looked out over St John’s Street and the splendid redbrick portcullis of Trinity College. Trinity was larger and more prestigious than St Michael’s, but St Michael’s was consistently voted the most beautiful college in Cambridge, with its wisteria-clad medieval courts, romantic formal gardens and exquisite, walnut-panelled Tudor Hall. It also had far and away the best reputation in astro- and particle physics. Which was why so many of the faculty were astonished when Theo Dexter was offered the fellowship there.
To the world at large, Theo Dexter was a brilliant scientist. He’d published two books with titles that no ordinary mortal could understand (His debut, the catchy Prospective Signatures of High Redshift Quasar HII Regions, sold a very creditable five hundred copies), he had a first from Oxford and a PhD from MIT and he was still only thirty-five. To the physics faculty at Cambridge, however, he was an amateur. A mere popinjay. Not only were his ideas rehashed versions of other people’s research, but the man dyed his hair, for God’s sake. He wore Oswald Boateng bespoke suits – in Cambridge! – and was even rumoured to undergo regular facials, whatever those were. Female students flocked to his lectures to catch a glimpse of that rarest of all known mammals – a sexy scientist – when just down the hall, infinitely more brilliant and innovative minds were being ignored. A combination of envy and intellectual snobbery had made the golden boy of Cambridge physics deeply unpopular amongst his peers. Being offered the St Michael’s fellowship was the final nail in Theo’s coffin.
Not that he cared. At least, that’s what he told himself. I’ve got the cushiest job in Cambridge, rooms that any other junior fellow would kill for, and a revolving door of willing, educated pussy at my beck and call. Not to mention a lovely wife and a pretty houseoff the Madingley Road. What more could a man ask for? And yet despite his smugness, lack of scruples and almost limitless physical vanity, deep down Theo Dexter did want to be taken seriously by his fellow scientists. One day, he vowed. One day I’ll show them all.
Feeling himself building to a climax, he reached down and grabbed Clara’s hair, forcing himself deeper into that heavenly mouth. Instinctively she pulled back, but as he started to come Theo held her head firmly in place. If you want top marks for your crappy dissertation, angel, you’re going to have to swallow. Afterwards he watched her get dressed, physically lifting each of her enormous breasts into her bra. Beautiful. He’d been worried he might not be ‘up to it’ for today’s pre-term tryst with his student. Theresa, his wife, had pounced on him earlier that morning, waving a positive ovulation stick as if she was trying to bring a plane in to land. It was sad, really. The doctor had told them that their chances of conception were low to nil, but Theresa couldn’t let it go. For his part, Theo had never understood the big deal about kids. Sleepless nights, dirty nappies, the mind-numbing boredom of the playground. Who in their right mind would sign up for that? Then again, he was by no means sure Theresa was in her right mind. She always seemed to be away with the fairies these days, so lost in her Shakespeare that she barely registered his presence – or lack of it. But Theo Dexter was not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. Tomorrow was the first day of Michaelmas term. That meant a new year, and a new crop of nubile, naïve young freshers, all of them in search of a mentor. If there was one thing Professor Theodore Dexter prided himself on, it was his ability to mentor. Just look how far dear Clara had come.
Fifteen minutes later, Theo was on his way to Formal Hall for lunch. Two shags in six hours had left him ravenously hungry, and the smells of garlic and onion wafting up the stairs from the college kitchens were like a siren call to his stomach. Only about half the St Michael’s fellows ate in Hall on a regular basis, but Theo Dexter went every day. Partly out of meanness (meals in college were free), but partly because he had yet to find anywhere he preferred to dine than in the dark, Tudor splendour of St Michael’s. Everything about it, from the rituals of the Latin grace and standing to welcome the Master to high table, to the strict rules about the passing of wine and water, gave Theo a deep and abiding thrill. To eat in college was to become part of history. It was to claim one’s place amongst the chosen ones, the privileged few whose intellect set them above the rest of humanity. Theo Dexter grew up in a nondescript semi in Crawley, but he had made it to the table of the Gods, and he relished every second.
‘Morning, Dexter. Off to enjoy the condemned man’s final meal? Depressing, isn’t it?’
Professor Jonathan Cavendish, Head of History at St Michael’s, was in his late fifties. A handsome man in his youth, one of the university’s most successful rowing blues, he had long since run to fat. Renowned as a bon vivant, Jonathan wore his paunch with pride, and didn’t seem remotely concerned by his thinning hair, or his fattening arteries. Everybody at St Michael’s loved him. Everybody except Theo Dexter. Jonathan Cavendish made Theo’s skin crawl. Why the hell doesn’t he go to the gym? Can’t he see he looks like Friar Tuck?
‘I don’t know what you mean, Johnny.’
‘The bloody undergraduates coming back, of course. Don’t tell me you’re not dreading it. Tomorrow morning they’ll be crawling all over college like vermin.’ Professor Cavendish shuddered. ‘I suppose one shouldn’t complain. They are our bread and butters after all. But really, it’s so difficult for college life to run smoothly with so many drunken children underfoot. And to do one’s work.’
Theo was silent as the two men crossed the cobbled bridge that led into Second Court. He was aware that most of the fellows at St Michael’s shared Johnny Cavendish’s view of undergraduates as an inconvenience, a necessary cross to be borne. But Theo Dexter didn’t see it that way. Just the thought of all those earnest eighteen-year-olds in cheap miniskirts, away from home for the first time, was enough to put a spring in his step and a song in his heart.
Dressed in their long, black academic robes, the professors filed into Hall like penguins on the march. Theo looked around at the familiar faces as grace was said and they sat down to eat. Most of them were elderly and wrinkled, a curmudgeonly group of old farts. Almost all of them were male. Watching them slurp their soup and scatter breadcrumbs through their thinning beards, Theo was conscious of being a class apart. Not only was he half their age, but he was clearly the only senior member of college who took care of himself. With his streaked blond hair, naturally athletic physique and bland, almost soap-star handsome features, Theo took great pride in his looks. His wife Theresa had annoyed him last week by giggling when he came home from a four-day academic symposium in Los Angeles with a mouthful of bright white porcelain veneers.
‘What? What’s so funny?’
‘Sorry, darling. They’re jolly nice teeth. It’s just that they make you look so…American. Were they awfully expensive?’
‘Of course not,’ lied Theo. They’d actually cost him the better part of fifteen grand, but he wasn’t about to tell Theresa that. In America where Theo had spent most of his postgraduate years, no one criticized you for spending money on your appearance. If anything, good personal grooming was considered a sign of self-respect. This was one of the many things Theo preferred about the States. Here you were made to feel like a vain, shallow idiot. ‘Besides, I’m a fellow now. It’s part of my job to look professional.’
Unlike his wife, Theo’s young mistress Clara had been wildly impressed with his Hollywood smile when she saw it this morning. Young people appreciate me, thought Theo. The sooner the undergraduates breathe some life into this place, the better.
‘My goodness, Professor Dexter. You’re ready for your close-up.’
Margaret Haines was smiling. One of only two female fellows in the entire college, Margaret made Theo uncomfortable. A Latin scholar, she was cleverer than he was and only a few years older. He could never quite tell if she was being sincere or taking the piss. In this instance he rather suspected the latter.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a perfectly pressed gown in my life. It looks good with your tan though. Have you and Theresa been away?’
‘I was away,’ Theo said cautiously. ‘California, for work. T had to stay here, unfortunately. She’s at a crucial stage with her book.’
‘Oh. How unfortunate.’ That smile again. ‘You must have been lonely.’
