The Art of Losing. Rebecca Connell

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СКАЧАТЬ a few times. Not quite as many as your interfering landlady might have suggested, obviously, but still, a few. I wanted to see you.’ He pats the bed and she goes and joins him there, thinking that this at least cannot hurt.

      ‘That’s very flattering,’ she says. ‘But I can’t imagine your girlfriend is too pleased.’

      ‘It’s not like that,’ he says, a trifle too quickly. ‘Isobel and I – we’re friends, sometimes we have fun.’

      ‘Have sex, you mean,’ she snaps, aware that she is sounding jealous, but unable to help herself.

      ‘Yeah, OK – have sex,’ he agrees, shrugging his shoulders helplessly. He’s trying to look contrite, but he can’t entirely hide the ghost of a smirk. ‘But that doesn’t mean she’s my girlfriend. Look, I feel really bad about going off and leaving you like that. I don’t know why I did it. It was you I wanted to—’ He breaks off and in her head she finishes the sentence with forbidden words, words that she has never said aloud. They make her feel hot, bewildered. She stares down at her hands.

      ‘Would she like to be?’ she asks then. ‘Your girlfriend, I mean?’

      Adam shrugs again and frowns, as if weighing up an entirely new concept. ‘She might do,’ he says. ‘But she isn’t. And besides, term ends in a fortnight. She’ll be going home to Kent, and obviously I live here.’ She doesn’t like the inference, and looks at him sharply. He corrects himself with commendable swiftness. ‘I mean, I don’t mean … it wouldn’t be going behind her back for us to spend some more time together. Because, like I say, there’s nothing going on.’

      ‘Mmm.’ She isn’t convinced, but wants to leave the subject of Isobel until she can think about it, alone. ‘What makes you think I’m not going home for the holidays myself?’ she demands. As soon as she asks, she sees a shift in Adam; he looks surer of himself, even a little angry, and with a flash of insight she realises that she is about to be challenged.

      ‘This is the thing,’ he says. ‘After I’d been here a couple of times and you weren’t in, I went over to Jesus and tried to get hold of you that way. But you’re not a student there, are you?’

      Lydia knows she will have to think fast, but she can’t get rid of the nagging question in her mind. ‘But you don’t even know my surname,’ she says.

      ‘I know that,’ he replies. Her comment seems to have taken away some of his anger; he leans back against the headboard, stretching his legs out across the duvet until they almost graze her own. ‘I left a note in every pigeonhole with the first initial L.’ The matter-of-fact tone in which he makes the admission suggests that, amazingly, it doesn’t seem to embarrass him. As she takes in what he has done, she finds that she is flattered and more than a little amused. She can’t help smiling.

      ‘That was very enterprising of you,’ she murmurs.

      ‘Yes,’ he snaps back, irritated again now. ‘And I left my number so you could get in touch with me, and I’ve had crank calls from about a dozen people all week, mostly blokes taking the piss.’

      She can’t hold back the laughter that bubbles up in her throat, and has to clamp a hand over her mouth. To her relief he joins in, and for a few moments they abandon themselves to a mutual paroxysm of mirth, flapping their hands at each other in wheezing protest. ‘I might have got your note, and just decided not to reply,’ she points out when she has calmed down, wiping her eyes.

      Adam shakes his head confidently. ‘You would have replied,’ he says, and for an instant she wonders what else was in the note besides his phone number. ‘Besides, you’ve just given yourself away a bit there.’ There is a pause; he looks slyly up at her, hands clasped behind his head, waiting for her to speak. ‘So what is it with you?’ he asks when she doesn’t. ‘You’re living here with some middle-aged battleaxe, you say you’re at college when you’re not, and you can make yourself disappear for days on end. What are you really doing here?’

      She can’t blame him for the directness of the question, but it brings her back down to earth. She thinks of Nicholas, and feels sick. Adam’s face looks sad now, reflective, as he takes in her silence. The winter sun streaming through the window picks out his features and, more than before, she sees Nicholas’s strong brow imprinted on his, Nicholas’s lips softened into Adam’s. Just for a moment, the resemblance is so strong that she feels a surge of hatred for him, but almost as soon as it has come she forces herself to lock it back up in its box. It isn’t fair to blame him, or to assume that all the unpleasant qualities she knows his father has have been passed on down the generations with Adam’s birth, like gifts from a malevolent fairy godmother. She sighs and tucks her legs up under her chin, pulling her skirt down over her knees.

      ‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘I’m not at the university. I wish I was. The truth is that I had a bit of a falling out with my parents a month or so ago. I was at uni in Manchester, but I dropped out of my course – I wasn’t enjoying it, I don’t think it was really what I wanted to do – and they weren’t happy about it. It got to the point where I just needed to get away, so I came here – I always liked Oxford, and I thought I’d be able to get a job. I still might … I haven’t been looking very hard.’ She stops for breath, marvelling at how easily the words have come, without her even having to formulate a story in her head beforehand. Adam has straightened up on the bed, his dark brown eyes serious and sympathetic.

      ‘This falling out with your parents, is it bad?’ he asks.

      Lydia weighs up the possibilities. She doesn’t want to be seen as a martyr, complete with a complicated family feud that she might well have to keep enhancing and adding to as the weeks go by. ‘Not really,’ she says carefully. ‘They understood that I needed some space. They expect that I’ll go back to studying eventually, and I’m sure I will. I think they think of this as more of a gap year.’

      Adam nods, relieved; this is safer ground. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t just tell me in the first place,’ he says a little aggrievedly. ‘Did you think I only talk to Oxford girls?’

      ‘No, of course not,’ she says hurriedly. ‘But, you know, when we met … in the lecture theatre … it seemed the obvious thing to say. I know I shouldn’t really have been at that lecture, but I’m … I’m interested in literature.’ Again, Adam appears to accept this, half-truth as it is, without thinking it too strange. He visibly relaxes, obviously relieved at having solved the puzzle, and for the first time he shoots her a warm and genuine smile.

      ‘Well, I like a woman of mystery anyway,’ he says flirtatiously. ‘Look, I’m due at a tutorial in half an hour, so I’m going to have to go. But do you want to meet up tomorrow? I’m having a few people round for drinks in my room in the evening, about nine probably – nothing major, but if you want to come it would be good to see you. Again.’

      ‘Will—’ she begins, and then cuts herself short. She had been going to ask whether Isobel would be there, but realises it is none of her business. ‘Will you give me your number?’ she covers up. ‘Then perhaps I can call you tomorrow and we’ll see.’

      ‘Sure.’ She watches him cross to her dressing table and jot down the number on the edge of her notebook. From behind, he looks tall and imposing, a grown man already, and it makes her feel young and, briefly, inadequate. She shakes the thought off, going to join him.

      ‘Just one thing,’ she says, putting her hand hesitantly on the sleeve of his coat. ‘If I do come along tomorrow, I’d rather that nobody else knows my situation. I’d rather they thought I was at the university. It makes things СКАЧАТЬ