The Girl Who Broke the Rules. Marnie Riches

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       CHAPTER 18

       Cambridge, St John’s College, later

      ‘Let me go,’ George pleaded, folding the wrapping paper from the jaunty poinsettia plant she had brought her supervisor into tight, ever-shrinking squares.

      ‘Absolutely not,’ Sally replied. She carried the gift gingerly, as though it were radioactive material, and plonked it into a ceramic plant pot holder at the side of her computer. Murmured something inaudible that had a sour tone to it. Turned to George, hooking her battleship-grey, bobbed hair behind her ear. ‘And don’t think you can bribe me so easily! I see through your pot-plant charms, young lady.’ Her pointing index finger was nicotine stained, but her fingernails were the same bright red as the plants’ leaves. She sat imperiously in her typing chair. Queen on her academic’s throne. The large, oak desk wedged a physical barrier between them, leaving George feeling like she had been abruptly banished from court.

      George blushed. Bit back her irritation. Crossed and uncrossed her legs. ‘Come on, Sally! It’s a bona fide request. An Overseas Institutional Visit. You had no problems with me doing the internship in Westminster. You’ve never taken issue with me divvying my time between here and—’

      ‘That’s entirely different. It’s London. The two things are not comparable. Especially not in your bloody situation.’

      George quietly mused that it was a good job Sally didn’t know about her gig as a cleaner in a Soho strip club. The shifty Italian chaperone for those young pole dancers whom Derek had been clucking around had only asked her for a double whisky and a private lap dance. But he had got pretty nasty when she had turned him down. No, her brush with a man who was clearly something far more sinister than just an ageing wide-boy was exactly the sort of thing Sally didn’t need to hear.

      Sticking her finger defiantly through the rip in her jeans, George searched all the admissible arguments filed away in her brain as to why Sally should sanction overseas travel. She downloaded the sure-fire winners. ‘I study the effects of pornography on violent offenders, for Christ’s sake! I’d be a visiting scholar in a city that’s one of the biggest players in Europe’s porn industry. Amsterdam, man! My funding body would agree immediately.’

      ‘No, I said. And don’t “man” me!’

      ‘But think how cool it would be, if I could just hop on the overnighter to Prague to do some qualitative research there as well. Porn was totally banned in the Czech Republic under Soviet rule. Now they’re going mental with themselves. Imagine how revealing that would be about the effects of pornography on sex crimes. A breakthrough study with your department’s name on it!’ George was willing Sally to relent. For Ad’s sake. For van den Bergen’s sake.

      ‘Nice try, you persistent little bugger! The phenomenon has already been studied, as you well know. Diamond, Jozifkova and Weiss. I know you’ve done your homework, so don’t pretend to be a fool and don’t try to take me for one, either.’

      George threw her hands up in the air. Stood and walked over to the mullioned window that looked onto the frosty courtyard below. Her breath steamed on the air. ‘Jeeesus! I’m a boring PhD student doing dry academic research. What the hell could happen to—’

      Behind her, Dr Sally Wright slammed her hand down on the desk top. ‘I will not authorise it. Do you hear me? Because I cannot authorise it. You’ve been told to stay put. After last time. Your track record for staying out of trouble is not exactly unimpeachable, is it, Ms McKenzie?’ She looked over the top of her winged glasses, fixing George with a gaze so unyielding that she felt silenced like a rebuked child. ‘That is my final word on the matter.’

      George folded her arms, flung herself back onto the chaise longue and dug her short nails deeply into the plush velvet covering. Stared into the glowing embers of the fire that heated only two feet directly in front of it, leaving the rest of that cavernous old room feeling like a morgue. ‘But if anyone can swing it, you can.’ She kept her voice small. Flattery was the only weapon left in her arsenal, though she knew it would not work.

      Sally lit a cigarette and coughed wheezily. Her throaty, rasping voice was punctuated by bouts of choking. ‘I know I could swing it. Theoretically. Not for nothing am I the senior tutor of St John’s College, Cambridge. I got MI5 to agree to you visiting for weekends, didn’t I? Study leave for half a year is, however, an entirely different kettle of fish.’ She started to type on her keyboard, cigarette hanging out the corner of her pruned mouth as she spoke. Studied indifference, George knew. Then, pausing dramatically, her eyes sought out her protégée once more. ‘But I do not wish to swing it. Capisce?’ Sally inhaled deeply. The hacking cough started up anew. She thumped herself in the chest. ‘Because the last time you went gallivanting off to Amsterdam for the year, you nearly wound up dead and could have taken half of Trinity Street with you. Stay put, young lady! My rules. Good reasons.’

      George took the sucker punch.

      Dragging herself over the hump of the narrow stone corridor that was the Bridge of Sighs, traversing the sluggish, inky, almost frozen River Cam and negotiating the frost-dusted backs, she acknowledged that she had lost this bout with Sally. Trudging up towards the monolithic brick phallus that was the University Library tower, George resolved that she would come back fighting in round two. I will not go down and stay down. Got to get the hell out of this beautiful prison. Got to help Paul.

      ‘Stop torturing yourself, you donkey,’ she said under her breath, as she cleared the library’s security and climbed the stairs to the silent, gloomy stacks, where under the timed lights, she would find what she was looking for.