I arrive for Sinclair’s morning lecture, to find the Hall buzzing. “What’s going on?” I ask, sliding into my back row pew next to Emily.
“Haven’t you seen the papers?”
“No.”
“Sinclair’s not in. Blakey’s doing the lecture.”
“Why?”
“Get a paper,” she says impatiently.
I hop away and head for the door, almost bumping into a smug-looking Dr Blakey on the way. “The lecture, Miss Newland!” she calls after me, but I am whizzing out along the corridors, through the door and up towards the nearest newsagent in town. Cherry blossom falls prettily on to my head but I am barely conscious of my surroundings. Something bad has happened to Sinclair and I need to know what it is.
Ah, here. At last. The newsstands outside the shop give little away; a Bank of England debt forecast on the front of the broadsheets; Jordan denounces Posh in the tabloids…but here we are in the middle-range. On the front page of the Daily Mail. “Truth about History Man’s Dark History.” I fling a few coins at the shopkeeper and throw myself down on the nearest bench, opening the paper with shaky fingers.
‘Professor Eliot Sinclair might be the latest academic heart-throb to take the women of the UK by storm but details have emerged today of his troubled past and scandalous private life. Read inside how Sinclair:
? LIED about his true identity and background.
? ASSAULTED a member of staff at the children’s home he grew up in.
? SEDUCED students at the University where he lectures.
? Took part in VILE ORGIES and DEPRAVED SEX PARTIES.
Turn to pages 5 and 6 for more.’
Chapter Fourteen
My fingers have taken on a samba-dancing life of their own, almost ripping the paper before I can get to the crucial pages. But I find them eventually. And I have to reread the sensationally purple prose three times before I can make any sense of what my brain is processing.
Sinclair…is not….Sinclair.
His name is Kevin Wronksworth. He grew up on a council estate in north London. His parents were shiftless alcoholics and he was taken into care aged six when he was found playing on the railway tracks in the snow wearing only a vest and pair of shorts. He was a teen tearaway at the children’s home, but after he was handed down a suspended sentence for assault in the Youth Court at the age of thirteen, he decided to make a plan, and he stuck to it. He did brilliantly at school, won a scholarship to Oxford and changed his name by deed poll on graduation.
Somebody – I can only assume it was Nerys – has told them all about Sinclair’s predilections, down to describing his office in detail. The sex tape of Rob and Mel, as well as some others, seemingly, have also made their way into the hands of the journalists. I am not mentioned by name, but I am apparently one of several students to have been lured into his ‘web of vice and sin’. Oh God. Just the latest in a long line…
The momentary bad taste in my mouth is chased away by the realisation that this must be utterly devastating for him. He has always been so meticulous about his image, cultivating it like a rare flower – and here it is, smashed to smithereens. I have to see him. I have to help him.
I throw the paper into the nearest bin and run, across roads and up avenues, past the Union, through the rose arbour walk, into the Village until…
Christ! A pack of photographers have set up camp outside the flat. How am I going to get past them without having my mug snapped for the breakfast edification of the masses?
I push through the bodies purposefully. “Are you his girlfriend, love?” calls one.
“No, I live in the flat above,” I lie, quite impressed with my convincing tone, only to be unmasked by the smug voice of Mags Parker.
“No she doesn’t – she’s the one I was telling you about. Beth Newland. She?
??s definitely shagging him.”
“Judas!” I shout furiously at her, beginning to run along the gravel drive so that they will have to try to photograph me in flight.
“He isn’t Jesus sodding Christ, you know,” she yells after me. “He’s just a kinky old man!”
I make it to the front door and let myself into the vestibule, gasping for breath and taking the stairs two at a time. I am here, at his front door. This is it. This is it.
Just as I did that day I came to try and retrieve my lecture notes, I gather every scrap of courage and resolve together and use it as a battering ram, letting it guide me over the threshold and into the living room.