It is like watching Clark Kent turn into Superman, but without having to step into a phone booth and swirl around so much.
One minute he is naked, tousled and still slighty alco-scented, the next he is coiffed, cologned, suited and booted, all creases ironed out by the Sinclair steamroller. My glimpse of the tattered and torn boy that was Kevin Wronksworth will be just that – a glimpse. Sinclair is back. And this time, it’s personal.
“Are you sure about this?” I jitter, watching him perform a final preen before the hall mirror, flicking unruly strands of hair into submission with his deft fingers.
He straightens his tie and gives me a look that shoots straight to my solar plexus. A ‘nothing can stop me’ look; the Sinclair alpha-male force-field never looked so unbreachable.
“They’ll be after your blood,” I remind him, trotting behind him after he grabs my hand and makes for the door.
“They won’t get it,” he says, then he smiles. “I am sanguine.” I am supposed to laugh at this, I’m guessing, though I’ve no idea why.
He sighs faintly. “You have so much to learn,” he says, for possibly the eight millionth time in our relationship.
“Just as well you’re a teacher then.” We are taking the stairs at a gallop when my stock response comes out. Speeding across the vestibule, nearly at the door, opening the door.
Flash! Flash! Catcalls, roaring, skittering feet running back from the coffee stand that’s set up shop on the other side of the road. Flash! Flash!
Sinclair pulls me over to his car; not the one they were expecting, for they are all pointing their lenses at the sporty silver number on the other side of the drive. Ha ha. Sinclair drives a decidedly run-of-the-mill hatchback, highly polished as it is.
“Professor Sinclair! Beth!”
I hear snippets of questions threaded through the jumble of shouts, but never the full sentences. “Do you think…BBC…are you…bondage…will there…student…”
I jump into the car as quickly as I can. “I didn’t even know you had a car,” I tell him.
“No, well, I don’t use it much. I walk to work and get cabs if I’m going out. It’s for emergencies.”
“I think this definitely qualifies.”
“Yes. Come on, Beth, belt up,” he says impatiently, revving the engine like a boy racer to intimidate any hack that might be considering standing in our way. I’m tempted for a second to do a bit of brat-flirtation, you know, “What if I don’t?” style, but the battery of white lights and jeering over by the gate soon brings me back to earth.
“You wouldn’t seriously run them over?” I ask, as he reverses quite sharply out of the parking space with a harsh crunch of gravel.
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” he mutters, and I recall that, despite his current icy control, Sinclair must once have had quite a fierce temper to have attacked that youth worker. His tyres squeal and I laugh at the way a great many of the journos fall backwards in alarm; a row of voyeuristic ninepins. Mags Parker is somewhere underneath the pile, and it seems appropriate that her nose should be as close to the ground as possible. Bottom-feeding bitch.
We leave the hue and cry behind, although Sinclair’s driving does not seem to recognise this. It is erratic to say the least, and his grasp of the complex one-way system in operation around the university is sketchy. “Should we just park and walk the rest of the way?” I wobble after narrowly avoiding a face-to-face interaction with a delivery truck.
“It’s fine,” he grits, desperately looking for the right gear while the car kangaroo-hops past Senate House.
“Just park!” I scream.
He pauses in his gearstick hell to look at me in a way that causes me to quantify seriously the respective hazards of Sinclair’s wrath and an early death on the road. Then, to my infinite relief, he turns into the Senate House car park and finds a space.
“We need to get away from here as quickly as possible,” he says, glancing surreptitiously up to where I guess the Powers-That-Be have their executive suites. “It would not be a good time to bump into the Vice Chancellor.” He takes my hand and yanks me along Spinneylands Avenue, cherry blossom confetti on our head again, around the corner to the road where the Student Health Service is located.
“You don’t have to come in with me,” I assure him, but he shakes his head and escorts me up the steps and into the waiting room.
Amongst the posters warning of the dangers of meningitis and STDs and recreational drugs is tacked the newspaper photo of Sinclair, underneath which a student wag has scrawled ‘PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING – This man could seriously damage your arse!’
I clap my hands over my mouth and check for Sinclair’s reaction – and I am not alone, as the gaggle of sniffing, rheumy-eyed undergraduates in the room are also staring, fascinated.
He moves his eyes from the poster and diverts them slowly on to each of the patients’ faces. I watch enthralled as every one of them looks away or dives back into the magazine or book they were previously occupied with. Then he strolls suavely up to the receptionist, who is too busy reading the Daily Mail to have registered his entrance. “Excuse me,” he says, and for a second she does not look up. She looks up boredly, then looks back down at her paper, then slams it guiltily down on the desk, in the mother of all tizzes. I almost laugh, but I’m too busy inwardly squirming. In all of this, it had not occurred to me that my relationship with Sinclair will now be wide open to public scrutiny. In other words, they will all know – or at least have a strong idea – what we get up to behind closed doors. Damn Mel and Rob and their stupid video; it seems I will have to get used to giggles behind hands and whispered remarks wherever I go as well.
“Can I help you?” she asks breathily. I tell her I need to see the doctor.
“Oh, well, I’ll see…” She looks vaguely, unseeingly, at her appointments screen.
“It’s an emergency,” clarifies Sinclair.