“Have you ever married?” I ask him.
“No,” he says curtly, almost succeeding in not looking at me, but falling at the last fence and flicking a quick glance up to gauge my reaction.
“Do you think you ever will?”
“I don?
??t think it’s entirely my decision,” he says sniffily, spearing a carrot with deadly accuracy.
“So you aren’t opposed to marriage on principle?”
He stares at me. “Are you considering proposing, Beth?” That look…oh my God….is so smouldering I am reduced to smoky embers on the spot.
“No,” I blurt. “Not marriage, anyway.”
The beat of silence that follows is fraught with near-unbearable tension.
“Is your Diderot essay complete?” he asks, looking away.
I could slap him.
*
On Friday at five I am instructed to meet Sinclair in his office to hand in my final essays of the term.
When I get there, he is leaning back in his chair looking raffishly casual with his tie loosened and top button undone. Growl. I could eat him up.
“Ah, Beth,” he says in an almost-friendly way. “We need to discuss your arrangements for the Easter break.”
“Oh. Well, I’m going home for a couple of weeks. Probably not till next weekend. But I have to come back a week early for dress rehearsals for the opera.”
He nods. “Fine. You’re here for at least another week then? I’ve devised a holiday task list for you. Some reading, a few book reviews. Nothing too onerous.”
I pout a little, but retract my lips at the look in his eye, knowing full well he will only add to it if I complain.
“I have to go out tonight, Beth. I will be back before midnight. Please don’t let me come home to any more scenes of drunken dissolution, will you?”
“No, of course not,” I retort.
“Good. Because we both know what the consequences will be, don’t we?”
“Yes, sir,” I mutter, my countenance florid.
“What will the consequences be, Beth?” Gah, he is going to make me say it. The man is intolerably intolerable.
“I will be birched, Sir,” I whisper.
“Correct, Beth. Run along then. I’ll see you later.”
*
Lying on Sinclair’s top-of-the-range leather sofa, I wonder what he is doing tonight. I wonder if he has a date. Oh God. Please don’t let him have a date.
I mooch moodily into the kitchen looking for likely snack fodder. Nothing but olives. How bloody tasteful. Surely the man must have some crisps stashed away somewhere? I start banging through the cupboards, then move on to the drawers. Corkscrews, tin openers, cheese knives…oh…a set of keys. Spare keys. What…might they…fit?
Blood rushes in my ears as I tiptoe out into the hallway. I stand at the study door for a long time. Am I really going to do this?
Of course I am.