Bright Air - Barry Maitland [14]
After the ceremony we retrieved our shoes and went to the reception at the nearby surf club. At some point I found myself queuing at the bar next to one of the other bridesmaids, a raven-haired girl who struck me as rather shy. In fact it was only as I remembered this that I realised that my first contact with them wasn’t with Luce, as I’d imagined, but there in that queue with Anna. She didn’t seem keen to talk at first, but there was a crush at the bar and I was chatty, and she gradually became more open. We were both at the university, although we hadn’t met before, and with the academic year about to start she told me the subjects she was taking. I showed more interest in her than I really felt, because I realised she was a friend of the blonde girl I’d noticed—whose name, she told me, was Lucy, or rather Luce. By the time I’d given her the three flutes of champagne she wanted she was quite animated and seemed enthusiastic about the idea of meeting up again. I suppose this was the first small betrayal in our story, my misleading Anna into thinking I was interested in her rather than her friend.
The following day, feeling a little bored, I checked the timetables for the subjects she’d mentioned, and two days later stood outside one of the large lecture theatres for an introductory lecture in STAT 303, a subject I’d taken two years before. There had just been a torrential late summer downpour, and the air was thickly humid, the trees dripping, students peeling off steaming rainwear. The girls were late, and the mob outside the auditorium had mostly moved inside by the time they came running along the concourse. I jogged up beside them as they joined the end of the queue, and called out, ‘Anna! Hi.’
She turned and gave a bright smile of recognition and introduced me to Luce. I’d meant to be very casual and indifferent, but up close I found her smile even more compelling than before. I think I blinked rather stupidly, and then we were climbing up the stairs and into the back of the theatre, which was packed. The two girls squatted on a step of the side aisle, and I followed suit immediately behind them. Luce’s hair was drawn up in a simple ponytail, while the back of Anna’s head looked rather untidy, as if she’d had a go at cutting it herself. From where we were it was difficult to see the lecturer’s podium, far below us. He strolled in ten minutes late—this was the Faculty of Management, after all—turned his back on the audience and proceeded to mutter inaudibly at the formula he began to scrawl across the board.
‘What?’ Anna hissed to Luce. ‘What did he say?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ Luce shrugged with a movement of her head that revealed the most beautiful ear I’d ever seen.
I leaned closer, mesmerised, and whispered into it, ‘That’s the two-mean hypothesis test for large samples.’
She turned and our eyes met, just centimetres apart, and that was it, I think, at least as far as I was concerned.
‘Is it?’
‘Yes, here.’ I wrote the formula on my pad, tore the page off and handed it to her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and gave me the most wonderful smile, as if I’d written her a brilliant sonnet.
At the end of the lecture we got up, stiff from sitting on the concrete floor, and Anna said to Luce, ‘Well, I didn’t understand a bloody word of that.’
I said, ‘If you’re interested I’ve got the notes. I already did this course.’
Anna regarded me suspiciously. I think she’d already guessed what I was up to. ‘Why, did you fail?’
‘No, I got an HD. I thought this was something else.’
Luce smiled. ‘You sound like just the person we need.’
I thought so too.
We went to a coffee shop and chatted. Luce was doing a Bachelor