Page 1 of Proof By Contradiction
CHAPTER ONE
Three days in Manchester and I’ve already decided I’m leaving.
Then a man walks into a lecture theatre and ruins the plan.
Sounds like the start of a joke.
The carpet is the colour of a confession nobody wanted to make. Brown, or grey, or some middle ground that suggests bodily fluid and cigarette burns.
Seven thirty in the morning. Welcome to Manchester.
My bag’s still zipped at the foot of the bed where I dropped it three days ago. Haven’t unpacked. Haven’t put up posters, haven’t arranged the desk, haven’t done any of the sad little nesting rituals other freshers apparently require. The girl next door has fairy lights. I can see the glow under the connecting wall, which is thin enough that I also heard her cry on the phone to her mum last night. The bloke on the other side wanks at midnight with alarming punctuality.
Home comforts.
In Lewisham, my room has a double bed, a window that faces the street, and the 171 going past every twelve minutes, on the dot. I had a system, a life, a postcode that held weight.
Here I’ve got a mattress with pin-holes in the wall above it and a view of a car park.
I roll onto my back. Stare at the ceiling. There’s a stain up there shaped like Italy, which feels like the universe taking the piss.
My phone buzzes, it’s my brother Ronan.You settling in?Delete. He’s been texting every day since I left, which is more interest than he managed last year. Guilt, probably. Or Mum told him to—either way.
The bag stays zipped. If I haven’t arrived, I can still leave.
Two hundred freshers crammed into a lecture theatre built for fewer. The heating’s on too high, and someone nearby has made a catastrophic deodorant choice. I slide into the back row next to Femi, who’s already got his notebook open, pen lined up, like he thinks this will matter.
‘Mathematical Methods,’ I read off the schedule. ‘Compulsory for Economics. Taught by the maths department.’ I look at Femi. ‘They’ve outsourced the boring bit.’
‘Give it a chance,’ he says. Femi gives everything a chance. It’s either his best quality or his worst, and I haven’t decided which.
Two hundred glazed expressions. Future traders are realising they fucked up.
Then the door at the front opens, and the man walks in and everything, every stupid thought about carpet and postcodes and getting out, drops.
Tall. His shoulders are broad enough that the shirt across his back is doing structural work. He moves like his body is a calculation. Sets his bag down and uncaps a marker. The tendons in his forearm shift under the skin when he grips it.
Christ.
His face is.
No.Start with the hands. Long fingers, blunt nails, a grip on that marker that says he knows exactly what pressure to apply. Those hands on a whiteboard. On a desk. On the back of someone’s neck.
My neck.
His face. Jaw like it was designed to cause arguments. Dark hair, pushed back, long enough to grab if you had him on his back. That stare that hasn’t locked down yet, behind a pair of glasses he thinks make him look academic. They do. That’s the problem. I’m already thinking about pulling them off. About how he’d look up close, unfocused, the pupils blown.
Stop. He’s talking.
‘Good morning.’ Deep, measured, Lancashire vowels that sit in the ribs. Half the room sits up straighter. ‘I’m Dr Haldrey. I’ll be taking you through the mathematical foundations you’ll need for your economics modules this year.’
Nobody’s excited. They signed up for supply and demand, not partial derivatives.
I wasn’t excited either. Thirty seconds ago.
I sit up without meaning to.
He writes a problem on the board, three lines. ‘To see where you all are. Have a look at this. Take your time.’
