Page 146 of Proof By Contradiction
‘And nobody taught you this approach?’
‘No.’ I shrug once. ‘I just knew the proof was wasting motion.’
Merton goes very still.
‘Good God,’ he says quietly.
He stares.
‘These solutions aren’t just correct.’ He puts the page down. ‘This is raw talent. Elegant. Pure.’
Elegant.Laurence’s word.
Whitmore closes the folder. ‘Your results are confirmed, Mr Carrick. No evidence of external influence. Your marks stand.’
I nod. Stand. The chair scrapes, and for once, the sound doesn’t bother me.
‘Mr Carrick.’ Merton. I turn. He’s holding my exam paper like Laurence held the marker; like an instrument, not a prop. ‘Come and see me next term. I’d like to discuss your options.’
Options. A word with doors in it.
Outside. The steps of the maths building. The air is cold, the clean kind. Sharp enough to wake you up.
My phone. I dial Laurence’s number. It rings, voicemail. His voice, recorded, the one for strangers, and I hang up because the thing I need to say can’t be said to a machine.
The campus. Students crossing paths, heading to lectures, carrying coffees, living the ordinary choreography of a Tuesday afternoon. I walk through them. Nobody stops talking when I pass. The whispers have moved on. They always do.
I defended myself today. Defended the fact that my mind works this way, and nobody can take it away—small and old and mine.
The wind picks up. I zip my jacket tight.
My phone screen is dark. No messages.
The proof confirmed, and the one person who’d understand what it means in the mouth of an old professor isn’t?—
I put the phone away. Walk. The narrow bed is still waiting.
Feet on concrete. Moving away from the maths building, away from the campus, away from the flat in Chorlton I can’t go back to.
Moving towards Fallowfield and the narrow bed and the girl next door’s fairy lights and the knowledge that I’ve been unmade.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Leaving is not an option.
I sit on the narrow bed at half five in the morning with the ceiling above me and an idea that came to me at night, like good ideas come, not built, not reasoned. Found. Like a proof that was always there, waiting for someone to look in the right place.
I pull a sheet of paper from the notepad Femi left on my desk. Plain. Lined. I pick up a pen.
And I write the warm-up challenge. The problem from the first lecture in September: two hundred freshers, Dr Haldrey at the board,just to see where you all are.I solved it in my head before his pen stopped moving, and I didn’t raise my hand.
I write the solution. The full proof. Every step laid out with the precision Merton saw in my exam papers, the elegance Laurence named before I understood what the word meant. Clean lines. No wasted steps. The route from premise to conclusion that lives in negative space, visible only from the back row, and only visible if you’re thinking about his hands.
Below the proof, one line.
My handwriting. Not the careful version I use for exams; the real one, the Lewisham scrawl that leans left.
This is mine. You didn’t give me this.
