Page 31 of Proof By Contradiction
‘All right.’
Neutral. Professional. Already gathering his papers for the third year.
I leave without looking back.
In the corridor, the noise of the maths building closes around me. Doors. A printer is running somewhere on the first floor. The vending machine on the landing is humming its one note.
I walk through all of it.
The question hadn’t been about Cauchy. Hadn’t been about any framework that fits inside a seminar room with strip lighting and plastic chairs.
And the problem, the real one, the one I’ll carry on the bus and into the library and into the gap between sleeping and not: he didn’t know.
The man who sees everything as proof. Who catches a planted error from three rows back. Who looked at my work and knew in seconds that I wasn’t struggling.
That man looked at me today and didn’t see what I was asking.
I’m not going to be the one who tells him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Femi grips my arm in the corridor outside the lecture theatre, harder than his worrying frame should allow.
‘We need to talk.’
‘About what?’
‘Not here.’
He steers me through the fire exit, down the concrete stairs that smell of cigarettes and old rain, and out into the courtyard behind the maths building. October wind. A bench nobody uses because it faces the bins. Femi sits. I stand.
‘Alright,’ I say. ‘Talk.’
He looks at me with that face, the one where he’s lined up everything he needs to say and is deciding which door to kick in first. I’ve seen it twice before. Once, he told me I was drinking too much at his cousin’s wedding. Once, when he spotted the lovebite on my neck, the summer I was fourteen, he asked if I was being safe. Both times, he was right. Both times, I wanted to strangle him.
‘I’ve seen how you look at him.’
Nothing moves. I make sure of it.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Haldrey.’ Just that. ‘In the lecture. At the vending machine on Monday. You stood there five minutes pretending to choose a sneak while he walked past.’
‘I was choosing a KitKat.’
‘You hate KitKats.’
Fuck.
‘What the fuck are you doing, Ewan?’
The courtyard is empty. Just the bins, the bench, a Hoover whining from somewhere inside. Nobody is listening, which makes it worse.
‘Nothing. I go to his office hours. He’s a maths lecturer, I’ve got maths questions.’
‘You haven’t got maths questions. You’ve got his weekly schedule memorised.’ He leans forward. Elbows on knees. The posture of a speech. A prepared one. ‘I’m not stupid, Ewan. I know what you look like past interested.’
Heat is crawling everywhere.
