Scandalous (42 page)

“Well, no. It’s not. I mean it doesn’t have to be,” Harry mumbled awkwardly. “And of course, I may be wrong. But I heard through the grapevine that Dexter’s applied for the St. Michael’s job.”

Theresa laughed out loud. Well
that
was a relief! Clearly someone was playing a practical joke and dear old Harry Tremayne had fallen for it. “Theo? Come back to Cambridge? Goodness me, Harry, I don’t think so! I can hardly see Dita Andreas propping up the bar in the Senior Common Room at St. Mike’s, can you?”

“It is a rather incongruous picture, I’ll admit,” said Harry. “Oh well, I daresay I got the wrong end of the stick. Good luck with the inspiration!” He walked off smiling, treading carefully to avoid the slick patches of ice that lurked beneath the snowy paths. Theresa went up to her rooms. Switching on her computer, she settled down to work, but her encounter with Harry Tremayne kept bothering her. Of course he’d made a mistake. It was the only explanation. Cambridge was
her
world, not Theo’s. Even when they were married, Theo used to go on and on about how happy he was to have “escaped.” How much happier must he be now, ruling the roost in LA with his gorgeous film-star wife? No, Theo was already living his dream. What interest would he have in stealing hers?

Her phone was ringing. She
must
be distracted; normally she always turned it off when she was working. She was about to do so now when she saw it was Jenny Aubrieau. Thinking she could use hearing a sane, friendly voice, she picked up.

“Jen?”

“Oh, thank goodness you answered. I was worried about you. Are you OK?”

The hairs on Theresa’s forearms stood on end, as if a ghost had walked over her grave. “Yeeeees,” she answered warily. “Should I
not
be OK?”

“He’s a real bloody bastard, isn’t he? I mean he just won’t go away,” Jenny ranted. “He’ll probably pull out at the last minute anyway. Some movie he has to shoot or some hapless third-world country he and Dipstick Andreas have to buy. Anyway, everyone at St. Michael’s hates him.”

Jenny’s words faded. Everything inside Theresa’s head was muffled, as if the snow were falling inside as well as out.
So it’s true. Theo really has applied for the mastership!
She could hardly have felt more heartbroken if someone had told her that Lysander had been squashed by a car. Except it wasn’t her beloved cat who’d been squashed, it was her. Her life, her hopes, her peace of mind, snuffed out in an instant.

Theo had applied for the mastership. The elections would be held in the spring, which meant he’d be here by then.
Theo
would be
here,
IN
C
AMBRIDGE.
Even if, by some miracle, he didn’t get the job at St. Michael’s, he would still be here,
living
here, with Dita and his children.
I’ll have to leave. There’s no other way around it. I’ll have to leave Cambridge, sell Willow Tree Cottage
…her eyes clouded with tears. Dimly, she was aware of Jenny’s voice, still talking to her.

“T? Are you all right, lovely? Do you want me to come over? I’d offer to pick you up but of course the car won’t start. I could jump on a bus though?”

“No.” Theresa’s voice was dull and flat. “It’s OK. I’m fine.”

“Well will you at least come to our place for supper tonight?”

“Sure,” said Theresa, though she knew she wouldn’t. “I’ll call you later.”

Horatio Hollander leaned morosely on the bar at the Mitre, staring into space.

“This is a pub, Horatio.” Jack, his friend and roommate, had a job behind the bar. “The general idea is that you come here to buy alcohol. Some people even come here to have fun.”

“I bought alcohol,” said Horatio. “I bought this pint.”

“Yeah, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth,” said Jack, looking disdainfully at the dregs in his friend’s glass. “You’ve been standing there for over an hour. What do you want?”

“Fine,” grumbled Horatio, emptying both his pockets of change and dumping the contents noisily onto the polished wood of the bar. “What’ll that get me?”

“About half a pork scratching,” said Jack, scooping up the coins while the manager glared at him, disapproving. “For God’s sake, I’ll buy you a whisky myself, but you have to promise to snap out of it. You’re scaring away the paying punters.”

Jack was right. He was in a funk, and he did have to snap out of it. But it was easier said than done. It was all right for Jack. He had a girlfriend, Kate, who was mad about him. He also had rich parents who lived in Cambridge, which meant a warm, festive house to go back to every night, and a decent holiday job at the Mitre. Horatio, on the other hand, was living in an unspeakably dismal youth hostel until term started again, with no job, no money, and most depressingly of all, no girlfriend.

He
could
have had a girlfriend. Could have had any number of them, as Jack was fond of pointing out: Louise Halabi, Caitlin Grey, Jenna Arkell. All pretty, accomplished, fun-loving girls, all eager to show Horatio that there was life beyond the professor who barely registered his existence, still less his love. But to Horatio, that was like saying he
could
have gone home for Christmas. It implied he had control over his own actions. That he was the sort of person with willpower strong enough to tear himself away from the city where he knew Theresa would be; where he stood an off chance of bumping into her occasionally, or even arranging to meet over a mince pie on the pretense of developing his thesis.

It wasn’t that he didn’t hope his love for Theresa would lessen. Ever since she’d turned him down last term, he’d been waiting for reality to sink in. He woke up every morning determined to get over her. But then he would catch sight of her again, papers fluttering out of her grip as she stumbled clumsily through college, like a beautiful mole unused to the sunlight, and it was all over. One taste of the sweet hopelessness, and he was lost, shipwrecked on a vast ocean with no land in sight.

“Get that down you.” Jack slid a single shot of whisky across the bar. Horatio sipped it cautiously. “It’s not poisoned.” Jack looked offended. “You don’t have to drink it like a girl.”

“I do if I’m going to stay here. I can’t afford to order anything else.”

Jack’s face suddenly darkened. “Uh-oh.”

Horatio looked up curiously. “What?”

“If I tell you, you have to promise me you won’t make a scene. I like working here.”

“I never make scenes. What?”

“Your Mrs. Robinson has just walked in. Staggered in, actually. She looks three sheets to the wind.”

Horatio spun around so fast he slipped off his bar stool. There, indeed, was Theresa, standing by the door, swaying gently but rhythmically, like a sailboat in the breeze. Her divine mountain of red hair was wet and dark, stuck to her head with snow, and her long skirt and sheepskin boots were also soaked through to the point where they made a sloshing sound when she walked. Her pale cheeks were flushed, her eyes glassy. There was no question she was drunk. Horatio’s eyes lit up with delight when he noticed she was wearing his scarf, but his happiness soon evaporated as Theresa staggered forward, falling into the arms of a surprised young couple enjoying their fish and chips by the fire.

“You’d better do something,” Jack whispered. “The boss’ll throw her out in a minute. He’s clamping down on hurlers.”

The very idea that anyone might consider Theresa a “hurler” filled Horatio with chagrin, but now was not the time to argue the point, especially as she looked as green as her scarf after her tumble and, if truth be told, distinctly nauseated.

“Let me help you.”

Theresa blinked groggily. “Horay…Hooray…Horay-show? Whaddayou doing here? ’S Chrishmas.”

“I know. Here, take my arm.”

“Why? Where’re we going? You shun’t be here you know. ’S Christmas.
’Tis
the season to be jolly, fa la la la
la!
” She dissolved into giggles. Jack shot Horatio a meaningful glance.

“I’m taking you home,” he said, ushering Theresa out into the freezing night air before she had a chance to resist. Outside the cold was sobering, but not sobering enough. At seven o’clock
it had been pitch-dark for hours. Streetlamps flickered pale gold above the snowy cobbles. Somewhere in the distance, bells were still ringing. Theresa clutched Horatio like a drowning man reaching for driftwood.

“I’m drunk,” she murmured sleepily.

“I know.” Horatio felt the damp weight of her body pressed against his thick winter coat and felt weak with longing. All he wanted was to sweep Theresa up into his arms and kiss her, but of course he couldn’t, not in this state.

“’Sall Theo’s fault, bloody bastard,” she mumbled into his lapel. “Why can’t he leave me alone? I mean, really, ’sthat too much to bl’dy ask?”

“Where do you live?” asked Horatio, who had no idea what she was talking about. “It’s too cold to talk out here, and you’re soaked to the bone. I could take you back to college?”

“No,” said Theresa firmly. She’d been drinking since noon, ricocheting from one pub to the next, getting progressively more depressed at the thought of Theo’s imminent arrival. Though extremely drunk now, she was not quite paralytic enough to think that staggering back to Jesus in this state, on the arm of one of her students, was a good idea. When she woke up tomorrow she would feel like death, but she’d rather feel like death in her own bed, with only her cats as witnesses. “I’ll go home. ’Sall right. I can get a cab.”

“Not in this state you can’t, no one’ll take you,” said Horatio matter-of-factly. “I’ll drive you. I’m parked round the corner and I’ve only had one beer all night.”

Too tired to argue, Theresa followed him. By day, Horatio’s ancient Datsun looked like the death trap that it was. Right now, to Theresa’s bleary eyes anyway, it looked like a welcoming oasis of warmth and safety. She climbed into the backseat, sprawled out across it, and fell deeply asleep.

When she woke, she found herself on the couch in the living room at Willow Tree Cottage, wrapped in a blanket, a freshly laid fire crackling to life in front of her. Disorientated, she sat up, then immediately lay back down again, clutching her head and groaning.

“Here.” Horatio handed her some revolting-looking liquid, fizzy and amber green. It reminded her of cat sick.

“No thanks.”

“Drink it. Trust me. I’ve made you Marmite toast for afterwards, to take the taste away.”

Like a child, Theresa drank. If possible, the liquid tasted worse than it looked. She retched, but with an effort managed to keep it down.

“Good. Now try some toast. Small bites.”

The sour tang of the Marmite felt good, cutting through her nausea like a knife. “Thanks,” she said weakly. She looked up at Horatio, who was smiling down at her, his kind eyes amused and compassionate at the same time. He was wearing a dark-blue Guernsey jumper with holes in it and a tatty pair of gray corduroy trousers. Or was that three pairs of trousers? Her vision was still touch and go.

“What time is it?” she asked, closing her eyes and sinking back against the cushion that Horatio had arranged behind her head as a pillow. Before he could answer, another thought struck her. “How did you know where I live? How did you get in?”

“It wasn’t
that
much of a brain teaser,” he joked, sitting down on the other end of the couch, by her feet. “After you passed out in the car I looked in your wallet. Your driver’s license had the address on it.”

“Oh.” Theresa blushed. “Of course.”

“I couldn’t find a key in your pockets, thought I might have to jimmy open a window or something, but the place was unlocked. You should be more careful.”

His tone was admonishing, as if he were the teacher and she the pupil. It—all this, the knight in shining armor routine—was
a side to Horatio that Theresa had never seen before. As his three faces merged back into one, she watched him tuck the blanket around her feet and thought,
He’s really very handsome.

“You mentioned something outside the pub. About Theo.” The name seemed to stick in Horatio’s throat. “Is that why…?”

“I was drinking? Yes. Stupid, I know.” She ran a hand through her drying curls. “Getting hammered’s not going to help anything. It’s certainly not going to stop him coming back to Cambridge, if that’s really what he wants. When Theo wants something he’s like the Bad Rabbit. He doesn’t say ‘please.’ He just takes it.”