It also came out that Nick’s room at the Chanders’ had been burgled that night. It’s unclear exactly what’s missing, but the room was a mess and his laptop was nowhere to be found. Mrs. Chander has admitted that they sometimes leave the front windows partly open, because of the uneven winter heating of the town house.

To make it all worse, Nick’s friend Peter, who’d been with Nick that evening, says that Mom had been looking for Nick. Like how she did with Liv.

I’d never even met Peter. Apparently, he’s Nick’s best friend. Which is why it’s incredibly stupid that anyone thinks I was Nick’s girlfriend. I didn’t even know his best friend. Peter’s a grad student too. Liv says he always has a different girlfriend. Even Liv knew him. I know she’s been here a year longer than me, but that’s not the point. Liv knew him.

Nick’s wallet was found in a skip on Trumpington Street. A student says he saw it just lying on the top of the trash. Mom wasn’t anywhere near that part of town yesterday morning, but I guess she could have dropped it anywhere and someone else picked it up. I mean, that’s what the police think.

I’m not sure what I think.

I haven’t asked Mom what happened because I don’t visit jails. I made that decision three years ago and I’ve stuck to it.

Gretchen got pretty mad at me, actually, when I told her I didn’t want to help my mother. She didn’t seem to understand that this isn’t my problem. She took it far too personally. I know she worships her mother and all, but not all of us do.

While she lectured me about my “duty,” she accidentally knocked over a small unlit candle. It split from its brass dish and rolled off the coffee table. Before that moment, I’d never seen her scramble for anything. She thrust herself after it, missing again and again. For the first time she really seemed blind to me.

I tried to avoid the river on the day they dredged it, but little brooklets all over the city lowered with the Cam. The assumption of Nick’s death was everywhere.

An urge to memorialize him blew through the University. The choristers at King’s dedicated a service to him, tactfully aimed toward praying for God’s care for him, whatever his current condition. The voices of those little boys flew up to the ceiling, that elaborate ceiling eighty feet up. I’d not heard boy sopranos before. Their voices lack the weight and ringing of the grown female versions; they have a hollow, airy sound that floats and fills instead of aiming for a target. The effect is truly corporate, rendering the individual voices anonymous. It was difficult to imagine Nick once so small, a skinny little thing inside a cloud of white surplice.

It was difficult to imagine Nick at all, actually. And he’d been gone barely a week.

Part 2. Nick

CHAPTER 4

The envelopes were snatched out of my pigeonhole just as I reached for them.

“What the hell?” I demanded.

“Ooh, love letters?” Liv held them behind her back with both hands. Stretching her arms behind her like that stuck out her chest. Her shirt was tight. Then she turned her back to me, bringing the mail around to her front, and rifled through the stack: a journal, a bank statement, a mobile phone bill.

“No,” I said, not laughing, not cracking a smile. Not bloody love letters. Polly had run out of my office at Earth Sciences like I was a monster. I still smarted from it.

“Bor-ing,” Liv sing-songed. She put the mail back into its slot and tugged on my shirt.

“What are you doing?” I asked, brushing her hand off. She rolled her eyes toward the porters and waved that I should follow her outside.

Out on the cobbles of First Court she whispered: “There’s a party. Come on.” She pulled my hand. I resisted at first. I leaned back to counter her weight. “Come on!” she said again, giggling, adding her other hand and pulling harder.

Polly. She’d pushed me away, with her hands and then with her elbow.

It was nice to be pulled.

“All right, let’s go,” I said. My sudden compliance with Liv’s drag almost toppled her backward.

“Okay!” she said, slipping, righting herself, holding on. “Wow, okay.”

I followed her lead across the road and up her staircase. We stood close. We had to; there were too many people in the corridor and the music was loud. We were close enough that the bottles in our hands clinked together as we pulsed to the rhythm unconsciously.

The porter broke it up half an hour later. Students dispersed to their rooms.

“Well, good night, I guess,” Liv said, shrugging. “Thanks for coming anyway.” She was right in front of her door.

I pushed it open. She pulled me in.

Liv stood up. I kissed her on the forehead, like a niece would be kissed.

Ridiculous. She was half-naked.

Her sweater was on the bed. Somehow, I was standing on her bra. I’d tossed it to the floor. First I’d struggled to unhook its clasp, scraping my knuckles on the wall behind her. Then I’d thrown it on the floor, not caring about anything except getting my hands on her skin. In the ensuing tangle it had got under my foot.

The blue cotton was now marked with dirt from my shoe. I picked it up. “Sorry,” I said. She took it, and lifted her shoulders, like she didn’t mind. She covered her mouth and laughed or sneezed, some small sound. Her breasts bounced and she crossed one arm over them. But she didn’t dress. She smiled.

“I have to go,” I said. I did up my trousers. I looked around for my coat and realized, in amazement, that I was still wearing it.

She shivered. I got her sweater from the bed. The coverlet was dented where the sweater had landed, but the rest was all smooth. Everything we’d done had been against the wall. She’d untucked my shirt and rubbed her hands over my stomach. She’d turned us to switch places, to steady my back against the wall, right next to the window well, where the side edge of a short red curtain had tickled my ear.

I offered her the sweater now. I righted the inside-out sleeves and held it out, limp.

“I don’t want to get dressed,” she pouted, again with that smile. She reached out to me, again with that hand; she has soft, avid hands, with short fingernails, and one smooth, cool ring.

“I have to go,” I repeated, backing up and knocking into her fan heater. The corridor must have been empty by then; at least I hoped it would be.

Her hair was wild. The light from the long-armed desk lamp made strange shadows that elongated one of her nipples. Everything that had urged me on had finished. I shouldn’t have done this.

“I have a meeting, Liv,” I lied. “Richard’s expecting me.”

“Isn’t it a little late?” She laughed nervously.

“I meant to see Richard earlier, but you, uh, you distracted me.” Actually, I’d come only to collect my mail and Richard was the last person I’d wanted to see. He wouldn’t approve of what I’d got myself into with Polly. How could I possibly explain this?

“Did I do it right?” she asked.

I stopped breathing. She looked at me so hopefully. She was still bare. She was lovely and waiting.

“I’ve never done that before. Was it okay?” she persisted.

My fingers grazed the door handle.

I exhaled the answer: “Yes,” I finally said. “It was very good. Thank you.”

I got out the door.

Stairs, then the whoosh of the outer doors sliding apart like in a grocery store. I sucked in the cool air outside.

Knock, knock, knock. I looked up. She waved from her window. She had the sweater on now. I wonder how much of us had been visible, or audible, from outside.

I waved back and ducked around to the front of “O” building. It was far too late to call on Richard, but I had to make a show of an appointment, for Liv’s sake. So she wouldn’t think I was escaping her.