The walkway leading out to the street was in full view of her window, so I waited. She’d think Richard had let me in. I stood in the dark against a brick wall. My hands were cold. Somewhere along the way I’d lost my gloves. I’d had them on when I got to Magdalene, but later I’d put bare hands all over her.

I sat on a bench, between the river and an alley with a locked iron gate.

I hid there until I was sure she’d given up on me for the night.

I showered for half an hour. I didn’t usually waste the Chanders’ hot water that way. Nothing about me was as usual, nothing. Polly had been right to run away from me. I evidently wasn’t to be trusted.

I pressed my wet hair with a towel, then rubbed my face, hard. I had to be honest with Liv tomorrow, and early. I couldn’t let her think that this was the start of something.

If she had a phone I would have called her then. Liv was the sort to tell all of her girlfriends, wasn’t she? I had an obligation to spare her the embarrassment of bragging and then being broken up with.

Laughs pumped out of me: “ha-ha-ha!” I hadn’t even got her off. I’d got mine and got out. What would she brag about?

But her face. She’d looked… grateful.

A knock rattled my bedroom door. I wrapped myself in a dressing gown and opened it. There was Aashika. She’s eight.

“You should be asleep,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “But I made you something at school. I heard you in the shower and I waited.”

She offered a carefully painted ceramic tortoise. She’s been studying Darwin and the Galapagos. The paint had glitter mixed in. She held it out with both hands, and I took it.

That look on her face, so pleased and proud that I’d accepted her gift? Liv had looked just like that.

I didn’t recognise her at first. She had on a skirt instead of jeans. The expression on her face was sweet. “Hi,” Liv said softly. I’d never heard her speak softly before.

“You look nice,” I said, only to acknowledge the effort. She clasped her hands under her chin.

Gretchen drummed her fingertips impatiently. I’d finally found Liv there, after missing her at Magdalene, and outside a lecture that had been rescheduled, in between appointments of my own.

“I’m so happy to see you!” Liv said. “But I need to finish up here, and then I have an appointment with my supervisor…”

“Back at Magdalene? I’ll walk you.” Perfect. There would be an end point to cut short her inevitable acrimony when I told her that last night had been a mistake.

She was satisfied too with her own expectations. She bounced as she followed Gretchen. I trailed them into the library. Gretchen opened a first edition of one of the Susan Maud books to the title page. “I received this in the mail yesterday. It had been flagged by the bookseller as having an inscription. Please read it to me.” Her finger stabbed right down onto it, having found the indentations by feel.

Liv said, “To Mickey with gratitude. Linda Paul, 1959.”

Gretchen strained to remember a Mickey she’d never met. Liv packed up notebooks and pens into her bag, out of which she pulled a sheet of paper. “Gretchen, this is a list of my hours. I know the index isn’t quite done yet, but I figured you could pay me for these now…”

“Yes,” said Gretchen absently. “Put it with the mail.” There was a stack of it on a table near the door. “I’ll have a cheque for you when you come next.”

“Oh! Thanks. Yes. But I was wondering if maybe you could deal with these hours now…”

I stared at the handwriting. “Linda didn’t write this,” I said.

“What do you mean she didn’t write it?” Gretchen wanted to know.

“This is Ginny’s handwriting.” The loopy one, same as copied the poem.

“I guess Linda got Ginny to do some of the autographs,” Liv said lightly.

Gretchen turned on her. “Is your time so precious that you weren’t going to tell me?”

I knew that tone. Once, one of her students had plagiarised and she’d dressed him down right in the centre of Magdalene’s First Court, on a warm day when everyone’s windows were open.

“I didn’t know,” Liv said. “You asked me to read it and I read it.”

“You have eyes!” Gretchen railed. “I pay you to look at things for me. If you think you’re here to do the minimum, only to read or only to sort, then I don’t know how I can trust any of what you’ve done.”

The look on Liv’s face was awful. I’d seen other undergraduate girls hit this wall. They admire Gretchen so much. But Gretchen’s not really the mentor type.

“Gretchen, it’s my fault,” I said. “If I hadn’t interrupted just now, I’m sure Liv would have noticed and called it to your-”

“What neither of you seem to appreciate is that this is all that’s left of a woman’s life, a significant woman’s life!”

“Does it really matter,” Liv said, “that Ginny signed a book for her sister?”

I flinched in advance. Gretchen wasn’t going to take that well.

“Now that you’ve revealed your fundamental laziness, I think we can all agree that your work is worthless to me.”

Liv’s eyes sprouted tears.

“Gretchen, that’s not so. The photo index is sound,” I insisted.

“I’ll skip my supervision,” Liv said. “I’ll double-check everything.”

She shouldn’t do that, not at end of term. “I’ll do it,” I offered. “I’ll stay. Gretchen, I’ll show you that everything is as it should be.”

“Thanks, hero,” is what I think Liv mouthed at me. She looked genuine but I could only hear it sarcastically. I walked her to the door.

“I’m happy to help a friend,” I said, not sure if I emphasised the final word too much or not enough. “Can we talk later?”

Liv suggested we meet in the evening. “I’m meeting Polly at the library at four, but I can lose her after that.”

Polly. They would tell each other everything. “Oh, I have to…” Something. Anything. Once she and Polly spoke to each other there would be nothing for me to add. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, certain that neither of them would want to see me.

“Oh!” she said, rooting in her pockets. “You left these in my room last night.” She held out my gloves. I reached for them and she held on, giggling.

“Nick!” Gretchen called.

I got the gloves and stuffed them into my own pockets. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get this handwriting issue sorted with Gretchen.”

Liv stretched up and kissed me on the forehead, the same kiss I’d given her afterward, last night.

“I’ll fix this,” I promised.

I opened the box of photos and pulled out the folder with the poem and its copies in. I took one of Ginny’s copies to compare, and the original, clipped from a newspaper, fluttered to the floor. I picked it up carefully, wary of its fragility. “Sorry. We tried not to handle the original much.” That’s why I hadn’t noticed that the back of it had part of the date on it: “mber 1963.”

That was strange. I thought Gretchen had said Ginny had died when Gretchen was seven, which would have been 1962. But what does it matter-seven versus eight, or even nine, is nothing. Gretchen must have meant merely that she’d been young when it had happened.

“I don’t know why she would have done it,” Gretchen persisted, about the autograph. “Mother and Ginny didn’t socialise much after Brussels. Ginny travelled so much and Mother and I didn’t anymore. I don’t see how it could have been Ginny who assisted her. Unless my mother didn’t know? Perhaps Ginny was pretending to be Linda?” But the books weren’t famous enough to make a masquerade worth her while, even as a social prank. Gretchen twisted her hands around each other, around and around.

“Let’s be sensible about this,” I said. I laid out the two signed books, one of the poem transcriptions, and three photos back-side up: one of the older photos of what might have been Linda and Ginny’s parents, the photo of “Jim” (purportedly Gretchen’s father), and a photo of Gretchen and her friends as teenagers. I compared them again.