I had to get shoes as well.

I keep my cards in a little zipper thing that fits in my pocket: credit card, ATM, public library, student I.D. The zipper thing is only just a little bigger than the cards themselves, and it kind of holds on to them when I try to pull one out. The bag and I had a little fight about the credit card. In the end I snapped the zipper pull and now it doesn’t close anymore.

I might have stopped myself. I could have stopped somewhere between the dressing room and punching in my PIN on the little machine. I needed to make it through to Christmas, when my dad would pay tuition and top up my living expenses again. But when my own purse tried to stop me I just got defensive. I’m not going to let a stupid bag tell me what to do.

The price came in just three pounds under my limit.

I wouldn’t be able to return the shoes; they would show scuffs. But I’d return the dress. So long as I was careful with it, I could return the dress, saying I hadn’t used it, and get the money back.

After all that, Nick didn’t come to the dinner.

It was held at Magdalene, with the usual formality. All the men looked alike, and the women looked different: different hems, different colors, different hairstyles. Except for the girl I’d seen in the shop, who was wearing the same dress that I was. Poppies on white.

I was angry. Nick was supposed to be there. Instead-what? I didn’t even think of him being with Polly. I assumed him to be at some sort of family event, something to do with his sister, or maybe something with the Chanders. Some performance or presentation at their school. Because he’d spent his whole life going to dinners like this. They weren’t special to him, so he had no respect that they were special to some people.

I was so angry I couldn’t eat. I didn’t want to risk dropping anything on the dress anyway. Dinner was roast beef. Even one drip would force me to keep the dress. I was careful with the wine, careful with the water even. I was between someone named Mark and another guy. Mark asked me if I’d ever sung Scarlatti’s “Stabat Mater,” which I hadn’t. He said it had more than thirty-part harmony. I told him he was full of shit. The girl on his other side said it does have that many parts, and what was my problem? I was really mad from Nick being so cavalier about where he bothers to show up, so I told her to fuck off. And she said, “How very American of you.” Five or six people laughed at that. The girl who said it wasn’t even English; she was Canadian. I wanted to leave but everyone would have looked at me walk out.

I picked up my wineglass, which was still full because I’d been avoiding it. Mark reached for his water at the same time, and our arms knocked lightly. If my glass hadn’t been full, it wouldn’t have been any big deal. But the wine was close to the top and sloshed over the side. Just one plop of it, but it hit my plate with momentum enough to send a drop sliding up over the edge. It hit my lap, on the linen napkin there, which I grabbed up quickly, to keep the purple from soaking through onto the dress. That’s when Mark’s water spilled onto the dress instead. Clear water, but any wet at all would ruin the fabric. It could be dry-cleaned away maybe, but not enough to make it look like it had never been worn. Two hundred and eighty-nine pounds. I gasped. Mark apologized, but the girl on his other side covered a laugh.

I was too angry to move, and if I swore again that would just set off the Canadian girl. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.” I thought, It’s Nick who should be apologizing. And, It’s Polly who would be laughing, isn’t it.

There was nothing Mark could do; it’s not like he could dab at my crotch with his table napkin. He stopped saying sorry eventually. Now I really couldn’t get up; it would have looked like I peed myself. The guy on my other side finally said something to me. He said, “These things go on forever.” What did he mean? Did he kindly mean my skirt would dry into a wrinkled mess before I’d have to get up? Did he obnoxiously mean that he hated being stuck next to me and my problems?

None of it even mattered. The hard rains had come. When I stepped outside, the dress got soaked.

We found out that Nick was gone on Day Two, which suddenly made sense of him missing the dinner. I heard it from the porter. I was worried, but in a light way, thinking he’d gotten a flat tire on his bicycle or had lost track of time in the library stacks. I went to tell Polly, who already knew.

Polly had been interviewed by the police.

I had to call them myself to tell them I was Nick’s friend too. This was Saturday, Day Three. The man said he was glad I’d called and that I was on his list, which was bullshit. He just said that to cover up that he didn’t think I was much of anything to Nick. I made an appointment to go down to the Parkside police station, to tell them everything that had happened and let them decide who the girlfriend was.

“Hi,” said the policewoman. Polly had talked to a man. “Thanks for coming in. You’re at Magdalene?” I nodded. “The porters tell me there was a little party Tuesday evening.”

“Oh, totally,” I agreed. “I saw Nick collecting his mail and invited him over. He needed a break.”

“Was there any alcohol at this party?”

“Just some beer. I think he only had one.” He wasn’t drunk, if that’s what she was implying. He didn’t need to be drunk to do what we did.

“When did he leave?”

“He stayed in my room for a while.” I smiled.

“How long is a while?”

“I guess half an hour.” Long enough, is what I meant. “He had to see his supervisor.” It was important to explain why he hadn’t stayed over.

“Richard Keene? No, he didn’t.”

“What?”

“We’ve spoken with Dr. Keene. They had no interaction on Tuesday night.”

I know that Nick saw him. He went around to O building and didn’t come out.

“Why would Dr. Keene lie?” I asked.

She leaned back. “Why do you think Dr. Keene would lie?”

I held on to the seat of my chair with both hands.

“I guess he wasn’t in. But Nick went to see him.” And didn’t come out from around the front of the building for at least forty minutes. After forty minutes I went to bed.

“We’ll investigate the discrepancy,” she said. “Did Nick go to a lot of parties?”

“I don’t know.” Maybe he did. Maybe this was a normal thing for him. Maybe lots of girls put their faces there.

“What did you and he do for half an hour?”

She was asking everything backward. She was supposed to have asked that before she told me that Nick hadn’t really gone to see Dr. Keene.

“Like, we talked and stuff. About… school.” I shook my head. That was stupid. Why would we talk about school? But she believed me. She didn’t even try to get it out of me that we hadn’t talked at all.

“Do you know Polly Bailey? Was she at this party?”

“No!” I said.

I let them take my fingerprints, like they were doing with everyone who knew him well. “For elimination purposes,” this policewoman said. That’s right; someone had trashed his room.

My prints wouldn’t be there. I’d never been in his room. Whenever I went over to the Chanders’ house, we’d sat in the kitchen. I’d never even been upstairs.

By the time I learned about Polly being sick in Nick’s office-and when-it wasn’t really a surprise at all.

Since he’d lied about needing to see Dr. Keene, and lied about liking me, and lied about whether I’d done it right and if it felt good and if I mattered, maybe he’d lied about everything. Maybe he hadn’t tried to smooth anything over with Gretchen. Maybe, instead of calming down her freak-out over the handwriting thing, he’d urged her on, picking apart my index line by line…

Never mind. I had to try. I had to get it done. I had to get paid.

She wasn’t even in. And Harry was away for a bird competition, which was actually kind of perfect. I have my own key for just this kind of situation, and I thought, Great, no distractions. But Gretchen had moved the photos. The whole box had been put away somewhere. Maybe she’d taken them someplace to get scanned or preserved, but I thought it was really rude to not have told me.