no.’ Sasha shuddered. The Cambridge Union was a debating society and the Footlights a comedic dramatic club. The very thought of speaking in public under any circumstances brought Sasha out in a rash. How anyone could sign up for such a thing by choice was incomprehensible.
‘Well, what sort of things are you interested in?’ asked Georgia. ‘These biscuits are delicious, by the way.’
‘Thanks.’ Sasha smiled. ‘I’m interested in physics. Radiophysics, cryophysics, physics of phase transitions and magnetism.’
Georgia’s eyes widened. Sasha went on.
‘You know, all of it really, quantum optics, semiconductors and dielectrics…’
‘So not a big cookery fan, then?’
‘Cookery?’
‘That was a joke.’ Georgia looked at her new friend with a combination of admiration and pity. Clearly she was going to have to introduce Sasha to the concept of fun. ‘Look, I get it. You’re Einstein.’
‘Oh, no.’ Sasha was mortified. ‘I didn’t mean to imply…I’m nothing special. Certainly not by Cambridge standards.’
‘Bollocks to Cambridge standards,’ said Georgia robustly. ‘You’re obviously an evil genius or you wouldn’t be here. You’ve probably got a laser in your room. Do you have a laser, Scott?’ She put on her best Dr Evil voice but it went right over Sasha’s head. ‘Never mind. The point is, we’re at St Michael’s now.’ Grabbing Sasha’s hand she dragged her over to the window. Outside, the college’s picture-postcard courts and bridges lay spread out below them like a wonderland. ‘Our mission is to have the time of our fucking lives,’ said Georgia. ‘Are you with me?’
Somehow Sasha knew instinctively that this was a rhetorical question. Georgia Adams was a force of nature. Sasha was with her whether she liked it or not.
From that day on the two girls were inseparable. The outgoing, flirtatious blonde and the quiet, mysterious brunette were the talk of freshers week. Party invitations flooded into Georgia and Sasha’s pigeonholes – all the third year Casanovas had bets on who would be the first to get one of them into bed – but even Georgia found that she had less time for partying than she’d hoped, what with all the paperwork and reading lists, supervisions, seminars, and, of course, exploring Cambridge itself.
‘It’s an architect’s paradise,’ sighed Georgia, wandering from college to college, where exquisite Gothic buildings huddled cheek by jowl with some truly stunning modern architecture. Treasure troves that they were, there was more to Cambridge than the colleges. There was Kettle’s Yard Gallery, centuries-old pubs like the Pickerel with its low beams and roaring log fire. There were the grand museums on Downing Street, and Parker’s Piece, and the teashop at Grantchester that let you moor punts in the garden. There were quaint cobbled alleys, magnificent churches, twee pink-painted cottages and outrageous neoclassical mansions. And it was theirs. It was all theirs.
For Sasha, the highlight of her first week was the tour of the Cavendish laboratory. Possibly the ugliest building in England, and certainly the ugliest in Cambridge, to Sasha Miller it was the most mesmerizing thing she had ever seen. This was where the magic happened! This was the Emerald City of Oz. The third-year physicist from Magdalene who showed her around didn’t appear to share Sasha’s enthusiasm. A skinny, greasy-haired boy with a Birmingham accent and acne so severe that he was more spot than face, he led Sasha from room to room with a look of pained ennui. Doesn’t he realize that we’re standing on the frontier of experimental physics? That we’re walking in the shadows of the great Cavendish professors, of Maxwell and Thompson, Bragg and Mott? Sasha couldn’t wait to call Will tonight and tell him all about it.
They emerged into the daylight – to Sasha’s regret and her guide’s relief, the tour was over – and Sasha noticed an extraordinarily good-looking blond man surrounded by an admiring throng of female undergraduates.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Professor Dexter.’ The boy’s Brummie accent made him sound even more bored. ‘Fancy him, do yow?’
Sasha blushed. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. I wondered what the fuss was about, that’s all. The man’s being mobbed.’
‘Well. You’ll find out for yerself soon enough, won’t yow?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re at St Michael’s?’
Sasha nodded.
‘So’s he. Physics fellow. He’ll be your Director of Studies.’
Sasha looked at the man again – what she could make out of him through the herd of miniskirts and low-rise jeans. He looks very young to be a fellow. I hope he knows what he’s talking about. How awful it would be to have made it to Cambridge only to be taught physics by someone second-rate. Still, one shouldn’t judge by appearances. Lots of people thought Will was a standard-issue, shallow, rugby-obsessed, public school boy when they first met him.
Which only went to show how wrong first impressions could be.
Professor Theo Dexter sat in his rooms at St Michael’s hunched over his computer in a foul mood. Last week’s optimism about the new term already felt like a distant memory. So far, this year’s intake of undergraduates had been dismal. Barely a single good-looking girl amongst them. As for the physicists, it made you wonder what the hell the government’s two hundred million pounds of extra education spending was being spent on. Certainly not hiring decent science teachers. To think that these kids were the best that the English school system had to offer. Morons the lot of them. God, it was depressing.
He turned back to his book. Cursed bloody thing. As an academic, you were expected to publish your own work at least every few years. Most scholars, including Theresa, considered this ‘the fun part’ and saw teaching as a distraction to their studies. For Theo it was the other way around. He found the obligation to continually reinvent the wheel and come up with new theories an immense drain on his time and energy. The truth was, he wasn’t much of an original thinker. He was bright, naturally. Unlike most of his colleagues he was also a good communicator, with a gift for expressing the most complex ideas in theoretical physics in simple, human terms. But Theo Dexter had yet to stumble across that one, seminal thought that would forever be identified with his name. Deep down he was wildly envious of his wife’s ability to come up with new angles on Shakespearean criticism over her Special K every morning. Not that he’d ever have told her that. Inspiration seemed to explode out of Theresa involuntarily, like a sneeze. Theo Dexter knew that his fellow physicists considered him a ‘plodder’. If only he had half his wife’s instinctive, unstructured brilliance, they might start taking him seriously. As it was…
A knock on the door disturbed him. Who the hell could that be? I don’t have any supervisions this morning.
‘Yes?’ He sounded less than welcoming. Tentatively the door creaked open.
‘Professor Dexter?’
‘Yes? For God’s sake, come in whoever you are. Don’t skulk in the corridor like a thief.’
A young girl shuffled nervously into the room. Theo’s first thought was, She’s escaped from the circus. Dressed in baggy, striped trousers teamed with a multi-coloured, polka-dotted shirt, dark
