Needlemouse

by Jane O'Connor

  The other slight annoyance was the presence of Lola in the front row, showing her approval of everything Prof said like a nodding dog and bursting into rapturous applause at the end as if his presentation had been dedicated to her personally. I would have liked to stay and watch him leave, but I was worried he might see me, so I slipped out while everyone’s attention was on another question.

  Walking out through the as yet empty dining hall I noticed a small table in the corner set with individually labelled plates for those delegates with specific dietary requirements. Knowing about Lola’s nut allergy, I paused for a moment and, out of curiosity, looked to see if she had requested a separate meal. She had, and there it was, a sticker saying S. Lola Maguire on a plate of soggy-looking pasta salad covered with cling film. My hand went to the packet of peanuts from the train which were still in my pocket and I turned the foil bag over and over as I stared at her name. The loud rattle of a trolley bursting in from the adjacent kitchen made me jump and I scampered out of the room and rushed past reception. Once outside, I shot down a side alley and leant against the wall until my rapid breathing had returned to normal. I wouldn’t have done that. Of course I wouldn’t. I opened my eyes to see two refuse collectors watching me warily as they dragged a massive metal bin towards their lorry. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry,’ I shouted at them and ran to the other end of the alley and out onto the main road where I joined the crowds of ordinary Romans going about their day and made my way haphazardly back to Villa Rosa.

  A long bath and a short sleep went a long way towards restoring my equilibrium, and I drifted into a different part of town for a coffee a couple of hours ago to kill time until the conference dinner this evening.

  Saturday 14 November

  I am so small, so hurt, so lost. I want to disappear. I want the world to swallow me up and make me not have to exist any longer. I am angry too, so angry. That vile woman. She has stolen Prof from me. She has manipulated him and seduced him and made him want her. She couldn’t just leave him alone. Why did she come to us, why did she have to come and ruin everything between me and Prof? He is mine. I have waited for him for fifteen years and looked after him and loved him and made myself perfect for him. No one could ever care about him more than me. How dare she come into our lives and spoil everything and take him away from me. I can’t stop crying, I don’t know what to do with myself. I am totally and completely undone and it will never be right. What a scheming little strumpet she is, stealing my love, making him want her, taking him away from me. As soon as I saw him see her tonight in that blue chiffon dress I knew she had him under some kind of spell.

  Poor Prof didn’t stand a chance. He was waiting in their hotel foyer for her. I was watching from behind a stand of postcards in the gift shop. I know that look. The eyes give everything away – that’s why I always try not to look directly at Prof if I can help it, so he can’t see that look of longing and surrender and downright admiration in my eyes – and that’s how he looked at her. I felt utterly sick with dread and as if I were falling into a huge, bottomless black pit with nowhere soft that I could ever land. I followed them out the front door at a safe distance and relocated to the far side of the top step behind a pillar. From here I watched them wave down a taxi, he with his hand on the small of her back. Just before they got in she looked at him and they both laughed and then he kissed her on the mouth, twice.

  I took a photo of the second kiss on my phone from my hiding place because part of me can’t believe it is true and I want hard evidence to remind myself of this pain to give me the courage and strength to do whatever I will need to do next. I need to protect us from this woman, this interloper, this hateful Jezebel. I had to hold myself back from confronting them, but I knew I mustn’t; they can’t know I’m here. As the taxi turned the corner, I ran down onto the street, pulled the bag of peanuts from my pocket, opened it and threw them after her, a gesture that drew surprisingly little attention from the well-dressed passers-by.

  I hung about in the hotel lobby for a couple of hours and then, when the receptionist kept staring at me unpleasantly, I went and sat in the bar, nursing a small glass of aqua libra. The time dragged and it seemed to take forever to get to midnight, when I knew the event was scheduled to end. I hadn’t taken account of Roman time-keeping, though, and it was nearer two when the barman shook me awake, telling me he was closing up for the night.

  I ran into the lobby, feeling disorientated and panicky, but all was quiet. I had obviously missed them coming back. The urge to know if they were spending the night together was overwhelming and I pressed the lift call button decisively. I alighted on the third floor and walked silently down the carpeted corridor until I was standing outside Prof’s door. I stood motionless, my ear pressed against it, listening for any sounds from inside, but it was completely silent. I went back to the lift, up to the eerily identical seventh floor, and repeated the procedure outside Lola’s room, but again, nothing. I took the stairs back down to the third floor and crouched outside room 320. After several minutes of hearing only the hum of the low-wattage lights on the corridor walls, I thought I heard a small sound, like a rustle, from inside. Before I could stop myself, I had knocked loudly on the door and then, in a panic, I ran and hid behind a large artificial fern at the end of the corridor. The door flew open and Prof stood there, dishevelled, in his dressing gown with his hair sticking up, rubbing his eyes in the dim light. He looked up and down the corridor and I held my breath in terror as he called out, ‘Yes? Is anyone there?’ Then he tutted loudly at the silence and shut the door. I felt relief wash through me. Surely he was alone; he had almost certainly been asleep. I was about to return to the lift when the door to 320 opened again and I leapt back behind the fern. A scrunched, pale face peered out beneath a mess of tangled blonde hair.

  ‘There’s no one here, Carl. There’s nobody at all,’ said Lola, looking up and down the corridor, and straight past the fern.

  Sunday 15 November

  After my horrendous discovery of Prof and Lola’s tryst on Friday night I got a taxi back to Villa Rosa in a state of shock. After writing it all down in my journal I lay motionless on my bed, going over it in my head. Then at first light I got up and spent furious hours pacing the streets of the deserted city, trying to decide what to do. The most obvious course of action was to report them to the university. Relationships between PhD supervisors and students are severely disapproved of by the Faculty. However, they are not actually forbidden, so divulging their extracurricular activities to the Dean would achieve little more than to severely damage Prof’s professional reputation – something I couldn’t bear to be responsible for. As the first eager tourists started emerging from their hotels around 8 a.m., a much better idea occurred to me, a way of getting rid of Lola whilst ensuring minimal damage to Prof. It was such a perfect plan that I couldn’t help emitting a wild little shout of triumph beside the Trevi Fountain, which I happened to be passing, much to the amusement of a group of young people sitting having a smoke after a hard night’s clubbing, and I rushed back to Villa Rosa to get organised. After the initial exhilaration came the realisation that there was a lot to do and it was going to take some guts to see my plan through, but I am nothing if not determined in my dedication to ensuring Prof and my future happiness.

  I took the metro and then the Leonardo express to Fiumicino Airport early this morning, although my flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until mid-afternoon. I didn’t want to hang around central Rome any longer than I had to, and risk bumping into Lola and Prof, lovingly sharing a Cornetto at a romantic street-side café.

  By the time I got to the airport the anxiety that I might run into them had started to subside. I had booked Prof onto a late-afternoon flight, as he had requested, and I had arranged for Lola to fly home in the early hours from the less-convenient Ciampino airport. I bought myself a coffee and sat watching the passengers come and go, each caught up in their own unknowable stresses or excitements. I had the letter with me in my bag
and put my hand on it every now and then to reassure myself that I was about to take back control. Once I had decided what to do yesterday, it had been a rush to find a print shop and a stationer’s, and my limited Italian and lack of knowledge of the area ensured it was even more of a challenge to get everything I needed. The open post office that I finally found, in a peculiar non-touristy area of the city, had an enormous queue, which mystified me as the street outside seemed completely deserted. I had to tussle with the woman at the counter after she had weighed the letter and put stamps on it to stop her putting it straight in the sack of post beneath her desk.

  ‘No, no, no!’ I shouted, pulling it back from her until she finally let go with such an enraged look on her face that for a horrible moment I thought she was going to spit at me. I wasn’t ready to let it go just yet. I needed to be sure and think it through one more time. I could post it anywhere, now it was stamped, and I had in mind that the airport would be the perfect place as most delegates making their way home from the conference would pass through there.

  I stood in front of the post box for a moment, then I pulled the letter carefully out of my bag. I touched the front, where the familiar address was printed on a label, and felt the satisfying prick of each corner before placing it in the slot. I hung on to it for just a second, teasing myself, really, but I knew I would drop it in. I couldn’t resist. Light as air, I wandered aimlessly around the departure lounge, smiling at strangers like a simple-minded child. The childlike delight continued as I allowed myself to be shepherded onto the flight by the glamorous cabin crew and ordered myself a celebratory gin and slimline tonic. I gazed out of the window as we took off and watched the extraordinariness of Rome blur into yet another urban conurbation, and then to invisibility, wondering with interest, rather than melancholy, if, when we die, the whole world recedes from view like that.

  Drinking gin, thinking philosophical thoughts, international air travel – I was deeply satisfied with myself. This was me as the sort of woman Prof should be in love with, the best version of me – a sophisticated, fascinating, astute older woman who makes younger women seem as boring and insipid as a plate of plain pasta.

  I excused myself, climbing over the legs of two sweet teenage girls, and walked along the gangway to the toilets at the end of the cabin. It was on the way back that a head of familiar blonde hair, two rows in front of mine, caught my eye, and when the head turned to speak to the air hostess I was sure that it was Lola. I practically leapt back into my row, pushing roughly past the girls, and slunk down low in my seat, my heart pounding. It couldn’t possibly be her. She was booked on a different flight, from a different airport. How could she be here? I peeked up again and had a frustratingly limited view of the top of a fair crown. No matter how I twisted or turned I couldn’t see any better, until finally the not-so-sweet girl sitting next to me gave me a mouthful of abuse in angry Italian, along with the international hand gesture for ‘stop’. The rest of the flight was ruined. I was terrified that Lola – if it was Lola – would get up and go to the toilet and see me. I hid behind the in-flight magazine and allowed myself furtive glances over the top every time I sensed someone walking past. When the plane landed I waited until last to disembark and then found, to my dismay, the entire flight waiting in lines to go through passport control and there was nowhere left for me to hide without looking thoroughly suspicious. Thankfully, I only had hand luggage, so dashed straight out towards the exit as soon as I had been checked.

  ‘Excuse me!’ A shrill voice stopped me in my tracks and I looked round sharply. ‘I think you dropped this.’ My passport was being held out to me by a stout old woman with a concerned face. I snatched it off her, mumbling my thanks, and continued on my harried way to the escalator down to the tube.

  I got home around six o’clock and turned the heating on in the freezing flat. I called Jonas straight away, to find out how the hoglets were doing, but he wasn’t answering his phone, so I unpacked and went directly over to Hartland Road with a bottle of grappa as a peace offering. I found him in the garage, feeding one of the little creatures in the gloom of the single overhead strip light, with the electric fire on full. I felt a stab of guilt that I had left him to do the round-the-clock feeds on his own. Taking a deep breath, I delivered my rehearsed apology.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jonas. I haven’t been well and then something came up at work.’ He continued on with the feeding as if I wasn’t there. ‘How are they?’

  I took a step towards him and he looked up at me sadly. His light blue eyes had dark rings underneath them from exhaustion and the skin on his face was grey and baggy. He shook his head.

  ‘I haven’t been this tired since Carrie was a baby – she didn’t sleep through the night until she was two years old, that one. I was a young man, then, though. Paula thought it was colic, then it was teething, then I think she just got in the habit of it. She was lonely at night, didn’t want to be on her own in her cot, even with the light on and her teddies and all. She’s always had a strong imagination, that one; she used to frighten herself when we left her on her own, that was what it seemed like. Paula took her into our bed in the end, even though that was something we said we’d never do – a man and his wife need some space together – but that was what she needed, you see, that did the trick. She slept good as gold after that. It calmed her down, made her feel safe again. She went back in her own bed after a few weeks, never another murmur from her. You have to give them what they need, don’t you, that’s the trick with the little ones. That’s what my Paula always said. She was kind, Paula was, and patient. She was a lovely mam to our girls.’

  I stood awkwardly in the fusty garage as he reminisced, squinting at the clock on the wall. I was trying to work out whether Prof had landed yet and fretting about whether he would be seeing Lola again tonight and whether it had been her on my flight and, horror of horrors, whether she had seen me.

  Jonas put the animal down at last and placed the pipette in a glass on the table. Talking about Paula seemed to have shifted him into a more upbeat gear and he became quite animated, telling me that the hoglets – he’d named them Spud and Sprout – were doing well, better than expected. He went on to recount, in great detail, their increasing milk consumption, growth, funny antics and so on.

  ‘That’s good, I’m pleased,’ I told him with a thin smile. And I was, in a way, although the plight of two baby hedgehogs had become somewhat eclipsed by the magnitude of the events in Rome and my swirling inner torture at the prospect of having lost Prof and our future together to a breezy, blousy interloper.

  I helped Jonas carry the hoglets’ box down the path and into the house so he could continue with the night feeds in the comfort of his sitting room. I offered to make him a sandwich and a coffee before I went, which he politely declined.

  ‘I’ll be off, then,’ I said, but didn’t say when I would be back. I couldn’t commit to anything until I knew what was happening with Prof. I suspected Jonas was waiting for me to offer to help with the hoglets, to take some of the responsibility off his shoulders, perhaps even take them with me for a night or two, but I just couldn’t. I was waiting for his request and had prepared my excuse, but he never asked.

  I got into my coat and scarf and had a final peer into the box. Spud and Sprout had curled up together and were sleeping peacefully, their little white prickles rising and falling with their breath. Jonas had given them their lives again and I felt a brief surge of happiness that was quickly tempered by the intrusive, appalling image of Lola in her long blue dress, holding the back of Prof’s head as he kissed her.

  Thursday 19 November

  The letter from Rome arrived for Prof this morning. It was strange seeing it again, as if it had nothing to do with me and was from another dimension altogether. I was trembling with anticipation, though, as I placed it on his desk with the rest of his post. I overcame the urge to put it on top and placed it second from bottom of the small pile, as if it was nothing special or important. He ca
me in as normal, all jovial and full of good cheer. I watched him through the glass partition as he set about opening his mail with the long, silver letter opener he always used, and I managed to coordinate bringing in his tea as he was reading the missive from Rome. I really needed to experience his reaction, not just see it. I wanted to be there as the realisation hit him that Lola was not all she seemed, that she had made a fool of him, that he had been tricked into having feelings for her. He frowned as he read the letter and put his glasses on as he held up the two photos and looked carefully at them. Then he read the letter again and turned it over as if there might have been something on the other side that he had missed. I was just leaving the room when he called my name with such intensity that I started a little and had a momentary feeling of panic that maybe, somehow, I had left an identifying mark on the paper. I turned and smiled helpfully in response, raising my eyebrows a fraction to indicate that I was expecting a question.

  ‘Where did this letter come from? Do you know? Did it come this morning?’

  I told him it had and that it had arrived in the regular university postal system.

  ‘Why, is there something wrong?’ I asked with a hint of concern and the slightest suggestion that he was behaving oddly.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he muttered as he looked back at the photos. ‘Will you contact Lola Maguire for me, please, and ask her to come and see me later today?’

  ‘Oh, I think Lola teaches all day on a Thursday,’ I replied innocently, as if I cared about disrupting Lola’s schedule.

  ‘Just tell her she needs to come in and see me, please. Urgently. Can you also ask Maurice Lowe from academic misconduct to come and see me as soon as he is free.’ I knew from his tone that I was dismissed and I flew back to my desk to email Lola and Maurice, feeling giddy with excitement. I had set loose a typhoon that was about to spin out of control and take Lola with it. Far, far away.