Needlemouse

by Jane O'Connor

  The rest of the day was beyond my wildest dreams and I am sitting here sipping a divine glass of Frascati with Puccini playing in the background, replaying it all in my mind and feeling like the proverbial cat who got the cream. The plan that I put into motion in that hot, crowded post office in Rome came together perfectly. Firstly, Maurice Lowe came rushing up to Prof’s office. What an unpleasant, officious little man he is – but just the type you want when you need someone on your side to be completely immovable about university policy and procedures in cases of plagiarism and the like. He and Prof had a deep conversation for about half an hour, during which time Prof asked me to photocopy both the letter and the screenshot photos, adding unnecessarily that he knew he could trust me to be discreet. I took the opportunity to remind him that I am not one for office gossip, and, because he looked so stressed out, I squeezed his hand gently as I took the papers, just in a supportive way. It was well judged and he looked at me with such appreciation I thought I might faint with glee, but I managed to keep a serious face as I headed towards the print room.

  Maurice hurried out importantly with the photocopied sheets as if he had been waiting for a scandal like this his whole life and, to my delight, Prof flopped down on the chair in front of my desk – something he has never ever done before. He took his glasses off, ran his hand across his face and then put his glasses back on before looking at me wearily.

  ‘We’ve got a problem, Sylvia. As you may have seen from the letter, an academic from the Rome conference, who chooses to remain anonymous, the coward,’ he said, shaking his head in disdain, ‘has evidence indicating that Lola Maguire may very well have plagiarised work from her previous supervisor, Michael Landers, and passed it off as her own.’

  I did a sharp intake of breath as if it was the worst crime I had ever heard of and responded with the usual range of disbelief statements and questions, none of which Prof answered. I was so tempted to stick the knife in further and say I had never liked her and thought there was something flaky about her, but I held back and Prof stared out the window behind my desk for a few seconds with a crestfallen expression on his face that pained me a little bit, before getting up and going back into his inner sanctum.

  It all went quiet then for the next few hours until Lola arrived, in an absolute spin, at around four. She was a dishevelled mess. Her hair was all over the place and her heaving bosom just made her look fat in the patterned tunic she was wearing. She had rushed putting her make-up on and her eyeliner was smudged across one eye and perfect on the other, giving her the look of a badly painted, cheap doll. I was just about to greet her with a cool, ‘Good afternoon, Lola’ when Prof threw his door wide and held it open for her as she rushed in. They were still in there when five o’clock rolled round, but I was hardly going to leave and miss the show. I had strained to hear the conversation, but all I got was her high-pitched pleading in a raised voice, and echoes of the stern telling-off tone Prof uses for errant students and underperforming faculty members. Maurice joined them at around ten past five, clutching some official-looking document and she came out five minutes later with a puffy, tear-stained face and mascara all down her cheeks. Oh, she looked such a sight. It was balm to my soul!

  That should be the last we see of her then, and good riddance to bad rubbish. It’s so lucky Prof has me looking out for him. I ‘totally have his back’, as Crystal would say. The damage that woman could have done to his reputation is unthinkable and to have had Prof humiliated in his professional circles would have been unbearable for him, and for me.

  ‘Salute’ to me for being a clever girl. I am off to bed now with a satisfied smile on my face and a feeling that justice has been done. I just hope this hasn’t put Prof’s recovery from his divorce back. Learning he couldn’t trust one woman was bad enough, but two – that could put him off for ever. He may never be prepared to put his faith in us and the wonderful life I know we will have together. No, I won’t think along those lines, not tonight. Tonight is a happy time.

  Friday 20 November

  A quiet day at work today. Prof was rather subdued and spent the day in his inner sanctum, working on his book. He even had lunch at his desk, which is unusual for him. He asked me to send students away if they didn’t have an appointment and to reschedule any non-urgent meetings. I was more than happy to fulfil my role as his protector in such ways. Even given the slightly depressed energy in the office, I definitely feel that things are back to normal and that it will just be a matter of time before Prof bounces back and we can resume our developing relationship. With any luck, we will be a few steps further on than before the whole Lola debacle, given the hand-touching and desk-sitting which occurred yesterday. I am full of hope and joy.

  Popped round to Millie’s after work to water the plants as they are away in Edinburgh for their anniversary. They have shut the deli too as they couldn’t find anyone to run it for a few days, now that their assistant, Katya, has gone back to Poland with her feckless boyfriend. This strikes me as enormously disorganised and irresponsible of them. The money they’ll lose over the weekend! I’m just glad they didn’t ask me to step in. I would be hopeless anyway, I don’t like food that much to want to stand selling small portions of it in plastic containers all day, and the cleaning that needs doing after hours is a most repulsive prospect. Crystal is staying with a friend, apparently; again, I’m relieved she wasn’t foisted onto me or I would have had to make up some excuse. I couldn’t bear a whole weekend of strained conversation with a moody teenager, permanently wearing earphones and transfixed by her iPad. No, I plan to spend the weekend luxuriating in the knowledge that Lola has gone and treating myself to some beauty treatments and an aromatherapy massage. I really do feel reborn and light as air.

  Tuesday 24 November

  I don’t know where to start. I am destroyed and distraught and in total shock. I need to go through the events of today in my head to try and understand how joy can so quickly turn to pain. I need to work out how I have ended up in this place where I don’t belong.

  This is how I recall what happened:

  Lola and Ned came into the office around four this afternoon so she could return some books to Prof, and he ushered her straight into his inner sanctum and closed the door. I fiddled around with the filing cabinet near the partition wall, hoping to catch the gist of what was being said and never thought to take any notice of Ned who was hanging around by my desk. As Lola came out of Prof’s office she looked at Ned and he was holding my phone (my phone!) in his hand, staring at it quizzically.

  ‘Mummy, why is there a picture of you and Carl on her phone?’

  The words hung in the air like frozen stones and the whole world turned upside down in the second it took for the implications of what he said to resonate with me and with Lola. I went to lunge towards the boy, but Lola was nearer and grabbed the phone right out of his hand. Her face passed through so many emotions so quickly it was dizzying. Confusion, bewilderment, disbelief – and then came the anger.

  ‘Jesus, you were there in Italy? Spying on us?’ It came out like a question and it came out loud – loud enough for Prof to sense something was up and come to his door. He looked from me to Lola and back again, trying to grasp what was occurring and she took the phone up to him to show him the picture. Her eyes didn’t leave me for a second. ‘She was there in Rome. She took pictures of us.’

  The words were utterly damning. I wanted to howl and scream and beg Prof not to look. I wanted to die right there in that very moment. My life ended. My hands flew to my mouth and I was looking at Prof in absolute terror as he snatched the phone from Lola and held it close to his face.

  ‘Sylvia?’ It was as if he had never said my name before, as if I was an alien concept to him. He looked straight at me. ‘What is this? Were you in Rome? What … ?’

  I swallowed, and the only word I could say was ‘please’. I said it over and over again, with my hands held out imploringly for the wretched phone. I don’t know what I thought i
t would achieve. In my distressed state, I thought that if they gave me back the phone it would all go away and be forgotten. It was ludicrous, really. I see that now. But no other word would come out of my mouth than ‘please’. It was as if we were all permanently locked into this dreadful tableau, a toxic, monstrous situation in which none of us had any idea what to do next.

  My immediate instinct was to run away and I went to grab my coat off the back of the door, but Prof wasn’t having that.

  ‘No. No, Sylvia, you need to stay here. We need to sort this out.’

  I was getting into my coat anyway and going for my bag when he shouted, ‘Sit down’ and I burst into tears.

  Prof has never shouted at me before. In fact, I have never heard him shout at anyone before and it was mortifying. He sent Lola and Ned away and told her he would call her in a short while. She didn’t want to go. She sensed blood, like the wolf she is, and possible triumph, and she wanted to see me brought down. Ned’s eyes were like saucers and he turned his head all sorts of degrees to get a last look at me – the shamed woman – as his mother led him out into the corridor. Prof closed the door behind them, shooing away a bemused-looking Margaret who had just arrived back from a meeting, locked it with his key, and pulled the blind down over the square of glass. Then he turned around to face me with an intense stare and I had to try and explain how I had never trusted her and had my suspicions about her and didn’t want for him to be humiliated and that I was only trying to protect him. He suspected, of course, that I had sent the anonymous letter, damning Lola. I denied it with all my might and he wavered on that one, not knowing what to think I suppose. Without that, all I had done was go to Rome during my annual leave and take some photos of him and Lola on my phone: weird, but not dangerous or illegal in any way, and I could sense him thinking the same thing.

  For a moment, I sensed there may be hope, hope that we could move past this, put it down to the menopause or whatever, perhaps even see it as evidence of my excellent instincts about people and my loyalty to him. Perhaps even laugh about it one day when we were together. For a moment, it seemed like life could continue, there would be a reprieve. And then he swiped back to the previous pictures on my phone and saw the screen shots of Dr Landers’ presentation that I had posted to him.

  The look on Prof’s face as he realised the awful truth will stay with me for ever. I can’t bear to think about it any more. I want to crawl into bed, go to sleep and never wake up.

  Thursday 26 November

  I have now been officially suspended from my duties at the university pending an investigation into gross misconduct. Not because of going to Rome and following Prof and Lola, not even for finding evidence of Lola’s plagiarism, but because I didn’t present this information to Prof in a reasonable manner and because I pretended not to have anything to do with it when the evidence landed on Prof’s desk. It’s a complicated case and the university aren’t quite sure how to proceed, but they want me out, that’s for sure. They just need to find a way to fire me.

  I am in agony being away from Prof. I can’t see him or speak to him or even email him. I have written him countless letters, trying to explain why I did it, and trying to make him see that even though it has gone utterly wrong it was all done for the right reasons and that my actions turned up important information about Lola that he needed to know. But I daren’t post them, even to his home address.

  Millie and Kamal are back from Scotland, thank goodness, and Millie is being an absolute rock for me. She doesn’t know the whole story – she has no idea how I feel about Prof, for example because I never let on to anyone how much he means to me. It’s as if saying it would make it somehow untrue, or I might be laughed at or teased – and I couldn’t bear that. She knows I have been suspended though, over a plagiarism charge I made against a student, and although she has no idea about the details, she is completely on my side as I knew she would be. It’s comforting just being around Millie at such a difficult time. I find just watching her pottering round the kitchen or doing her embroidery calming and wish I could be looked after by her for ever and not have to go out and face the world any more. I miss the way we used to be, Millie and I, before she met Kamal. Every time I think of what has happened with Prof my stomach twists and I feel like I’m going to be sick. I can hardly eat a thing, no matter how hard Millie tries to tempt me. Last night, as we were sitting watching the news, she brought in a tray of fruit and cheese which she placed beside me with a look of anxious concern.

  ‘Could you just try to eat a little bit of something, darling?’ she pleaded, prompting Kamal to throw down his paper in disgust and storm out the room.

  Millie winced as he thumped up the stairs. ‘Don’t mind him, he’s just stressed out about the shop,’ she said, as she started cutting up the fruit for me. ‘He doesn’t mean to be so rude.’

  I allowed myself to be subsumed into Millie’s care and took a nibble of apple, feeling enormously grateful for her love. Lewis called round to see Crystal at about half past nine and Millie told him it was too late and she was in bed already, even though she was actually crouching behind the living-room door with her finger held against her lips.

  Saturday 28 November

  This dreadful day began with me receiving two letters. The first one I opened was an official letter from the university terminating my employment and the second was the following devastating missive from Prof:

  Dear Sylvia,

  You will have had official notification by now from the university secretariat informing you of the termination of your employment as my Personal Assistant and as an employee of the university.

  I am extremely disappointed by what has happened and feel very let down by your behaviour. I understand that in some way you may have thought you were trying to help me, but surely it is clear to you now that I do not, and never have, required help of this type from anyone from anyone. It was entirely inappropriate of you to follow me to Rome and set out on an ill-advised attempt at espionage to try to discredit Lola Maguire. For your information, results of an internal and external investigation into plagiarism indicate most strongly that Dr Landers copied Ms Maguire’s work and not the other way around. Unfortunately, Dr Landers is in the early stages of dementia and made a mistake when writing up what he mistook for his own research, when it was actually the work Lola had done for her Masters thesis. He then presented this as his own at the Rome conference, having completely forgotten the origin of the paper. As you can appreciate, Dr Landers is most distressed by all this. It is an inglorious way to end what has been a stellar career and we in the academy are regretful of the circumstances of this whole affair. I would consider an apology from you to be appropriate and I include details of Dr Landers’ postal and email addresses at the bottom of this letter.

  It is with relief that I can report that Ms Maguire is now re-registered on the PhD programme and is progressing well again with her studies. It is to her credit that she has managed to pick herself up and continue with her research and she is enjoying the full support of the department and of myself as her supervisor.

  Please note that I will not be able to provide a personal reference for any future jobs you may apply for, but do feel free to contact the Human Resources department who will be able to confirm your length of service at the university.

  May I suggest, Sylvia, that if you have not already done so, you consider seeking some professional help or counselling to support you in the coming months?

  I wish you luck with your future endeavours.

  Best wishes

  Professor Carl Lomax

  I didn’t know what to do with myself after reading Prof’s letter, so I did what I always do when I feel completely lost – I went around to see Millie. My dire luck was that she wasn’t at home. Kamal opened the door, looking really edgy and cross. I had obviously caught him at a bad time, but that still doesn’t excuse the vitriol with which he spoke to me.

  ‘What do you want now?’ he said nastily,
as if it was the tenth time I had knocked on the door that morning.

  ‘Is Millie in, or is she at the deli?’ I asked, desperate to speak to her.

  ‘Neither.’ He shook his head. ‘They’ve gone Christmas shopping. Katya is back, she’s in the deli today.’

  We stood looking at each other while I waited for him to invite me in, which he did, eventually, gracelessly, just by stepping back from the door and allowing me to walk past him into the hall. I had tears in my eyes by now and looked up at him imploringly, needing a kind word or at least some civility and he responded in the cruellest way, with the most unkind words spitting out of his mouth in a horrible whisper.

  ‘What is it you want from us, Sylvia? Eh? You skulk around on the edges of our lives, but nobody wants you here. I’m telling you, Millie is sick of you pulling her down with all your problems. Crystal can’t stand you and neither can I. Why don’t you just fuck off and leave us all alone. Get your own life, no?’

  Almost immediately my upset turned to anger. I could feel it rising from the depths of my being, all these years of hurt and deceit and bitterness, all because of him. And he had the gall to speak to me like that, as though it was my fault, as though it was I who was the interloper in Millie’s life, rather than him.

  ‘You bastard!’

  The words seethed from my mouth as he put his finger to his lips to try and quiet me, but I wouldn’t be quieted, not this time. A tirade of abuse and fury sprang forth as I told him everything I thought of him, everything I had been through, how I was alone because of him, how I was childless because of him, and how appalling it was that he just carried on as if nothing was amiss. How he had everything and I had nothing and now he even wanted to take Millie away from me too.