My Oxford Year

I want to scream, but to do that I’d have to be able to breathe, to draw oxygen into my lungs. Words tumble out instead. “Oliver’s dead.”

“Dreadful, isn’t it?” she replies, as if I were merely stating a fact, not asking a question.

Reeling, I barely notice Sophie stagger to the sink, turn on the dingy faucet, and splash cold water on her face.

I excuse myself from the ladies’ room, all calm serenity. The calm of shock. The calm of betrayal. The calm before the storm.

One thought breaks through this calm, the first darkening cloud on the horizon, the telltale electricity that lifts the hair on your arms.

Jamie’s soft, pleading, moonlit voice in our set-adrift punt:

I don’t want to hurt you.

Chapter 17

No other man

Can know a man

Such as this.

For a woman knows a man

In ways a man

Knows not exist.

Ay, she knows her man,

Such as he is.

Unknown

The first campaign I ever worked on was for a city council seat in Nowhere, Virginia. I did it for the experience. I’d drive down there in the early evenings of my freshman year, knock on doors during the dinner hour, sleep in my car, then canvass the gas stations and bank parking lots in the prework hours, before driving back to D.C. for my lunchtime classes. I was an animal. I created inventive campaign literature, I engaged constituents who’d never been engaged before, I ate endless amounts of barbecue, and I paid for it out of my own pocket. I did everything. Everything but vet the candidate.

Turns out, he was a pedophile. And a meth addict.

I felt horrible. Horrible about what I’d nearly done. But what really stuck in my craw as I took that final drive back to campus, what I could not for the life of me understand, was this:

Why would he put himself in this position to begin with?

If you have a secret (or secrets, in this case), why run for public office? Why open yourself up to the scrutiny of others? Why set yourself up to disappoint those closest to you?

Did he want to get caught?

Fifteen minutes after leaving Sophie in the filthy bathroom, I’m standing at Jamie’s door, sopping wet and no longer calm. That vanished when I turned off Banbury Road onto Norham Gardens, my wet clothes chafing with every step, the wind wrapping my hair around my face and throat like clingy fingers. In its place, single-minded, near-homicidal rage.

We were better than this, Jamie and I. We weren’t much, maybe, but we weren’t this. This cliché. This statistic. This sadly predictable inevitability. As Jamie had said in our first tute, “We’re the clever ones. We’re Oxonians.”

This is not the way the clever ones end.

I don’t knock on his door. I don’t ring the bell. I feel entitled to shatter his sense of safety the way he’s shattered mine. So I reach for the doorknob. Surprisingly, it turns in my hand, as if this is all preordained.

I push the door open and stride in, making a left out of the foyer and into the drawing room, following the low hum of voices. Male and female. Cecelia? I stop under the archway and stare at the tableau before me.

Jamie sits in a chair. Shirtless. He gazes up at a girl. In a nurse’s outfit, of all clichés. Holding Jamie’s hand.

Both Jamie and Nursie jump and turn to me.

“Ella,” Jamie breathes, a compendium of emotions crossing his face in the space of a second.

The girl drops Jamie’s hand, holding some kind of tubing in her own, and takes a step toward me. “Miss, I’m sorry, Mr. Davenport isn’t to be disturbed at present.”

“Stephanie,” Jamie says lowly. “It’s all right.” The strain in his voice, its airy thinness, prompts me to take a closer look at him. I haven’t seen him in almost a week. He seems altered somehow. I take a curious step toward him as Nursie steps off to the side. Her move reveals something else in the room, something previously blocked from my view.

An IV stand.

I look more closely at the nurse and realize the outfit she’s wearing isn’t remotely sexy. I caught the stethoscope around her neck and her little white dress with black piping, but I didn’t notice the demure length, the industrial-strength material, the sensible square-toed sneakers.

I focus back on Jamie. “What is going on?”

“You shouldn’t have—”

“What the hell is going on?!” I start to shake, rain flicking off me with each tremor. My heart goes from zero to sixty in a single beat, so loud I’m sure he can hear it across the room.

For the first time since we met, I know we both wish we were looking at someone else.

“Dammit!” Jamie barks, loud enough that the nurse moves back toward him, placating hand outstretched, trying to calm him. “This isn’t what I wanted—”

I cut him off again. “I thought we both wanted honesty! Remember?”

Jamie swallows, looking like all the blood has left his body. “God, Ella, this is not the time. Please just leave.”

“Leave?! You don’t think you owe me—”

“Ella—”

“You know what?” I shout. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care anymore—”

A roar starts in the back of Jamie’s throat and barrels out of him like a freight train from a tunnel: “Get out!”

This silences me. I’ve never heard him yell before. It scares me. I’ve never been scared of Jamie. Silently, reeling, I turn and walk out of the drawing room.

I can hear Jamie’s groan from all the way in the foyer. “Come back! Ella, I’m sorry, wait!”

Too late.

I slam the door on my way out, rattling the entire house behind me.

Chapter 18

Sweet, never weep for what cannot be,

For this God has not given.

If the merest dream of love were true

Then, sweet, we should be in heaven,

And this is only earth, my dear,

Where true love is not given.

Elizabeth Rossetti (née Siddal), “Dead Love,” 1899

I rush down the front steps, but stop at the bottom, feeling completely lost, as if I slipped into another universe and found myself on this rainy sidewalk. Do I go left or right? Or up or down?

The door opens behind me.

“Ella, please, I’m sorry, stop.”

I hear his panting, strained voice, but it has no effect. I’m still trying to find my way out of this black hole.

“Ella, please, you must allow me to explain.”

My anger spikes again and brings me present. I spin around to face him. “Oh, must I?!”

“All I ask is that—” He stops talking. He lists into the doorjamb. He’s pale, shaky. He attempts to play it off, righting himself, pointing into the house. “I’ll put the kettle on, yeah?”

“I don’t want tea, Jamie!”

“Might I offer you something a bit stronger?”

I fold my arms. “An explanation. Offer me that.”

His eyes are gentle and weary, his face long and drained. I can’t stop looking at him. He’s morphed in a week, but I don’t know how exactly. Is it just because I’m seeing the person he actually is, not the person I thought he was? Or is there something else?

“All right.” He takes a shallow breath, moves away from the door, and takes a deliberate step down the stairs. “I’m in the midst of a rather serious medical circumstance. It’s—”

“You know who isn’t in the midst of a rather serious medical circumstance? Your brother. Your dead brother.” I bite back a cringe. That came out more callous than I intended.