An Experiment in Love: A Novel

bring anyone back, does she?’

‘Not that I know. Of course, I’ve had weekends away.’

‘You’ve never seen her with anybody, have you, Carmel?’

‘No.’ I fell silent, cherishing my whisky, trying to imagine Karina and her beau – any possible beau – running the gauntlet of the signing-in system. Karina just wouldn’t go for it, I felt. If she wanted to bring a boy in, and anybody tried to stop her, she’d square up and curl her lip and then – BIFF!!! – that would be the warden laid out, blood springing from her nose in fountains. I said faintly, ‘I suppose she could have met someone outside.’

Julia began to laugh. She fell back on her bed and kicked her legs; this was extravagance, I felt. ‘Carmel, you’re a riot,’ she said. ‘Outside? In a park, you mean? You think she did it in a shelter, or under a bush?’

‘Not that sort of outside,’ I said severely. ‘I mean out of here, somebody else, not even a student. Honestly, Jule, this is no laughing matter.’

I felt a thrill of fear.

Julia wiped her eyes. ‘I find it so.’

That was a long night. I had to catch up on what I’d missed, but the whisky had flown straight to my head and it was hard to keep awake. I read the case of Thomas v. Bradbury (1906) in which an author sued a malicious book reviewer, and won. I rubbed my eyes and adjusted the desk lamp to cast a better light. Julia snored discreetly behind me, the covers flung back and one arm flopping out of bed.

Next I read the case of Carlill v. Carbolic Smokeball Co. (1883). This was a case of a quack remedy, backed up by ritzy claims: the smoke ball claimed to prevent influenza and to cure coughs, colds, asthma, croup, neuralgia and a mysterious condition called throat deafness. ‘Oh, and snoring,’ I said out loud. ‘Cures snoring, within a week.’ It occurred to me that I hadn’t been down to dinner that evening. No particular reason, I’d just been immersed in my work; when Julia said, ‘Are you coming?’ I’d waved her to go on ahead.

The heating was off; I rubbed my upper arms, and groped for my cardigan. The travelling alarm showed three o’clock. Thoughts of Karina kept sliding into my head. How pathetic if we’d all been so absorbed in Sue – and let’s face it, if I’d been so self-absorbed – that we had missed, or simply misinterpreted, the fact that Karina was swelling before our eyes . . . But no. Don’t be frightened, I said to myself, it’s just the macaroni, just the macaroni and the powdered soup and gristle pies and ogres’ penises. It’s the sheer quantity of food ingested that makes her get bigger and bigger.

I tried to imagine Karina in a man’s arms: a romantic encounter, a lace pillow, an orchid. I could imagine only the Victoria bus station. It was engraved on my mind, the day long ago when I’d seen her on the way home from school, smoking with a crowd of boys. I knew – I’d known for years – that Karina had another life, one hidden from me. I just didn’t understand the nature of it, and she didn’t mean me to.

Now: I ran my fingers through my short hair, I tugged it hard to make myself concentrate. The Smoke Ball Co. offered a reward of one hundred pounds to anyone who contracted influenza after using their product. It claimed that one smoke ball would last a family for months; it produced testimonials. The Bishop of London said the invention had benefited him greatly. The Duke of Portland wrote that he found it most efficacious. Lady Mostyn said she would have pleasure in recommending it to her friends.

I was hungry; it could not be ignored. I had to wait a moment to place the sensation, it was so unfamiliar. When I thought about it, I couldn’t remember eating a meal since the day of Niall and the roast-lamb dinner; not positively. I must have done, of course; consumed toast, the odd yoghurt, an egg here and there, a bar of chocolate. But if you asked me what I ate yesterday, or the day before – I had no idea. I thought, I could go downstairs and read the menu by the warden’s office; that would give me a clue.

I groped in my bedside cupboard, to see if by chance there was a forgotten half-packet of biscuits. Nothing: there were crumbs, that’s all, grit under my fingers. I tiptoed across the room to look in Julia’s cupboard. There was an orange, a luminous disc in the darkness. She would not mind my taking this, I thought. After all, she knows I have to sit up and work all night. I dug my fingers into its skin, and the pulp gave beneath them, and the juice ran; I licked it from my fingertips. Mrs Carlill used the smoke ball, but went down with flu just the same. She sued the company for the hundred pounds.

I noticed that my heart was beating very fast: a skipping rhythm. My chest felt tight: perhaps because I was trying to imagine the smoke ball, work out what kind of thing it could be. Some juice dripped on to my file paper. I will talk to Karina tomorrow, I thought. I will go to her room and be friendly, we will sit down and chat, I will have the opportunity to look at her closely and if there’s anything she wants to tell me she’ll have the chance. After all, I am her oldest friend.

Dawn came. I could sense rather than hear or smell the preparations for breakfast going on below. I shifted in my chair; my legs were stiff, and I had the beginnings of a headache. The whisky, I thought; I’m not used to it. My desk lamp still burnt feebly. I heard Julia stir. I turned, stood up shakily, and saw myself in the mirror that hung beneath Mrs Webster’s shelf; I was narrow, a bar of darkness, a shade.

Julia sat up, yawning. ‘Is this Wednesday?’ she asked. Our faces looked bruised, half in shadow and half in weary light.

I had three tutorials that morning. Getting from floor to floor seemed more difficult than usual, and crossing the narrow street from building to building. At one o’clock I sat in one of the coffee bars over a cup of weak tea and a roll filled with grated cheese. The first oily filament of cheese on my tongue, my heart began to skip again; I put the roll back on my plate. An odd thing had happened that morning. My tutor asked me a question to which I knew the answer – but when I opened my mouth to reply, something completely different came out.

My tutor gave me an impatient smile. ‘No, no, no . . . hardly Hartley v. Ponsonby. That is the case of 1857, where a sailor obtained remuneration in excess of the terms of his contract because nineteen persons of thirty-six had deserted, leaving only some four or five able seamen. No: I was adverting rather to Hadley v. Baxendale. Late delivery of replacement crankshaft for a mill, remember? Your very diligence is defeating you, Miss McBain. You look exhausted. Shall we pass on?’

It must be throat deafness, I thought. What might it be like to inhale a smoke ball . . . perhaps some mixture of disinfectant and steam – my tutor’s face altered slightly, slipped out of focus as if its planes had slid and subtly realigned themselves. I blinked. His face returned to normal. Another student was answering the question.

And now – it was another odd thing – I was not convinced that the canteen table was quite solid. When I touched its surface, it felt like last night’s orange pulp beneath my fingers: sticky of course, but also yielding. I stood up. I’d better get back to Tonbridge Hall, I thought; I knew that on a Wednesday Karina was home early.

I can dash back to the library later, I said to myself. Perhaps it would be better to miss dinner, as eating didn’t seem to suit me. I drank off the dregs of the weak tea; it was a comfort.

My walk home then became a journey; not just a trek, but a voyage full of surprises. As soon as I got out into the street I saw that