Cambridge University, March 1985
Robert Ashton closed his copy of The Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 and stood up from the desk. He felt a fierce thirst, but ignored the tall, narrow glass of water that stood on the corner of the table, next to a pile of textbooks and papers. A dull pain was building slowly behind his eyes. It mingled with the numbness that he still felt after all these months.
A pale shaft of sunlight struggled through the curtains, illuminating a small patch of the worn rug on the floor. Outside was a beautiful spring day: England as it was supposed to be, bright, fresh, almost warm in the sun. Laughter rose from the courtyard outside.
Room 12 was situated on the third floor of Darwin Hall, one of the halls of residence for undergraduate students at Cambridge University. It was basically a large, dark space that Ashton shared with another student, a French waster called Nicolas who had already left for Easter even though there were still ten days until the end of term. That suited Robert just fine, as he liked having the place to himself. Reaching across the table, he picked up the glass of water and stepped cautiously into the middle of the room, careful to avoid stepping on any of the books strewn across the floor. Having picked his spot, he gazed up at the oversized mirror that had been placed above the fireplace. His head cocked to one side, like a concerned fawn, he contemplated a face that he no longer recognised. Then, slowly, deliberately, he threw the glass into his reflection, smashing it to pieces. His heart racing, he stood there for a second, concentrating hard, making sure that the image was gone. After a moment, he realised that his cheek was stinging. Carefully, he extracted a small shard of glass from just below his left eye and dropped it in the fireplace, before wiping away the smallest drop of blood.
From down the hall, he could hear the strains of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 coming from the room of a seriously disturbed German theology student, who had been playing the same music almost non-stop since September. Turning back to the desk, Ashton extracted three envelopes from under his pile of books and placed them in a row, aligning their edges carefully with those of the table. The brown A4 manila envelope addressed to Professor Box contained his essay on the causes of World War One. It was a day late – the first time he had ever missed a deadline – but, still, he knew it was a good effort, probably deserving of an A, or an A – at the very least. A stickler for deadlines, Box would doubtless even refuse to look at it, but Ashton had finished it, so he might as well send it.
The other two envelopes were smaller, just big enough to contain a couple of the Howard Hodgkin postcards he had bought at the Fitzwilliam Museum a week before. The first envelope, containing an image of Hodgkin’s painting entitled Bleeding, was addressed to his shrink, a nervous woman who seemed even more disturbed about what had happened to him than he was himself. The envelope containing the second card, Mourning, was simply addressed to ‘Suzy’. Both cards had been left blank, and both were apologies of a sort. Both, he knew, were pitifully inadequate, not that he cared. They could decipher them or not.
Satisfied that everything was finally in place, Robert Ashton stepped through some curtains and opened the door that led on to the small balcony overlooking the quadrangle. He was wearing just a thin black T-shirt the chill in the air made him shiver. The sun was rapidly sinking in the sky, and already beginning to disappear behind the buildings on the far side of the quadrangle. Squinting, he held up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun’s glare. The stone parapet in front of him was about four feet high and maybe ten inches wide. Yawning, he pulled himself up on to it and stood shakily surveying his domain. Forty feet below, people were going about their business, still heading to and from lectures. In the middle of the square was a large oak tree. Near the tree, a fantastically pretty girl was sitting on the grass, lapping up the attention she was getting from two would-be suitors competing for her attention.
For what seemed like an eternity, Ashton waited for the girl to look up and catch his eye. When she finally did so, he pulled back his shoulders and held his arms outstretched. Overwhelmed by a huge sense of relief, he listened to her scream of alarm fade away on the breeze.
Then he stepped off the wall and into space.