Oxford
The same day

Ben surfaced slowly from a murky sleep filled with threatening dreams, and his mind drifted back into focus. He remembered now. He was in his new flat. Oxford was hardly a strange city to him, but it felt weird actually to be living here again after so many years. He wouldn’t be home in Ireland until December.

Fighting away the numbing torpor that made him want to crawl back deep under the covers, he kicked his legs out of the bed. He shrugged on a tracksuit top, walked through to the living room, stepped over the mess of half-unpacked luggage that was in there and headed for the kitchen. The flat was tucked into a secluded block of apartments in the quiet northern end of the city. It felt modern and compact, so different from the rambling old seaside house in Ireland, with its stone floors and draughty fireplaces.

He listened to the twitter of birds and the distant traffic rumble as he made some coffee. No milk, no sugar, nothing to eat. He left the radio off. He wasn’t interested in whatever might be happening in the world. He sat for a while at the small table in his kitchen, the coffee cup hot between his hands, emptying his mind, trying not to think about things. Most of all, trying not to think about the two bottles of ten-year-old Laphroaig in his suitcase – and how easy it would be to walk over there and open one of them. Too easy. He knew he’d get there in a moment of weakness, when the demons came. But this wasn’t it.

At three minutes to eight he stood up, walked back to the living room and found the fabric Tesco shopping bag he’d left on one of the armchairs the night before. He picked up the heavy bag, carried it across the room and dumped the contents out across his desk. Books spilled everywhere.

There were over twenty theology textbooks in the heap, and he’d set himself the task of reading them all in the next few days. Acres of Hebrew and Latin to pore over. Thousands of pages of abstruse philosophy. Aristotle. Spinoza. Wittgenstein. Stacks of essays and interpretations of Bible scripture. It was a mountain of work, and he relished the prospect. It would keep his mind occupied and get him in training for when term began in October. Nineteen years was a long time to catch up on.

He worked for six straight hours, stretched and stood up and then headed for the tiny bathroom. After a quick shower he pulled on a pair of jeans and a white cotton shirt, and ate a stale tuna sandwich that he’d bought at a filling station on the M40 the day before. Sometime after two he left the flat and did the half-hour walk into the heart of the city in twenty minutes. He headed straight towards the Bodleian, the University’s grandest and oldest library, just off the city centre.

The sun was beating down strongly. As he walked, he took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder.

That was the moment, strolling through the old city under the clear blue sky, when it hit him.

What is this feeling?

He stopped. It was the strangest thing.

I’m just a normal person. I’m a student about to start college, walking to the library. That’s all I am.

Suddenly, and for just one wonderful instant, it all seemed possible. That he could live the simple life he’d dreamed about, far away from the violence and ugliness he’d been immersed in for what seemed like an eternity. That he could be happy again one day, that the pain would come to an end.

It was just a taste of that happiness, a simple taste of normality and freedom and the promise of some kind of life again. He knew there would be more bad days ahead – days when he didn’t even want to go on living. But here, now, for the first time in months, he could feel the sun on his face and he was thankful to be alive. Maybe the worst of the grief was over. Maybe he was coming through. Maybe he was going to be OK.

It was what she would have wanted, he thought. He saw her face in his mind, and felt the loss and guilt stab deep inside him. He wanted to reach out and touch her. Then she smiled, and it made him want to cry but smile too.

Oh, Leigh. I’m so sorry for what happened.

I know, her distant voice replied in his mind.

He was still smiling sadly to himself as he walked through the stone archways of the Bodleian. The main reading rooms smelled of old leather and burnished wood. He approached the desk and showed his card to the librarian.

Twenty years before, the women behind the desk had been notorious battleaxes with intimidating stares that had frightened most of the students. He’d been idly wondering whether he was going to find them still here, greyer, fatter, and even more formidable.

The librarian flashed a smile at him. She was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with sandy curls tied up loosely in a ponytail, little wisps hanging down and framing her face. It was a pretty face, open and natural. She glanced twice at his name on the card, and smiled again. He requested the book he was after, and she told him in a low voice that it would have to be fetched up from the bowels of the library.

He thanked her, and spent the next half-hour flipping through periodicals in a booth in the reading-room across from the main desk. Every so often, he was aware that the librarian was glancing over at him. Then another member of staff brought him the book he’d come to read, and he didn’t see her again.

It was late afternoon by the time he left the library. The heat and sweat of the bustling city centre was a strong contrast to the cool silence of the Bodleian reading rooms. He filled his lungs with the smell of the old city.

‘Well, I’m back,’ he said quietly to himself.