Emma Hammond peered into the murky air.
Vinnie materialised from the gloom, waving her arms as if to bat away the thickening fog. ‘Two days running,’ she grumbled. ‘Bloody vapers — we didn’t have to contend with all this till they made them take it outdoors.’
Vinnie was a plump Asian girl, an extrovert Mancunian who bounced from group to group; she was given to sarcasm, but her infectious sense of the absurd meant she rarely gave offence. They walked together, finding their way across campus by a kind of homing instinct, their landmarks — the stark modernity of the arts library and the prim elegance of the Georgian terrace at Abercromby Square — having vanished in the fog.
Emma felt happiness like a warm glow in her breast; she was eighteen and in her first semester at university, yet she had already made friendships she was certain would last the rest of her life. They crossed Oxford Street and took a shortcut through one of the car parks, chatting all the way. Emma was on her way to a biological sciences faculty open lecture. The guest speaker was a leading exponent of adult human stem cell research.
A half-dozen buses rumbled outside the Students’ Union Building, parked crookedly to accommodate the curve of the road. Students were piling on to them or forming untidy queues, their breath intensifying the mist.
Emma said, ‘You’re sure you won’t come?’
‘Well, let’s see . . .’ Vinnie drummed her fingers against her chin as if seriously considering the proposition. ‘Is it compulsory?’
‘No.’
‘Hm . . . Is it likely to come up on our next exam paper?’
‘No.’
‘I see. Will there be beer?’
Emma sighed. ‘No, Vinnie, no free beer.’
‘Then I’m sure.’
‘Vinnie, it’s Michael Clarke — it’s the scientific equivalent of Adele visiting Mountford Hall for an “unplugged” session.’
Vinnie put her arm around Emma. ‘Here’s the thing: Adele hasn’t toured since 2017, so the chances of her fetching up at Liverpool Students’ Union are minus ten to the power of a trillion. However, we are agreed — she is the definition of cool. Michael Clarke, god among the geeks though he may be, is not — and can never be — cool. Anyway, what kind of unplugged session could it be without beer?’
Emma played the injured party, detaching herself with haughty disdain, taking Vinnie’s hand by the index finger and brushing it from her like a troublesome fly. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’
‘Um . . . I think I do.’
Emma grinned and hugged her friend. ‘Later, philistine.’
* * *
The lecture was perfect. It was held in the Hartley Building, in a small, Victorian lecture theatre with narrow bench seats and acres of polished wood, newly waxed and gleaming. Emma came out into the foggy night, her head full of technical jargon, buzzing with the dizzying notion that science would soon be capable of repairing damaged neurologies — of literally making the lame walk and the deaf hear.
The others quickly dispersed, heading left for London Road or vanishing like sprites into the murk. Alone, in the dark, she felt almost that the fog shrouding the buildings and deadening the thrum of traffic was laid on for her. This was a night she was supposed to remember always — a pivotal moment that would shape the rest of her life.
She would dodge Vinnie and the others for another half hour when she got back to halls, so that she could write up the alchemy of words while their impression was strong in her mind: blastocyst, pluripotent, master regulators, therapeutic cloning, and the sweet, simple, most powerful word of all: cure. Her fascination with the subject owed a lot to the slow fall into silence she had seen in her Nanna Hammond. She was only eight when her quick, clever, uncompromising paternal grandmother died of Parkinson’s disease.
Emma rounded the corner near the Quadrangle, just behind the Victoria Building with its ornate clock tower, where cars still jostled to park in the narrow space between the huddled buildings and the small patch of green. This was the oldest part of the university and, as the traffic noise faded still further to a dull swish, it was possible to imagine herself back in the nineteenth century, when the place was first opened, its redbrick façade and gleaming clock a new landmark and a symbol of prosperity and hope for the city.
The lowing of foghorns on the Mersey a mile distant, and the rapid clip-clip of her boot heels on the pavement thrilled her so that she wanted to hug herself with secret joy. She almost held her breath, waiting for something to happen — something wonderful and mysterious and exciting.
At the quad, she edged past a couple of cars parked nose to tail and made for the Victoria Building where an archway led through to the main road. If she was lucky, the tall iron gates would be unlocked and she would save the couple of minutes she needed to catch the next shuttle bus to the halls of residence. Ten yards from the opening, the archway remained invisible, though she could hear the traffic noise on Brownlow Hill echoing as though through a tunnel, and she thought that the dense vapour glowed a more lurid orange in that direction.
A creak-thud, creak-thud from up ahead sent a trickle of anxiety down her spine. A dark form, huge, troll-like, loomed in the curve of the archway. Emma froze, the hairs rising on her arms and the back of her neck. Light chased right to left and the shadow seemed to slide forward, expanding, flowing up and over the concavity of the arch.
All her instincts told her to run — run fast and not look back.
Then the shadow seemed to shrink and took human form. It was a man on crutches, the monstrousness of his shadow caused by the combined magnifying effects of tiny water droplets in the air and the headlamps of a passing vehicle. Emma choked back a laugh of relief.
He swung a couple more steps, his head down, panting, concentrating on the uneven surface ahead. The creak of his crutches and thud of his plaster cast set up a weary rhythm.
Emma moved left to let him pass, but he glanced up, startled, tried to manoeuvre around her, misjudged the direction, and dropped the books clamped under his right arm. They apologised simultaneously, accepted blame, and reached for the books. Emma, unencumbered by crutches, was more agile and got there before him.
‘I’m not usually such a klutz.’ He spoke softly, smiling at her. ‘Which is probably hard to believe, what with the broken leg as evidence and all.’
Was he flirting? He was bit old — maybe mid-twenties? But he had a nice smile and he wasn’t bad-looking, either — what she could see of him in the fog, with his beanie hat pulled down over his brow and the English Soc. scarf wrapped twice around his neck.
‘Well, I’d better . . .’ She jerked her head, indicating the direction he had just come from, and offered him the bundle of texts.
‘Oh! Right. Sorry.’ Flustered, he made space under one arm for the books and she wedged them back in place. ‘It’s really very good of you.’
She felt a pang of guilt at leaving him to struggle. But the fog was getting worse and if she missed this bus, she’d have to wait in the freezing cold for twenty minutes or more.
A few steps later, she heard a flutter of pages, followed by three thuds in quick succession, and he cursed mildly. He really was rather sweet — ‘Blast it,’ indeed! Even her dad used stronger language than that.