Free Higher Ed by Tessa McWatt Page B

Peeking over the menu she sees that Patricia is smiling, that Patricia has enjoyed Francine’s defiance, and now, oh shit, she’s really done it now.

    The cup lights that line the balconies—their shimmering make the Royal Opera House appear to be on the verge of being beamedup. And it smells of … what? Nina Ricci, that’s it. She has to hold her nose, but a little cough comes, just beneath the soft music, an aria not a tune, into the second half of
Rigoletto
. She has been struggling to stick with it and has been lulled along by the arias she recognized from Bugs Bunny cartoons, and by her memories of working on the high school production of
Oklahoma
, doing costume and makeup, sewing petticoats and bonnets, and going home singing about how the cowboys and the farmers should be friends and the elephant-eye height of the corn.
    But she’s sleepy. Her eyes are sliding shut. Okla, Okla, homa, homa … O.K.L.A.H.O.M.A. She rubs her eyes, keeps her eyebrows raised.
    When she jolts awake it’s the hand she feels first—Patricia’s on her arm—but then she realizes that her head has dropped in Patricia’s general direction, looking to be patted. Straightening up, she flushes, sweat welling like tears, and the baritone is singing like he is crying too. Patricia’s face is fixed in concentration. On what? The words? Does she know Italian? The notes are sad. Patricia glances over, gives a little smile and rubs Francine’s forearm just before Francine moves it away.
    The next day at work, and all that week, Francine makes tea in her office and brings parcels of protein—tuna, ham, even roast beef—for lunch so that she doesn’t have to appear at the Starbucks in the atrium or the Costa’s in the Watson building. She doesn’t answer her phone when she sees Patricia’s number come up on the screen, and when Patricia leaves a voicemail message wondering how she is, Francine writes a polite text back telling her that she’s incredibly busy and that all the work is keeping her mind off troubling things. She doesn’t tell Patricia that itactually felt good to be tilted towards her at the opera or that she has found out that the man who killed Dario—Rajit Mahadeo—is a fifty-five-year-old night shift Quality manager at Kandhu Ltd., supplier of branded and own-labelled snack food to major UK retail centres. Rajit Mahadeo lives in Harlesden with his wife, mother-in-law, and four children aged between ten and nineteen. He was released on bail the night of the accident, having been charged with dangerous driving causing death.
    The charge continues to be the disconcerting fact in the case. She saw no dangerous driving from the red sedan on that night. The others must have seen something more terrible. She should have stayed longer. Slumped over his steering wheel in tears, Rajit had not been dangerous in any way.
    It could have been her.

OLIVIA
    Olivia, you make heart singing. Nasar
    He’s probably in the queue. That’s well-dred. Has he seen her? She looks behind her but sees the wheelie bloke in his Paralympic vehicle, whose name she knows for sure is Christopher. Who the fuck is Nasar? She throws the phone into her satchel. She wouldn’t get in that queue in any case; she can get water from the tap in the caff and pick up a regular coffee there too. It’s hard to keep her eyes open on account of how much reading she did last night so that when her tutor, Stan, looks at her and asks which EU statutes apply to jurisdiction and immunity in international law, she’ll have something to say. But she’s done with answering people’s questions, really. All those answers have exposed her, and Nasar might be a phony name for Clive or Richard or Amir, trying to humiliate her. She’s answered enough questions for a whole degree, and all it’s given her is—what? No, what she needs now is continue her boycott of Costa and Starbucks, get a first on her dissertation project, and find a way to persuade Robin about her