Free Unseen Things Above by Catherine Fox Page A

having the girls dumped on him at two hours’ notice by their mother. He’s still technically ‘the bishop’s chaplain’ during the interregnum, but the next bishop will naturally want to make his own appointment. Martin has an important interview tomorrow, and he ought to be preparing his PowerPoint, not going to the zoo. He’s trying not to take his frustration out on the girls, but . Clearly the girls’ mother is incapable of setting them proper boundaries.
    It’s Wednesday. Dr Rossiter is invigilating an exam. 11.02. Rain drums on the roof of the Luscombe sports hall. Most of the desks are empty. Just the two exams, history and politics. After a brief spike of panic, when 9.25 came and the entire politics cohort had failed to appear for their 9.30 exam (discovered outside, smoking), the morning has passed without incident. They’re in the home straight now. The other invigilators prowl the rows. She suspects them of playing Pac-Man.
    11.03. Jane yawns. She’d sneak her phone out and read the news, but it’s all too depressing. French far right. English far right. The Resistible Rise of Nigel Farage. Forty years from now, will they be setting exam questions on him? God, I hope not. She decides to while away the last 27 minutes pretending she’s casting director for a Lord of the Rings remake. She divides the students into orcs, hobbits and elves. She will take the role of Gandalf herself. Then she can shout, ‘YOU! SHALL! NOT! PASS!’ into the microphone at the end of the exam. This may well prove true of the ones who left an hour early.
    She looks at the electronic clock again. 11.06. Through a slice of reinforced window she can see someone running on a treadmill in the gym. Someone else does press-ups. Other worlds. Still 11.06. Will this never end? She stares at the green swags of net hanging from ceiling to floor. The rain rains. She thinks of all the exam halls she has sat in. School, university. The grinding tedium of revision, the cliff falls of dread. And then the final day of Finals. Walking out and thinking: That’s it. I will never sit another exam again, ever. From now on, freedom!
    Yeah, right.
    11.07.
    Ring him, you idiot. Today. The minute you get out of here, just ring him and say Yes . Don’t waste the rest of your life. You know now that the whole New Zealand thing was just a pipe dream. Not legally valid back in the UK. (Text from Dom: ‘Woman’s Hour, now. Civil Unions.’) At least we didn’t waste the airfare, eh?
    But he hasn’t been in touch. Is he trying to outwait her? Or was it actually over? Final. Him walking out and thinking, I will never see her again, ever. From now on, freedom from the nightmare of Jane Rossiter and her fucking feminist conscience.
    No, she can’t ring him. Wouldn’t he have been in touch by now if he was still interested?
    Thursday is Ascension Day. But it is half term. There are no overexcited choristers up on the tower first thing. No wafts of incense or choral praises sung seraphic-wise; just said services. Elsewhere in secular Lindfordshire, who would even know to hail this festival day? It comes and goes in Britain like Labour Day, Waitangi Day. At dawn in the silent cathedral a robin sings. A pair got in through a tiny broken pane last month and built a nest behind the high altar. Sometimes the male perches on the marble pinnacle of the altar screen and carols with the choristers, adds his ornamentations to the Tallis setting. This Ascension morn, rain at the windows, and his sweet thread of song echoes round pillar and vault. The world sleeps, but God is gone up with a merry noise.
    All week long the local members of the CNC brood over the long longlist. They will meet soon to whittle it down to the names they want to see mandated on to the long list, from which a shortlist of three or four names will be chosen for interview. Who should they choose from this list? Marion