Free Life by Gwyneth Jones Page B

Gough; a sociology student called Ray Driscoll, who had been another male member of first year’s they all; and a girl called Marnie Choy, live wire and fun fanatic, who had answered an advertisement they put up. One night in October, when Daz was in London for the weekend, Rob Fowler came and tapped on Anna’s bedroom door. She turned him down. Sexual attraction never dies, but it was no struggle.
    She worked. She was the Biols student who attended every lecture, studied every textbook, and possessed complete, immaculate notes that she freely shared. She was the one who enjoyed the hated, obligatory statistics course. She went out dancing, she stayed up late commiserating with other people’s troubles, she had a few nights of sex with Ray when he was between serious girlfriends. A transparent envelope stood around her. It was Anna’s extended self, her containment: the great river. When Marnie and Daz, arm in arm, screeched drunken girl-power challenges in the Union Bar: We want a man! Not one of you dickless lot, a real man, we want a man!, she laughed and cheered, but she was a million miles away. There’s a growing grace and glory in remaining by myself.
    In early June, on a bright cool summer’s day, she walked out of the campus valley to visit Spence’s sun terrace. There had been more rain this year. The turf was richer, the flowers more advanced. Some of the plants were hardly recognizable in habit as the above-ground processes from the same rootstocks as last June. She spent a long while on her knees, looking, examining, making sketches in her notebook.
    She thought of Spence. In that room in Regis Passage, with the ridiculous wiring and the terrible crack in one corner, which he monitored in felt-tip, he lay beside her on the mattress that smelled of flea-powder and cum. They were both dressed; they were not being sexual. He showed her a picture of his cat, a blue-eyed, black half-Siamese called Cesf, standing up on gangling back legs to bat a catnip mouse on a string. “It’s an old password I don’t use anymore.” He missed Cesf, and worried about him. The cat was monogamous, didn’t get on with Spence’s Mom, and was reportedly pining. He missed his mother too, but didn’t carry her picture. He said, with a droll self-mocking reserve, “I can remember what she looks like.” Anna sensed something very different from the affection and mutual respect she shared with her own parents: Spence’s mother was a power over his whole life, future and past, his goddess not his government.
    She had realized, soon after the start of their idyll, that she could never, ever tell him about being “in love” with Rob Fowler. It would have been rude, like telling someone they’d been invited to dinner because your first choice of guest had canceled. Especially since it turned out he didn’t like Rob. Given the typical first-year’s emotional situation, Spence’d probably had an unrequited crush of his own, and he hadn’t said anything; but she’d felt compromised. Maybe it was because of that unease—something she needed to say, but must not—that she’d made no effort to get back in touch. He hadn’t contacted her either, which he easily could have done. Simon still heard from him.
    They had each made the same choice. It was the right ending.
    She set her sketches aside and opened a sheaf of printed lecture notes, minutely annotated. Eukaryotic Genetics: Genetic Constraints of Selection.
    At school, Anna had been thrilled by the certainty of the DNA process. It was such a trick, so satisfying and neat, the two complementary strands of bases, unzipping, acting as templates for replication: safe as the ticking of a watch. At school they let you think perfect replication was the norm—with the occasional dramatic derailment, so that new species could be born. When you got closer, you realized what happened was totally different. The process was weak, not strong. The strings of bases were continually being