Free After the Fall by Kylie Ladd Page A

formal, regarding me quizzically when I went to shake her hand.
    “So,” she said, laughing, as if this were all some great big joke. “Have a nice life, I guess.”
    Her candor was so disarming that I had to laugh too. Then Cary joined in, and just for a second the three of us stood there, laughing together, understanding but still enjoying the artifice of it all.
    Six weeks and a honeymoon later the photos came back. Cress and I had had a great time vacationing in Malaysia on a tea plantation, and already the wedding seemed to have taken place years ago. It was almost a shock to recognize Cary’s wife, still laughing, in a group photo of Cressida’s medical friends.
    “Who’s that?” I asked, sliding the photo over to Cress, who was agonizing over what should go in the album.
    “Umm … Cary’s wife. You know, my supervisor,” she replied distractedly. “Kate, I think her name is.”
    “She seemed like fun,” I ventured.
    “Mmm, he’s lovely too. Maybe when my project is finished I’ll ask them over to dinner as a thank-you.”
    “I thought the wedding invitation was his thank-you?”
    “That’s not very personal, is it?” Cress asked. She had clearly forgotten our conversation before the big day. “And I’ve still got another six months or so to go, so I’ll want to do something then.”
    I rolled my eyes, but not so Cress could see. My short experience of marriage had already taught me that sometimes it’s just easier to hold your tongue.

CARY
•
    As a student, Cressida was a bit of a disappointment. Not to Steve, of course, who practically started panting when I told him she’d be working with us for a while. I’d also been pleased when she’d approached me for supervision on her fellowship project, though for different reasons. I remembered Cressida as a conscientious and careful medical student, and looked forward to her bringing those qualities to our research.
    It wasn’t that she was no good: far from it. Her lab work was thoughtfully designed and carried out, her reports turned in on time. In the years since I’d first attended meetings with her Cressida had developed a textbook clinical manner: concerned without being overinvolved, able to mix inquiry and empathy in equal parts. She certainly had the skills for the work; it was just that her mind was elsewhere. The timing was to blame, I guess. When I agreed to her doing her project in the department she was going out with Luke. By the time she actually started at the beginning of the new academic year they were engaged. Then came the wedding and the honeymoon and weekends spent house-hunting rather than writing. In the end, what should have taken six months dragged on for over twelve, till we were both sick to death of it. I think we published the results, though I can’t remember. Funny how important that seemed at the time.
    Actually, it bothered Steve more than it bothered me. “What is she doing?” he’d moan whenever Cressida’s weekly lit review was a day late on his desk, or a meeting had to be canceled so she could attend a dress fitting. “You’re too soft on that girl,” he told me more than once, with an irritation that I suspected was owed to pique that she was so transparently crazy about someone else than any concern for our tenure. I don’t think I even replied. For one, I enjoyed having Cressida around the place. She was smart and pretty and a welcome change after years spent hunched over microscopes with only Steve for company. And she was so darn happy that it made you smile just to see her. When we weren’t discussing genetics it was Luke, Luke, Luke. “I’ll leave you two to pick out your china patterns,” Steve would mutter in disgust, stalking out whenever conversation veered toward the conjugal. Cressida would look momentarily abashed, then carry on with an apologetic smile.
    I knew how she felt. Kate and I had been together for about six years at that stage, married for two, and listening to