Free The Queen's Cipher by David Taylor

in the picture is forty. She is looking directly at the camera but her head is tilted to reveal her best profile. The gaze is steady, the eyes serious but not yet sad. She seems to be waiting for something to happen in her grainy, black and white world. The photographer’s artfully placed lights emphasise the height of her cheekbones and the width of her mouth. Ten years had gone by since Dame Julia Walker-Roberts posed for the picture that appeared on the back cover of her award-winning book, By the Dim Light of Nature . The book was still a classic and Blackwell’s continued to stock it for Oxford’s undergraduate intake.
    Julia returned the hardback copy to the pine bookcase, keeping it as far away from the Book of the Month as possible. She didn’t want to share even the same shelf with Milton Cleaver’s latest work. Copies of Shakespeare without Question seemed to be everywhere. The best thing to be said for the ‘Shakespeare Criticism’ section was its proximity to the coffee shop and those tempting little pastries she really shouldn’t touch.
    In search of an antidote for hunger, she wandered downstairs to ‘Modern Fiction’ and picked up a book of Martin Amis essays. She was soon laughing aloud. In reviewing Michael Crichton’s lame follow-up to Jurassic Park , Amis had written about the literary jungle. ‘Out there, beyond the foliage, you could see herds of clichés, roaming free.’ How very typical. She remembered an old don at Exeter College complaining about Amis’ flashy, meretricious prose and saying he should never have been awarded a Congratulatory First. Julia had disagreed. Martin had a truly original mind and there weren’t many of those around. Julia smiled one of those thin, cleverer-than-thou smiles her peers found so disconcerting.
    Moving towards the ground floor entrance, she caught sight of a display table devoted to a Victorian sex guide and Melvin Bragg’s best-seller, The Adventure of English . She flicked through Bragg’s pages. The book’s intellectual firepower was obvious but she was suspicious of it. There was something about books based on television series that made her uncomfortable. Michael Wood’s In Search of Shakespeare had been particularly annoying, a soufflé of ideas suitable for peak-time viewing. Although never invited to be a TV presenter, Julia felt sure she would have turned down the opportunity. For all its administrative irritations and political backbiting the cloistered life of Oxford was infinitely preferable to the gutter of public recognition and commercial reward.
    Leaving Blackwell’s shop she walked out into the bright sunlight. The Broad appeared to be full of tourists and bicycles. As a northern girl with a sheltered upbringing, Oxford had come as a surprise. Instead of dreaming spires she discovered a bustling, vibrant city that wore its history lightly. The university she had always loved. With its pervasive atmosphere of pure learning and untarnished scholarship, it had become her sanctuary; a magical place where her wish for harmony and organisation could be fully satisfied.
    Julia checked her reflection in a shop window.  She had opted for a black suit and white blouse and softened her hairstyle to make herself look younger. She knew Sebastian Christie would be waiting outside the Randolph Hotel and that, on catching sight of him, her stomach would churn.
    Sure enough, he was standing under the glass and wrought iron awning as if uncertain of his whereabouts: the body less muscular, the fair hair thinner now. But the smile hadn’t changed.
    “Julia,” he said, “you’re looking well.” That soft Irish lilt.
    The memories flooded back. Sebastian of the gentle gaze and rough student sweaters; Sebastian the Brasenose athlete bending his back in the Isis boat; Sebastian the secret lover to be hidden in her college bed at night: Sebastian, thirty years later, bowing his head and smiling a seductive welcome. He was still the boy she had