Free Red Joan by Jennie Rooney

possibility of iterating algorithms in daisy petals—than there is in all the love poetry in that heavy, dark-brown book which she will keep under her bed until it must be returned to the library. But still, she is a student. She is eighteen years old. The poetry is inevitable.
    She does not mention these talks with Leo to Sonya. It is not that she intends to be secretive but she is not yet ready to share them with anyone who might be able to see how much she enjoys listening to him. She can imagine Sonya’s expression if she were to let on, the sharp burst of laughter which would accompany any confession of this nature. These moments are too delicate, too precious, to withstand such an onslaught. Besides this, she could not bear the thought that Sonya might tell Leo, and that the two of them would laugh about it together, maybe even with the blonde girl in the pillbox hat whom Leo has never mentioned and whom Joan hasn’t seen since the films, but who occasionally appears in Joan’s dreams as a pretty yet menacing presence.
    Today Leo is waiting outside the science faculty when she comes out of morning lectures. ‘I was wondering if you were free for lunch?’ he asks, holding up a small shopping bag to indicate that he has brought food with him.
    Joan smiles, not wanting to appear overly delighted at the prospect, but at the same time flattered by the trouble he must have gone to. ‘I’d love to,’ she says and then pauses, glancing back at the science faculty. ‘I’ve got to be back by two though. We’ve got practicals this afternoon.’
    He nods. ‘Plenty of time.’ He turns around and starts to walk, and then looks back. ‘Come on. There’s something I’d like you to see.’
    They walk together through Market Square and then along Rose Crescent to Trinity Street. This side of town is unfamiliar to her, being home to the older, men-only colleges which Joan is only permitted to enter in the company of a man. They are grander and less welcoming than Newnham, but Leo does not allow her to linger. He marches her past the bookshop and the post office, and steers her through the gatehouse of St. John’s at the end of the street, gesturing that she should wait outside the Porters’ Lodge while he goes in to collect a large, iron key. He reappears after a few seconds, and leads her to a small door at the bottom of the chapel tower in the far corner of the cobbled courtyard. The key slots easily into the keyhole, turning the lock with a clunk, and Leo pushes the door open. ‘You first,’ he says.
    Joan steps inside. She blinks, her eyes adjusting to the dimness of the tiny room. There is a small space to stand in, and then a narrow spiral staircase leading up around a stone support. She takes a few steps upwards, past a bird’s feather and some encrusted droppings. Further up it is darker still and the staircase narrows until it is impossible to stand square on any step, and when Leo closes the door behind him she has to feel her way up the stairs until she gets into a rhythm. She hears the key turn in the lock, and the sound causes her to jump slightly, although she cannot be sure whether it is caused by the fact that Leo has invited her here on a picnic, or by the fact that she is now locked in a darkened staircase with a man she barely knows and nobody, not a single soul, knows where she is.
    There are small slits in the walls as they progress upwards, punctuating the darkness, and after climbing for several minutes Joan stops at one of these gaps to catch her breath. She peers out, seeing the spires of the chapel in the college next door now at eye level, and when she looks down she can see the modern guttering of the college roofs, hidden behind sixteenth-century turrets.
    Walking on, they pass a small ledge next to a slate roof and continue upwards, past the bell chamber and the bell-ringing mechanism until finally they come to a tiny