Free Red Joan by Jennie Rooney Page A

wooden door at the top of the stairs. Joan almost expects to see a white rabbit emerge clutching a pocket watch. She draws back the heavy bolt and the door swings open to reveal a flat, square rooftop, cornered by four decorative towers. The sunlight is dazzling in its brightness. Leo has to crouch almost double in order to get through the doorway, and by the time he has stepped outside Joan is already standing at the edge of the roof, leaning against the stone wall which marks its perimeters. Her body feels hot from the exertion, and she unbuttons the cardigan she is wearing over her blouse, and slips it off.
    Leo comes to stand next to her, and together they look out across St. John’s and into Trinity Great Court, its centrepiece fountain looking much smaller from this distance. Behind that is the Wren Library, and then the River Cam, meandering past King’s along the Backs towards Newnham. After a moment, Joan turns to Leo and she notices his eyes flick to the small spattering of freckles on her shoulder before meeting her gaze. It is a bold look, and Joan feels her skin tingle.
    â€˜There,’ he says. ‘What do you think?’
    â€˜It’s beautiful,’ she says. ‘And so quiet.’
    â€˜Yes. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’
    Joan frowns. She had not been expecting this response. ‘I didn’t think you’d approve of all this . . . ’ she pauses, gesturing about her while she searches for the right word, ‘ . . . extravagance.’
    â€˜Where did you get that idea?’
    Joan laughs. ‘Everything about you. Your thesis, those films, all the things you say, the fact that it’s not planned. It’s all higgledy-piggledy with statues and crests and—’
    Leo smiles and shakes his head. ‘But that’s not the point. Why does everyone think communism is about destruction?’ He is looking at her so intently that she can hardly breathe. ‘I don’t want to tear this down.’
    He is so close to her that she could reach out and touch his face, and a tremor runs through her body at the thought of it. ‘What do you want then?’
    Leo smiles, as if the answer is perfectly obvious. ‘I want everyone to have it.’
    He sits down and opens up his shopping bag. He takes out two plums, a hunk of bread, some cold ham, a few tomatoes and two bottles of ginger beer. Joan smiles, and sits down next to him. Already she knows that today is going to be different from every other day she has ever known. It is starting now. Life is starting now. She is having a picnic on the roof of a chapel with Leo Galich and the sky is a deep, brilliant blue.
    â€˜So,’ he says, tearing the bread in two and handing half of it to her, ‘why did you choose to read science?’
    Joan takes a swig of ginger beer and squints into the sun, considering the question. To say that she chose it because she was good at it does not seem enough. ‘Tadpoles,’ she says suddenly, and then turns to him with a smile. ‘There was a pond in the school garden where I grew up. It was always dirty and smelly but my sister and I used to catch tadpoles to keep in glass jars so we could watch them turn into frogs. I thought it was like a magic trick.’ She laughs, unsure why she is compelled to tell him this but she cannot seem to stop. She supposes it is because she wants him to know that she is different from those other Cambridge girls, just as she knows that he is different. She wants him to see
her
, as she is. ‘One day, we collected all the frogs from the pond and put them in a bucket to give them a bath. Smelling salts and rose petals and hot water from the kitchen.’
    He smiles at her as she speaks, that rare unguarded smile, and slips his hand across to rest gently on her knee. His skin has that same lemony smell of soap and tobacco that Joan remembers from the first time he touched her.
    â€˜But when we