The Book of You: A Novel Read Online Free

absence was not a compelling reason.
    Clarissa tried to sound sorrowful and as if something shocking had been done to her. “I thought it would only be nine days. Two weeks at most. That’s what all the stuff they sent us says, but I somehow got picked for a seven-week trial. I’m so sorry.”
    “Didn’t they give you a chance to say you couldn’t? You’re vital to this university.”
    She couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not. Not like doctors or teachers. Even they don’t get out of it. Even judges don’t. The secretary to the head of the graduate school is hardly a key worker—though of course I’m touched by your unique sense of my importance.”
    “But you didn’t answer my question.” On rare occasions Gary could muster a serious boss tone with her. “Didn’t they give you a chance to get out of it?”
    She felt no qualms about the lie. “No,” she said. She was home; the train was pulling into Bath. Her skin prickled, usually an unfailing warning that she was being watched, but she knew Rafe wasn’t in the carriage. She couldn’t see him on the platform, either. “No, they didn’t.”

Tuesday
    T HE TRAFFIC FUMES were making her eyes burn. She was walking from Bristol Temple Meads station to the court, and the roads were so wide and alike she wondered if she was lost.
    She was trying to concentrate on the route, the barely known landmarks—she was sure she remembered that purple wall to her right from yesterday—but Rafe was crowding out everything else, as usual.
    Friday, January 30, 10:00 a.m. (four days ago)
    It is my last day at work before jury service, my last day of having to avert you. On Monday I will disappear into the court building and you will not know where I am.
    I place my documents and reports on one of the fixed wooden chairs in the large lecture theater and my bag on another. I take the seat between them, hoping these small battlements will deter you from sitting beside me. Such a visual signal of my wish for space would work with anyone else. But not with you. Of course not with you. Nothing works with you.
    You are standing over me and saying “Hello, Clarissa” as you move my papers onto the floor and sit down. I’m unfairly, irrationally furious with Gary for insisting that I attend this meeting in his place. You are in the aisle seat, making escape more difficult—I’d been foolish not to see that coming.
    You lock your eyes on me, your eyeballs quivering. There is nowhere to hide from your eyes. I want to put my face in my hands, to cover myself. Your cheeks flash crimson, then white, then crimson again with the sharpness of a car’s indicators. I hate to see such clear evidence of my effect on your body.
    And your effect on mine. I am growing hot, and my chest hurts so much I fear I will stop breathing. I might faint in front of everybody, or be sick. It must be a panic attack.
    The ceiling is high. The fluorescent lights are speckled with desiccated fly corpses. Though the bulbs are far above my head, they burn into the top of my skull. Even in winter the flies survive in the building’s warm roof space. I can hear one hissing and frying, unable to escape the trap of the lamp in which it has found itself. I fear it will fall on me. But better a fly than you.
    You touch my arm, and I shrink away with as little violence as I can manage. You whisper, “You know I love your hair that way, off your neck. Your neck is so lovely, Clarissa. You did it for me, didn’t you? And the dress, too. You know how I love you in black.”
    And I just can’t bear it anymore. As if the top has blown off a pressure cooker, I jump up, abandoning my papers, tripping over your feet and legs. You take advantage—of course you do, you always do—and put your hands on my waist in a pretense of helping to balance me. I slap your fingers away, beyond caring whether I affront the Vice Chancellor, who pauses in his opening remarks as all the heads in the room turn to watch me rush out.