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eyes, kissable lips and delicate nose on full display. She was leaning against a wall outside the university library, reading The Beauty Myth . She looked perfect.
    My feet began to itch. I took off my sock and gave my toes a rub.
    ‘Do you think you’ll stick it out?’ asked Alice. ‘I mean, you sound pretty stressed out.’
    I told her I didn’t know and explained the crux of my problem – teaching in the training year was nothing like teaching was now. This was For Real. The kids were depending on me to help them pass their exams. The ramifications of my being a crap teacher were terrifyingly immense.
    ‘Imagine thirty kids fail their English GCSE because of me – thirty kids who will get a rubbish job or no job at all sucked into the poverty trap. Five years later, half of them will have kids and be living off social security. Multiply that by a couple more years of me teaching, and before you know it I’ll be responsible for increasing unemployment in the UK more than any government, Conservative or Labour, since the war.’
    ‘You’re overreacting,’ said Alice. ‘You’ve got to face facts, Will. You’re a grown-up. Grown-ups have responsibilities.’
    ‘You know what I mean,’ I said, while pulling off my other sock and rubbing between the toes on my now naked foot. ‘These kids won’t know anything unless I teach it to them. What if I’m a crap teacher?’
    I sensed Alice was having problems seeing my perspective. Too tired to continue making my point, I changed discussion topics. Over the next half hour – in which time I’d put my socks back on but taken my trousers off and draped the duvet around me – Alice told me how she was working out of the Peterborough office for a month and living in a Novotel in the city centre because of a project she was overseeing. The only time I’d ever been to a hotel was when Aggi and I had saved fourteen coupons from the Daily Telegraph , which had got us a half price night at the Nottingham Holiday Inn. We stole the shampoos, shower caps and even the miniature kettle before vacating the room the next day. It had been brilliant. I was about to remark how cool it must be to live in a hotel at someone else’s expense when it occurred to me that Alice probably saw things a bit differently.
    ‘What about Bruce?’ I asked, remembering the times I’d really missed Aggi, like when she went on holiday to Austria for two weeks with her mum, or when she had her wisdom teeth out and had to stay in hospital on my twenty-first birthday. Both times I’d missed her so much I literally thought I’d die. ‘Isn’t he missing you?’
    ‘Yes, he is,’ she said sadly. ‘At least I think he is. That’s what my message on your machine was about. I think he feels threatened by the fact that things are going so well at work for me at the moment. He’s been throwing himself into his work as if he’s got something to prove to me – I don’t know – that he’s the main bread winner. As if I cared! He’s been working late most nights, even some weekends. Once this project is over I’m going to ask for a transfer to a less frantic department. Maybe then he won’t feel the need to compete and we can just be happy.’
    I got the impression that Alice was unsettled for the rest of our conversation – I wished I hadn’t reminded her of Bruce’s absence. Hiding her sadness under the guise of a merry gossip she told me about the gym she’d joined and how her friend at work, Tina, was having an affair with her supervisor, and how she and Bruce were planning to go to New York over Christmas.
    Before she finished the call she brought up the subject of my birthday.
    ‘I know you hate birthdays, Will.’
    ‘And Walkers prawn cocktail crisps . . .’
    ‘But I . . .’
    ‘And totalitarian governments . . .’
    ‘. . . really wanted to . . .’
    ‘And sticky-outty belly buttons . . .’
    ‘. . . do something . . .’
    ‘And Alfred Hitchcock