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tights. ‘More frightened of us than we were of him.’
    A few years ago they would have had the surety of a cigarette to smooth the post-coital awkwardness. But these days smoking in university buildings was grounds for dismissal. Fortunately, fucking didn’t set off the sprinkler system. Murray fumbled his belt buckle into place and sank into the chair usually designated for visiting students. He lifted a first-year essay that only seconds ago had rustled beneath Rachel’s bottom and tried to smooth out the creases in its paper.
    . . . he succeeded against the odds. Though his lifestyle was deemed unacceptable by mainstream society his . . .
    The page bounced stubbornly back. Murray replaced it on the desk, weighting the bent corner with a mug. A little cold coffee slopped onto the neatly printed words.
    ‘Fuck.’ He blotted the stain with the front page of the Guardian . ‘Was he wearing a porter’s uniform?’ Murray peeled the newspaper back. A dark shadow of newsprint remained, stamped across the dutifully prepared argument. ‘Shit.’
    ‘I told you, I didn’t get a good look at him. It was dark and I was . . . slightly distracted.’
    Murray wondered if he should have carried on chasing the intruder. He had been breathing in the distinctive reek of recalcitrant students, frustrated scholars and books since he was a seventeen-year-old undergraduate. The corridors’ twists and turns were mapped on his mind. He knew all the cubbyholes and suicide steps. The lecture halls racked with seating, the illogical staircases that tricked the un­initiated but led eventually to the out-of-bounds attics from where a man could lose himself and emerge on the opposite side of the old campus. The chances of catching whoever it was were radically slimmer than the odds of looking like an out-of-breath idiot. But the part of him that imagined grabbing the peeping Tom’s collar and administering his boot to the seat of their breeks wished he’d given it a shot.
    Rachel tugged the hem of her skirt down. Usually she wore trousers. She had, he realised, very good legs.
    ‘You look nice.’
    Rachel flashed him the same bright smile that she gave to shop assistants, students, fellow lecturers, porters, her husband, anyone who crossed her path when her mind was elsewhere. He watched as she took a small mirror from her handbag. Her lipstick was hardly smudged, but she perched on the edge of his desk and reapplied it anyway. Murray was reminded of an early author photograph of Christie Graves, long legs, sharp angles and red lips. It was a good look.
    The memory of the opening door, the light shifting across Rachel’s face, returned and spoiled the knowledge that she’d dressed up for him. He measured the trajectory between their clinch and the door with his thumb and forefinger.
    ‘You don’t think it was someone from the department?’
    Rachel’s smile grew tight. She dropped the mirror back into her bag and zipped it shut.
    ‘It’s Friday evening. No one else would be in their office at this time. Most of them have something that passes for a life. Don’t worry, I imagine we made his night. No doubt he’s crouched in the gatehouse right now, reliving the memory.’
    ‘Of my white arse? I bloody hope not.’
    ‘Irresistible. Your white arse will have a starring role in that little bit of ciné film that plays behind his eyes when he goes home and rogers his tired, but pleasantly surprised, old wife for the first time in months.’
    Rachel was on his side of the desk now. Her skirt was made of some kind of shiny, silver-grey fabric, stretched taut across her hips. Murray ran a finger down her leg, feeling the satin slide of the material. She placed a hand on his, stopping its progress, and he leaned back in his chair.
    ‘So what’s the occasion?’ He wanted to keep her there a while, or maybe be with her somewhere else. Somewhere with subdued lighting, candles, soft music. What a cliché. It was Friday night and most