Only Darkness Read Free Page B

her, and tried to pin back a lock of hair that had freed itself from its confinement of combs. The disturbance brought the whole lot down round her shoulders, and she irritably pulled it back off her face and wound a rubber band round to hold it. Fifteen A-level essays to mark, and about thirty GCSE pieces. She picked up the first one and started reading.
    She wasn’t even halfway through at twelve-thirty when hunger drove her over to the canteen in the Moore building.
    Fridays usually weren’t too busy in the canteen. Most students didn’t have classes on a Friday afternoon, and a lot of those that did ‘wagged’ it. Debbie collected a mixed salad from the salad bar, struggled with her conscience and got a side order of chips, and looked around for somewhere to sit.
    ‘Hey, Debbie!’ Tim Godber, media studies lecturer, journalist
manqué
and at one time a lover of Debbie’s, was waving her over.
    ‘Hi, Tim.’ Debbie was wary. She’d been very attracted at one time, but once they had fallen into bed together after a departmental party, he’d turned into a game player who’d tried to control and manipulate her through different hoops via charm and indifference, and Debbie was nowadays more put off than interested. They’d gone out for drinks together a couple of weekends ago, and again ended up in Debbie’s bed, but she’d told herself the next morning that that was the last time.
    He pushed his hair back from his forehead and moved hisempty tray to make space at the table for her. ‘How are you, sweetheart?’
    ‘I’m not your sweetheart.’ Debbie had learnt to be brisk. ‘And I’m fine. How are you, lover boy?’
    ‘I’m not your lover boy, and I’m fine too.’ Tim no longer found it necessary to charm Debbie. They chatted in a desultory way as they ate, exchanging gossip from their different staff rooms. Debbie was fielding an invitation for a drink, when there was a flurry of discord from the coffee bar at the far side of the canteen, shouts and the sound of breaking china –
breaking glass
– that meant either horseplay or a fight. She got up from the table to see what was happening, though she had no intention of doing anything about it. Some of the young male students could be quite intimidating. Someone seemed to be dealing with it anyway. The shouting had died down. Rob Neave was talking to a group of students over where the trouble had been.
    Tim, who had no more desire than Debbie to get involved in student fights, looked relieved, but continued to watch the situation with interest. ‘Machismo fascismo,’ he said, ‘wins out every time.’ Debbie looked at him. ‘Your friend the ex-policeman. The one laying down the law over there.’
    He did look a bit authoritarian, actually, but Debbie was damned if she was going to agree with Tim about it. She liked Rob Neave. ‘I don’t think he’s laying down the law. Why should he be doing that? He’s just sorting them out. Is he an ex-policeman?’ Debbie thought that she ought to have known it.
    Tim knew everything. It was partly his journalist’s love of gossip, and partly his connections at the local newspaper. ‘That’s his job. Security, antivandalism, keep the buggers down. You remember that business with the lift last term?’
    Debbie shook her head. Tim’s story gradually came out about how some students at the end of last term had vandalized one of the lifts in the Moore building so badly they’d jammed it, trapping themselves inside. When they pushed the alarm button and summoned a rescue party, Neave, working the situation out, had delayed the rescue for two hours, claiming they couldn’t get the lift moving. The caretakershad stood around outside the lift, threatening to light a fire in the shaft. By the time the pair were released, they were pretty subdued, and the college authorities, faced with a bill for the lift repair, weren’t in any mood to listen to complaints. Debbie laughed as he got to the end of the story.