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I
knew
it.”
    “D’you think he’ll be all right, Mum?” Sasha closed the bedroom door.
    “Don’t worry about your father,” said Sue. “It’s the rest of the village that’s going to need counseling. Post-traumatic shock, I think they call it. I’m used to seeing your father’s wedding tackle swinging in the wind, but poor Mrs. Anderson. She looked like she was about to have an aneurism. I mean, she is ninety-two, the dear old stick.”
    Sasha got ready for bed in a daze. She’d had a few drinks herself, but that wasn’t the reason. In the last few hours, her life had changed forever. She called Will to tell him the good news as soon as she got back from the pub.
    “Great, babe,” he yelled over pounding music. Evidently the party at Chittenden was still in full swing. “Cambridge is miles nearer than Exeter. That means I can still play rugby on Saturday afternoons once the season starts, then drive up and take you out for dinner. Wicked.”
    If it wasn’t quite the reaction she’d hoped for, Sasha tried not to be disappointed.
I can’t expect him to understand. He’s not academic. He has other qualities. And at least he’s making plans to come up and see me. That has to be a good sign, doesn’t it?
    Pulling on a pair of scratchy cotton pajamas she’d had since she was fourteen, Sasha turned out the light and crawled under the covers of her single bed. Above her, a solar system of glow-in-the-dark stickers shone a comforting green. It was a child’s bedroom, and Sasha loved it.
But I’m not a child. Not anymore. I’m a Cambridge undergraduate! I’m Will Temple’s lover!
She hugged her excitement to her like a priceless treasure.
I don’t want to fall asleep. I don’t want today to be over.
    Outside, the church bells struck midnight.
    The day was over.
    Sasha Miller slept.

CHAPTER TWO

    P ROFESSOR T HEODORE D EXTER was having a wonderful day. The sun was in the sky. Cambridge, ever beautiful, had looked particularly lovely this morning as he cycled along the Backs into college, its spires and turrets bathed in early autumn sunlight. His rooms, the most beautiful in St. Michael’s, had been newly cleaned and filled with vases of fresh flowers. (Professor Dexter’s housekeeper was more than a little in love with him. But then, who wasn’t?) And waiting in his bed was Clara, a German postgraduate student with the sort of oversize jugs rarely seen outside of specialist porn mags and a mouth that God had clearly created for the purpose to which she was now so gloriously putting it.
    “That’s right, sweetheart. Nice and slow.”
    The blow job was so good it was almost painful. Clara was an average physicist, but thanks to her extraordinary oral abilities her PhD thesis on galactic anisotropy was rapidly edging its way to the top of the class. Trying to prolong his pleasure, Professor Dexter moved higher up the bed so that he could see out the window. His rooms in First Court looked out over St. John’s Street and the splendid redbrick portcullis of Trinity College. Trinity was larger and more prestigious than St. Michael’s, but St. Michael’s was consistently voted the most beautiful college in Cambridge, with its wisteria-clad medieval courts, romanticformal gardens, and exquisite, walnut-paneled Tudor hall. It also had far and away the best reputation in astro-and particle physics. Which was why so many of the faculty were astonished when Theo Dexter was offered the fellowship there.
    To the world at large, Theo Dexter was a brilliant scientist. He’d published two books with titles that no ordinary mortal could understand (his debut, the catchy
Prospective Signatures of High Redshift Quasar HII Regions
, sold a very creditable five hundred copies), he had a first from Oxford and a PhD from MIT, and he was still only thirty-five. To the physics faculty at Cambridge, however, he was an amateur. A mere dandy. Not only were his ideas rehashed versions of other people’s research. But the