The House of Sleep Read Free

was the first thing that she noticed. And the second thing she noticed was that he appeared to have been crying – quite recently, in fact. He sat down at the kitchen table to drink his coffee, and she sat down opposite him to drink her soup, and as she was pulling up a chair she glanced across at him and could have sworn that she saw a tear inching down his cheek.
    ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. They didn’t get many first-years at Ashdown, but she wondered if he had just arrived at the university, and was already starting to feel homesick.
    It turned out that this was not the case. He was in his third year, studying modern languages, and had moved into Ashdown only yesterday. What had distressed him was a phone call from his mother, who had rung from home a few hours ago to tell him that Muriel, the family cat, had been killed that same morning – run over by a milk float at the bottom of the front drive. He was clearly ashamed to be showing so much emotion about this, but Sarah liked him for it. To save him further embarrassment, all the same, shechanged the subject as quickly as possible, and told him that he was not the only one to have had an upsetting day.
    ‘Why, what happened to you?’ he asked.
    It did not occur to Sarah until later that it was surprising to have found herself talking so frankly to such a new acquaintance, someone whose name she had not even, at this stage, troubled to find out. None the less, she told him all about her bizarre encounter on the street with a complete stranger who had glared at her and called her a bitch for no apparent reason. The new resident listened attentively as he sipped his coffee: striking, Sarah thought, just the right balance between concern (for he seemed to understand how traumatic the incident must have been for her) and a more lighthearted note of reassurance (for he encouraged her, at the same time, to laugh it off as the outburst of some pitiable eccentric). She told him about the conversation she had overheard at the Café Valladon, how it had turned to the subject of misogyny, and how she had felt compelled to join in.
    ‘It’s a very live subject at the moment,’ he agreed. ‘There’s a big anti-feminist backlash going on here.’ He told her how the university’s new Women’s Studies Department had been vandalized recently: someone had broken in and spray-painted the words ‘Death to the Sisters’ in foot-high letters all over the walls.
    Sarah was enjoying talking to this man very much, but had started to feel tired. Sometimes she was subject to a sort of tiredness which was extreme, by most people’s standards, and once or twice had even found herself falling asleep in the middle of conversations. She didn’t want anything like that to happen here: she was too anxious to leave a good impression.
    ‘I think I’d better get back to bed,’ she said, getting up and rinsing her soup-mug under the cold tap. ‘It’s nice to have met you, though. I’m glad you’re moving in. I think we’re going to be friends.’
    ‘I hope so.’
    ‘My name’s Sarah, by the way.’
    ‘I’m Robert.’
    They smiled at each other. Sarah ran a hand through her hair, taking hold of a clump and tugging at it lightly. Robert noticed this gesture, and remembered it.
    She went up to her room and slept for an hour or two, until Gregory woke her by coming in and turning on the overhead light. Blinking, she looked at the alarm clock. It was earlier than she had thought: only ten-fifteen.
    ‘Home already?’ she said.
    He had his back towards her, putting something away in a drawer, and grunted: ‘Looks like it.’
    ‘I thought since this was the last night you were all going to be together, you’d stay out late. Make an occasion of it.’
    It was the beginning of the autumn term, and Gregory had come down from his parents’ house in Dundee merely to collect some belongings, to see some old friends, and to spend a few final days with Sarah. They had both