Charlotte Stein - The Professor

CHARLOTTE STEIN

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Mischief

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.mischiefbooks.com

An eBook Original 2015

Copyright © Charlotte Stein 2015

Cover design: Head Design 2017, cover images: Shutterstock.com

Charlotte Stein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007579501

Version: 2017-08-22

Contents

Cover

Title Page The Professor CHARLOTTE STEIN A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright Copyright Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Epilogue About the Publisher Mischief An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London, SE1 9GF www.mischiefbooks.com An eBook Original 2015 Copyright © Charlotte Stein 2015 Cover design: Head Design 2017, cover images: Shutterstock.com Charlotte Stein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007579501 Version: 2017-08-22

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

About the Publisher

I know immediately that I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake. I can tell before I search through my folder for the essay I should have handed in, and instead find it still in there like a protruding tongue. Though once I see it and know for sure, I still pretend I did something else. I probably dropped a different piece of work on his desk. I gave him the one I did on Romanticism for Professor Pacheco, I tell myself.

But that essay is still in the folder too.

The only thing that’s missing is the story.

The filthy, appalling story that no one should ever see, never mind Professor Halstrom. Why did it have to be Professor Halstrom? Everything would have been fine if I’d just given it to squat, flustered little Garwood, or the guy who teaches linguistics and looks like Rory McGrath. They might never have mentioned it at all.

But I know he will.

He never lets anything go. He once made the captain of the football team cry for failing to hand an essay in on time – or so the legend goes. And I believe the legend, because that is exactly how terrifying Halstrom seems. His gaze is as flat and still as the surface of an undiscovered lake, yet oddly penetrating with it. I always get the impression that he sees absolutely everything about you in one stroke, yet finds you so dull and disappointing he can’t quite muster any emotion in his eyes.

He just takes you in, then spits you out.

And that’s not even the most intimidating thing about him.

No, the most intimidating thing is his enormity.

Every other lecturer at Pembroke is normal sized. They all look like academics, from their hunched, narrow shoulders to their neat little shoes. Occasionally you’ll come across one with a pot belly or maybe an unnervingly large head. But none get anywhere close to Halstrom. He must be somewhere north of six foot five, despite how ridiculous that number sounds to me.

Every time I leave his lecture hall I think, No, he can’t be .

And then I return and see him towering over the tallest guy in the class. He’s talking to Ricky Callahan when I next slink in, and the disparity between them is shocking. It gives me a little jolt to realise that even a champion rower with a bull neck and a fondness for tight shirts looks small beside Halstrom.

But it remains true – and not just in terms of his height. His shoulders are so broad they nearly eclipse Ricky completely. When he turns to pick something up off his desk they strain the seams of his suit, and his chest does the same to his waistcoat. One day he will bend down too quickly and rip right out of all of that tweed.

Like a werewolf, I think, tearing off his human skin to reveal the man beneath.

Then quickly force myself to think about something else. Melissa Gorlinski is applying sticky red nail polish to her squat little nails, and I try to train all my attention on that. I watch the brush swishing back and forth – the strokes slow and steady at first but then with more impatience – and will myself to be hypnotised.

It doesn’t work, however. No matter how hard I try I keep imagining what he looked like when he opened what he thought was my essay. Did he blanch at the first ‘cock’? Or did he just raise one of those too thick and too dark eyebrows? I think it might be the latter, but doing so doesn’t help me in the slightest.

If anything it makes it worse. His brow is curiously mobile, for someone with a face like a slab of stone. In fact it often seems to say things that his eyes and mouth won’t. If someone answers him back in class, his eyebrows register the fury or the shock. They almost kiss in the middle of his forehead, in this oddly querulous way, while the rest of him maintains complete control.