Emily Winslow - The Whole World

“We all got to know him, Nick. We were all questioned by him. About you.”

“Yes, of course.” Nick still waited in the doorway, on one foot.

Peter stood up and to the side, to give him back his bed. Nick sat on it, legs over the side and back straight, rather than lying back down.

“Did you know that they dredged the Cam for you?” Peter demanded.

Nick nodded.

“That Richard considered postponing the wedding? Did you know that Polly’s mother was arrested?”

“What?”

“Because of you.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“A lot happened while you were off.”

“Is she all right?”

“She was only in a few days.”

“Days? My God. Polly didn’t say.”

Peter lifted his head. “She was here?”

“Half an hour ago.”

Peter sucked in a breath, then whooshed it out. “I’ve got to ask you this. But… you’ve got to tell me the truth.”

“About what?” There was so much he had to tell everyone, over and over again. Why he left, where he went, what he’d hoped to find and what he did find…

Peter leaned in close and spoke barely above a whisper. “Liv said you raped her.”

“What?” Nick gaped. “What?”

“After they dredged the Cam she was upset. We all were. All day we’d prepared for the worst news. It didn’t come, thank God it didn’t, but all that coiled energy had nowhere to spring. Then she told me, and I was angry, and I didn’t believe her. But it stuck in my head. It stuck there.”

“You didn’t believe her,” Nick repeated, insistent.

“Not at first. No. Then maybe… The idea was absurd, but everything was already absurd. There was no reason for you to have run away, no reason for anyone to have hurt you. There was no ransom demand, no body… And I remembered the last time I saw you. You were upset about Liv and Polly. It came across like something on the scale of a pregnancy scare. But this was you, Nick, so at the time I thought you’d ‘led Liv on’ as far as a kiss, or maybe not even that. Maybe just words had been taken the wrong way. I hadn’t thought anything significant of it.

“Then Liv told me you’d raped her. Having done that would make you run away. Or make Liv want to hurt you. It could even have made you hurt yourself. It was unthinkable that you would do it in the first place, but, if you had done it, that would make sense of everything else. Not just of you being gone, but now. What Liv did. Not why it was aimed at Gretchen and Harry, but why she felt she had to hit back at somebody…”

“No!”

“No what, Nick?”

“No to everything! No, I didn’t rape her!”

“That’s the truth?”

A leaf hanging from one of the carnation stems suddenly dropped. It sawed back and forth through the air on its slow fall, finally brushing gently against the cold floor. The slight sound of that soft friction magnified and elongated to fill the gap between asking the question and hearing the answer.

“I wouldn’t do a thing like that,” Nick said.

Peter goggled.

“You wouldn’t? Really? We all said that. ‘Nick wouldn’t do that.’ Nick wouldn’t just leave. That’s what we told the police, over and over again. But that’s exactly what you did do, so how the hell do I know what you would or wouldn’t do anymore?”

Peter avoided the bus. He wanted to keep moving.

He believed Nick. He was relieved. But he was still rattled by having had to ask him.

Nick was home, but home had changed while he was gone. Home had changed partly because he’d been gone. His absence had been a hole they all kept falling into. Now that he was back, he didn’t quite fit that space anymore. Now the people who cared for him most were poked by his sharp edges, and poked back with their own.

The south end of Cambridge, around the hospital, isn’t the Cambridge that Polly and Liv swooned over. It’s just ordinary brick houses, and then, after a good distance, Hills Road erupts with practical, un-decorative shops and businesses. Only much farther beyond do the colleges and parks and expensive stores by which Americans mean “ Cambridge ” cluster.

It used to be a fashionable prank for students to scale the University’s towers. There’s a famous leap from a student bedroom onto the Senate House roof, which has been forbidden for years. Peter had never been tempted. He’d never felt the urge to climb.

Until now.

He turned into Downing Street. He’d be caught, surely. But the question was, how far could he get before that happened?

Someone had had the bright idea to string the tower cranes building the Grand Arcade with Christmas lights; that’s how much a fixture the cranes had become. They shone.

That’s one of the last things Liv said to Peter: that she loved the cranes. That they were more beautiful, in their immensity, symmetry, and balance, than whatever they could build.

There’s nothing so tall as they in Cambridge. Yes, there’s the view from Great St. Mary’s bell tower, but it has a cage around the top to prevent jumping. You can press your face up against the cross-hatching to give your eye an unjailed look. You can see down onto the college lawns, and notice the plaids and stripes made by the mowers. But the cranes…

It was all too small, suddenly. Too tight. The history, the traditions, the glut of buildings.

Peter wanted height. He wanted to look at how big the world really is.

Cambridge is a transitional place. Some people stay. But most pass through on their way to somewhere else. They get their degrees. The cranes sum it up nicely-they’ll come down when their job’s done.

That’s why it was urgent that Peter do this immediately.

The building site was fenced and locked. Peter knew there would be cameras. He tried to not look too interested. He wanted to shock whoever was watching. He wanted to give himself the most time he could.

Just scale the fence, jump down. The cranes were there. Just scramble up the base of one and grab on to the beginning of the latticed neck. He could manage that. Would alarms go off? How far could he get? Would whoever swooped in to get him down treat him like a criminal, or gently, like a potential suicide?

He just wanted to get up high. The air didn’t feel breathable down among the buildings anymore.

There’s a famous Hubble image of deep space, full of distant galaxies and stars like a bag of sweets spilled across a blackboard. Hubble gets those kinds of pictures because it’s above the atmosphere. It sees without fog.

That’s what Peter wanted to do.

He wanted to try. He wanted to reach. He wanted to stand there just for a moment, and fling out his arms, and look down from a great height.

I’ll come down without a fight, he promised himself. I’ll take what punishment comes. But I’ll have that view in my head. That’ll make it worthwhile.

He grabbed the link fence and hauled himself up. He climbed, and rolled over the top, landing on his feet. The cranes were right there. He scrambled up a base, and gripped the bottom lattice in his hand.

The universe expands.

My heartfelt gratitude to all who contributed to The Whole World, especially:

My research sources, Keith Ferry, Dave and Gina Holland, Stephanie Hurd, Jon Coppelman, Dr. Judy Weiss, Dr. Sheila Picken, Jo Timson, Dr. J. Alex Stark, Ruth and Elizabeth Doggett, Mingwei Tan of Peterhouse, and Detective Superintendent Mark Birch of the Cambridgeshire Major Investigations Team, for the generosity with which they shared their experiences and expertise. They know their stuff; all errors and liberties are my own.

My contacts at Magdalene College, especially Dr. Glenton Jelbert, Dr. Simon Stoddart, Assistant Bursar Peter Daybell, College Marshal Bob Smith, and Deputy College Marshal Michael Flanagan. I deeply appreciate the warmth and friendliness I’ve encountered whenever I’ve approached this college.