Jack left for the River Club an hour early, just for the feeling that he was doing something. 

All the things that usually made the Faculty bearable – actually, he didn't know why he was pluralizing them, because it was just Ellini – had withdrawn their aid, and now he felt as though the electric lights and the over-arching ceilings were hammering him into the ground.

And yet he didn't feel worried – or rather, it was his body that was worrying for him, without the intervention of his brain. It had driven him to pace restlessly around his bedroom for two hours. His left arm had taken to grabbing anything that was sharp, hot or dangerous.

He needed to be outside, that was all. Outside, away from the Faculty, using his energy and his wits. He wished he could have gone up on the rooftops with Ellini again, but with Alice in her current mood, it probably would have been unwise. Dancing with his mouse would be the next best thing.

And it didn't matter if all indications pointed towards a dire outcome. It didn't matter that his feet had taken to pacing uncontrollably and his left hand wouldn't stop reaching into the fire. He still had the moment. He was used to living on his wits when matters came to a crisis. In fact, in many ways, he was a better man on the spur of the moment than he ever was when he took the trouble to plan.

It would be all right. It would have to be. The alternative was just unthinkable.

He walked on with a spring in his step after coming to this conclusion, which meant that, when the Turl Street Music Rooms came into view, he had to throw out a hand and grab one of the pillars outside the Sheldonian just to slow his momentum.

The Star-spangled Banner was flying from a flag-pole at the top of the steps. Seeing it was like getting punched in the face all over again. He remembered something – a feeling rather than an image. It was dark, it was French, and it was hopeful, but not in the pitiful sense that had come to be associated with that word. It was hopeful in the same way that the crowd at a football match was hopeful – it was an electric, convulsive hope that drove you to your feet and made you yell out loud, regardless of where you were and who you thought was watching.

And, at the same time, he could hear a voice whispering soft, meaningless phrases in his ear. He felt as though, if he could only de-code them, he would have the answer to the whole mystery – but they were in a language he didn't understand. Their tone was hard to mistake, though. The soft, lovely voice was practically purring. It was Ellini's, perhaps – but in a state of abandon that she had never allowed herself in Oxford. There was a whole other world in that voice, and he wanted it much more than he wanted to stay free and clear-headed.

And then, when he came out of that pictureless reverie, he noticed two separate but equally worrying things.

The first was that his left hand had been grinding its knuckles against the stone-pillar he'd been clinging to.

The second was that a woman was standing motionless on one side of the steps, with her hands clasped decorously in front of her, waiting to be noticed.

She was watching him with the expression of someone who thought she was patiently enduring an insult, but she was mistaken. The insult may have been there, but the patience wasn't.

It was clear that he was supposed to know her, and that she was waiting for him to speak, but her face betrayed no anxiety to help him, or hurry over the awkward moment. She seemed to be hungry for the awkwardness as well as the insult.

This woman was pretty enough, but there was something hard and expectant about her face, as though she was longing for you to slap her just so she could bitterly congratulate herself on having judged you rightly.

It was familiar, but it was just at the edges of what he could recall, and for the moment, all he was getting was a vague memory of flowers.

"It's Violet, yes?" he said, squinting at her.

"Very good, sahib," said the woman.

Sahib. So he knew her from India. That was a murky portion of Jack's memory, but he did his best. "And we were... not lovers?" he hazarded.

"Very good again."

"Well, it was a fifty-fifty chance," said Jack, with a modest wave of his hand.

"I hear you're getting married?" said Violet, in a low, significant voice. "If you cared to listen, I could tell you a great many things about your future bride which might shock you."

Jack raised his eyebrows. This sounded very promising – especially since Ellini had admitted to a relationship with a French temptress the last time they'd talked.

He motioned politely for Violet to walk with him. "So that's why I don't remember you much. You're part of the big amnesia. You've got something to do with Ellini."

"I was her maid-servant in India," said Violet, in a tone which suggested she was to be grievously pitied for this.

"Yeah, that makes sense," said Jack. His little mouse would probably have been the only mistress with patience enough to tolerate this woman. "But I've seen you somewhere else as well – don't you work at one of the Faculties?"

Violet nodded proudly. "The Chemistry Faculty, on Mansfield Road." She hesitated, and then plunged on, "My window is the second one from the right on the top-floor, and it's always open."

Jack didn't quite know what to say to this. If he had been his old self, he would have known exactly – but he was still engaged, until he heard otherwise, and this woman was so unsettling. He looked down – mainly to avoid her eager, meaningful eyes – and saw her fingernails for the first time. They were long, red and pointed, like the false kind worn by actresses or music-hall singers. They transfixed him with the idea that she had just been pawing bloodily through somebody's entrails.

"And what kind of shocking things can you tell me about my fiancée?" he said, recovering as smoothly as he could.

"I can tell you why she left you in India."

Jack stopped mid-stride, leaving her to go on a few paces before she realized he wasn't beside her anymore. She seemed pleased with this response, though, because she hurried back to him with a ghoulish smile on her face.

"After you've heard what I have to say," she continued, "you can decide whether or not you still want to marry her."

Jack waited, without saying a word. From the look on her face, she seemed to think she was cradling a dramatic revelation, and he didn't want to undermine the drama by telling her that he considered her to be the least reliable informant he'd ever met.

"You were very much in love with her, did you know that?" said Violet, still glowing with triumph.

"It doesn't seem impossible to believe," said Jack cautiously.

"And she broke your heart into pieces."

He tilted his head. "That's less likely – but, again, not impossible."

"She left you for your worst enemy," Violet hurried on, perhaps feeling that her dramatic moment had been undermined.

"For my father?"

"No – no, for Robin Crake! She slept with him in your bed – and half the soldiers in the camp! She made you so miserable you nearly drank yourself to death!"

"Well, it sounds like a nice way to go, anyway."

"Don't--" Violet stopped, and screwed up her face in anger. "Don't you believe me?"

"You're a very astute woman, Violet."

"Why not?" she shouted, causing figures to turn all along the street. "You don't know – and it's the truth, anyway! Are you so arrogant-?"

"Oh, it's not that I have a high opinion of myself," said Jack. "Or even that high an opinion of her. It's just impossible."

"You didn't believe it at the time, but she soon proved it to you, by leaving Lucknow arm-in-arm with him! She never cared about you, sahib. She doesn't care about you now."

Jack gave her an apologetic shrug. "I don't have any of the facts. I just know you're mistaken."

As he walked on – and as she spluttered, red-faced, beside him – he wondered why it was that he didn't believe her. After all, he had no idea what had really happened, and Ellini was self-destructive enough for anything. Why was he so convinced that she couldn't have left him for Robin Crake?

Because she had better taste than that. Because she could never love a man unless he made her laugh – and Robin's humour was unintentional and very, very black. Besides, he had seen her loving him. He had seen it in her glowing skin when she'd been standing in front of the mirror with him in her new white dress.

"I can't believe she's done it to you again!" Violet shouted. "You don't even have any feelings and she's done it to you again! Aren't you ashamed that a woman like that should fool you?"

It's better than a woman like this fooling me, Jack thought.

"Don't you wonder why you chose to forget her?" she persisted.

"Yes, flower. I do wonder. I just know you've got the wrong explanation. I'm sorry if my fiancée has inadvertently made you spiteful and bitter – although I'm inclined to think the damage must have been done in early childhood – but I can't believe the impossible just to humour you."

Violet came to a halt beside him. She was breathing quite heavily, and not looking as offended as she ought to have looked, in the circumstances. It suddenly occurred to Jack that she was enjoying herself.

"This is what you like, isn't it?" he said, taking a step towards her, and then stopping when recollection fluttered behind his eyes.

Oh god, there was something there – something horrible. He heard himself – or someone – thinking: Is that what all women want? To be beaten and pushed around by someone who holds them in contempt? He felt as though the huge, heavy curtain of amnesia in front of him was fluttering, and he was catching incomplete glimpses – totally meaningless on their own – of the view outside.

This was the other side of the world that the meaningless, purring voice had seemed to promise him. Maybe it was mostly this. Maybe discerning that beautiful voice amidst all the horror was like trying to hear a pin-drop in a thunderstorm.

"I have to go, flower," he said, finally tearing himself away. "You are wrong, but you're wrong in an interesting way, and I need to think about it."

"I'm right, sahib," she said faintly, as he walked away. "And I – I hope you remember – about the window."

Jack didn't even turn to look at her. "I obviously respect you more than you respect yourself, flower, because I hope I do no such thing."

***

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