It felt natural to talk to him. As if now that she had spent hours and days with his handwriting, she knew him in some way. She forgot the offence she had taken when he had slid his folders across the table to her, all the times he didn’t say hello.

In the computer room, at the end of the statistical packages class, she went to him and said, ‘Thanks for the notes. They are really good. I think I might not fail, after all. I might have a chance to pass.’ Her eyes were dry from all the nights she had stayed up. She was tired and grateful.

He nodded and they spoke a little about the Poisson distribution, Queuing theory. Everything was clear in his mind, his brain was a transparent pane of glass where all the concepts were written out boldly and neatly. Today, he seemed more at ease talking to her, though he still shifted about from foot to foot, avoided her eyes.

He said, ‘Do ye want to go for a coffee?’

She looked up at him. He was tall and she was not used to speaking to people with blue eyes. Then she made a mistake. Perhaps because she had been up late last night, she made that mistake. Perhaps there were other reasons for that mistake. The mistake of shifting from one level to another.

She said, ‘I don’t like your earring.’

The expression in his eyes was new, a focusing, no longer shifting away. He lifted his hand to his ear and tugged the earring off. His earlobe without the silver looked red and scarred.

She giggled because she was afraid, because he wasn’t smiling, wasn’t saying anything. She covered her mouth with her hand then wiped her forehead and eyes. A mistake was made and it was too late to go back. She plunged ahead, careless now, reckless, ‘I don’t like your long hair.’

He turned and walked away.

The next morning, Multivariate Analysis, and she came in late, dishevelled from running in the rain. The professor, whose name she wasn’t sure of (there were three who were Mc something), smiled unperturbed. All the lecturers were relaxed and urbane, in tweed jackets and polished shoes. Sometimes she wondered how the incoherent Bryan, if he did pursue an academic career, was going to transform himself into a professor like that. But it was none of her business.

Like most of the other students, she sat in the same seat in every class. Bryan sat a row ahead which was why she could always look at his hair. But he had cut it – there was no ponytail today! Just his neck and the collar of the grey and white-striped shirt.

Notes to take down. In discriminant analysis, a linear combination of variables serves as the basis for assigning cases to groups …