‘Malice, egoism, vindictiveness—all these things are in our nature, my dear Miss Richter,’ he said. ‘There’s no getting away from that.’

‘Spare me that bullshit. I’m not one of your students. You’re a sadistic bastard, that’s all. And one of these days, I’m going to get you, I swear I will.’

He laughed in her face.

‘I like your sense of humour,’ he said, looking about him attentively, as if he were trying to memorise the contents of the room.

‘We’re not so very different, you and I,’ he said at length, his eyes piercing her, as she stood there with her arms folded. ‘I have seldom seen such anger. I bet that if I were to take a scalpel and cut open your chest I’d find a heart that’s every bit as black as mine. The only difference is that I accept my dark side.’

He flashed his teeth.

‘What do you say to burying the hatchet?’

She felt like punching him in the face.

Is that what he’s come for? she wondered. Does he want to provoke me until I hit him? This thought alone held her back.

‘We have nothing in common,’ Norah said coolly. ‘Nothing at all. And now please leave.’

The professor smiled again.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is the trouble with women like you. You think you’re superior to everyone else. But you’re not.’

‘At least I’m not a sadistic old bastard who gets his kicks out of destroying young women,’ she said. ‘And now get out.’

The smug grin he gave her as he left haunted her for days.

‘Why can’t you just drop it?’ Alex had asked one evening.

She looked at him as if he were off his head and gave him the only answer she could think of.

‘Because what he’s doing is unfair.’

Alex wasn’t convinced.

‘Norah, wake up. The whole world’s unfair.’

‘What are you saying?’ she asked. ‘That I should give up? That I should just accept everything?’

Alex had smiled condescendingly, as if she were a child refusing to accept that she couldn’t adopt every dog in the dogs’ home. She saw him differently after that.

It was soon afterwards that she found the ring, hidden away in a drawer, under his clothes. For a few seconds she stared at it, as if it were something gruesome, but fascinating—an open wound showing white bone.

When Alex came home that evening, she told him it was over. Coco’s life was ruined; Norah’s reputation, her job, her relationship—all gone to pieces. A total disaster. The professor’s triumph was complete.

Norah stubbed out her cigarette. She mustn’t think of all that now, or she’d never get to sleep. She lit up again and blew smoke into the night.

15

Wrapped in a once-fluffy dressing gown that was now rough and scratchy, Norah stepped onto the balcony, sipping her coffee. The sky was wide and grey; there was no way of knowing what kind of day it would be. She went back into the flat and googled the article that Coco had mentioned. It didn’t take her long to trace the contact details of the professor’s latest ‘muse’. She wrote the young woman an anonymous email from a disposable address—a brief, but unequivocal warning about her new boyfriend—and began to feel better.