There is a brief split second when Nevis seems about to speak, then thinking better of it, she rolls her eyes, puffs her cheeks, lets out a long, exasperated sigh and heads, once more, for the door.

Chapter 8

Cullen

The news that a student in his department has attempted suicide reaches Cullen at a Monday morning community liaison breakfast at the university, whispered into his ear by the head of student welfare, Lea Keane. Cullen takes a breath and closes his eyes briefly to collect himself and pastes on a thin smile for the benefit of the others gathered around the table before rising from his chair and apologising. Urgent business. He doesn’t say what, obviously. There are outsiders present. He waves Keane through the door and they make the short walk to the Deanery without speaking.

Going round to the business side of his desk, he waves Keane to a visitor’s chair but doesn’t offer her a coffee. He’s never liked Keane. Is it the moustache or the busybody air or the taste for garish clothes featuring big blooms which reminds Cullen uncomfortably of his mother? Probably a combination of all three. Plus, he doesn’t believe in counsellors or therapists; considers them archaeologists of human misery, forever disturbing feelings that are best left buried.

‘Were you notified by the parents?’ Cullen asks, lowering himself into his ergonomic office chair. He finds knowing the exact sequence of events soothing. It’s the mathematician in him. First this, then that, feeling the ground beneath him.

‘Not exactly, though I have spoken to the parents this morning. I found out in the wee hours. My daughter Jackie was one of the attending paramedics and she phoned me when she got off shift. I did call you but you must already have gone to bed.’

Oh, he thinks, so that was the unanswered call. It had slipped his mind.

‘So,’ he says, leaning on his elbows and steepling his hands on the desk. The timing couldn’t be worse with the university about to go into admissions. ‘Who is this about?’

‘One of your second years. Mathematics and biosciences. Satnam Mann?’

Cullen’s brain stops turning over. A moment passes before a question floats out from under the white noise in his head. Can Keane really have said Satnam Mann? He notices his hands shaking and jams them under the desk before Keane spots them.

‘Is she conscious?’

‘The hospital won’t speak with me directly, but the parents told me she’s in a coma. They didn’t seem to know whether that was medically induced or not. It was hard getting anything out of them at all, to be honest. Jackie told me a passer-by came across Satnam trying to climb the suicide barrier at the bridge, but she collapsed before she could, well, you know.’

‘I see,’ Cullen says, with some relief.