A sour feeling rises from Cullen’s belly and settles in his mouth. Veronica’s use of the plural subject pronoun displeases him. We are not trying to get pregnant. Veronica is trying and Cullen is going along with it for the same reason he always goes along with his wife – for the sake of an easy life and because being married to the Honourable Veronica makes him feel a little less like the dishonourable Christopher. He switches off the pregnancy monologue and allows his mind to focus on more immediate things, like the conversation he’s just had with his old flame, the VC, Maddy Ince. He did not, for a minute, believe what he had told Keane, that it was possible that what had happened to Satnam Mann was an accident, and he told Maddy so. Nonetheless, he thought that if the parents were willing to believe it was then they should go with it, not only out of solidarity but also because the accident theory offered the university – and himself – a get-out clause. An unfortunate accident. End of story. His advice to Maddy, therefore, was to allow the whole thing to blow over, which was precisely what he sensed Maddy wanted to hear. Not that he was ever likely to disagree with Maddy on anything of substance. She’d made sure of that. He was OK with the fact that he was, at least to some extent, Maddy’s creature. It was she who’d helped him leapfrog over Ratner and secure the position as head of department and, before long, dean. They went way back, knew one another’s secrets.

A part of him feels oddly admiring of Satnam Mann. Envious almost. Isn’t suicide a rational response to unbearable pain? When you look at it like that, doesn’t it seem perfectly reasonable, courageous even? Who hasn’t wanted to be free of the bewilderment of being alive at least once? For some people, people like him, and, he knows now, like Satnam, the feeling that you could take your own life at any time is just an extension of everyday existence. More than that, it’s a freedom knowing you’ve always got an out. Funny, Cullen usually has a gift for detecting that small, insistent bead of self-destruction which lurks inside more people than are willing to admit it. Like dogs trained to scent out cancer, Cullen has a nose for a death wish. Which makes it all the more surprising that he missed it this time round.

He swallows another coffee, asks Tina to take messages if anyone calls and heads down the corridor and then down two flights of stairs and through a series of fire doors to Mark Ratner’s office in the biosciences building.

‘Bit busy right now. Can it wait?’ Ratner says.