Chapter 1
Helen
I have ten minutes before my next appointment and I instinctively reach for my phone. My finger hovers over my trusty dictation app, but I catch myself. Not here.
With a sigh, I put my phone back. When I arrived this morning, I was in the middle of dictating a climactic scene. But it would have seemed too odd to sit talking to myself in my car in the car park so I stopped—although, these days, so many of us look like we’re talking to ourselves all the time.
These are my university hours and I can’t allow my two schedules to get confused, even though my office door is closed and no one would see me.
Instead, I grab the sheet of paper I printed out earlier from my desk. Victoria Carlisle. Sounds posh. But I’ve taught myself not to judge—if that’s even possible. This is Oxford. There’s no shortage of posh people here. I’ve seen many students come and go over the years, from all backgrounds, but the majority have always been more posh than not.
I glance at Victoria Carlisle’s picture. The department makes it compulsory to have your picture on its website. Could she be the very last student I supervise?
“You very well might be, Victoria Carlisle,” I say to her printed image. Dark hair. Brown eyes. Wide, full lips. She must have been in one of my first-year lectures, but if she was, I don’t remember—despite her distinctive mouth.
Someone knocks on the door.
“Yes.” I drop the sheet of paper.
The door opens and in walks the woman whose picture I was just studying.
“Hello, Professor Swift.” She walks straight towards me, hand outstretched. “I’m Victoria.”
I briefly take her hand in mine, then invite her to sit.
She’s wearing jeans and a turtleneck sweater. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail.
“Right,” she says and looks me straight in the eye, flashing a very wide smile. “I have to admit”—her voice is clear—“I’m a little nervous.”
Her attitude and facial expression contradict her statement. Since her arrival, the energy in my office has shifted. She’s one of those people who draw the eye—who light up a room. I wouldn’t be caught dead using that cliché in one of my novels.
“No need for that.” She’s making me nervous now. One day, if she does get her doctorate, she’ll make an outstanding lecturer—unlike me, perhaps. With some people, one glance is all it takes to know they’ll excel.
“The way I see it”—she cocks her head—“you’re my only chance at doing this particular kind of in-depth research.”
I arch up my eyebrows. I know what Victoria Carlisle wants to research. She emailed me about it in astonishing detail.
“I wouldn’t put it in such black and white terms, Miss Carlisle.”
“Well, no doubt you know what I mean.” That wide grin again, accompanied by a wink this time. Goodness, this woman is forward. Like most young people these days, who carry themselves with a familiarity towards faculty that I’ve never quite got used to.
Of course I know what she means. “Professor Monohan has an interest in the subject you suggest.”
Victoria shakes her head. “She doesn’t really.”
“Did you inquire with her?”
“I did and she wouldn’t even meet with me to discuss it.”
That figures. “So I’m your second choice?”
“Most definitely not, Professor,” she’s quick to say. “You were always my first choice, but I felt like I needed to hedge my bets.”
“You didn’t try Professor Fleming?” I ask, more to amuse myself than anything else.
She cocks her head again. “No, of course not.” Now she’s making me sound silly for even suggesting it.
“All right.” It’s time to move things along. “So, the evolution of lesbian characters in English literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”
Victoria nods.
“I take it you have considered this subject carefully?” Another silly question, but one I find myself asking every time nonetheless.
“My master’s thesis was about lesbian pulp fiction of the fifties and sixties, so a doctoral dissertation would really be an expansion of that. I feel like there’s much more to be said on the subject and a DPhil dissertation carries more weight.”
“You seem very passionate about the subject.” I take my time to examine her face more carefully this time.
“I am, indeed.” She sits up a little straighter. “In almost every aspect of life, lesbians are the most invisible group. Regardless of the reasons for that, it’s my mission to unearth as many lesbian characters as I can in the last hundred years of English literature. It is very much my passion.”
“Good.” I give her an encouraging nod. The goal of this first meeting is always to gauge and predict—insofar as that’s possible—the stamina of the DPhil candidates. The dropout rate is so high, and so many promising dissertations never get finished. I, for one, would like to read the final version of this particular project. At the moment, Victoria Carlisle surely comes across as very enthusiastic. I see a determination in her glance I rarely encounter. This could be one that works out. “I’d be very happy to be your supervisor.”
“Yes!” Victoria bumps her fist into the air.
I can’t help but smile a little. It bolsters my enthusiasm for my own job just a bit. The fondness for it that I seem to have lost along the way. It’s been a while since someone like Victoria has come along. One more year full-time, I tell myself. By the end of this year, my other supervisees will have completed their dissertations and working part-time will give me more than enough hours to supervise Victoria. To help this woman get started with her research. I can actually see myself do it now.
Victoria regroups and puts her hands in her lap.
“The first few months, I’ll see you once a week.” I’m already looking forward to discussing Victoria’s quest for lesbian characters in literature. When I was a student, it wouldn’t have been entirely unthinkable to devote a dissertation to this type of subject, but it would have taken a lot more convincing to get the whole thing off the ground. I also didn’t have any out-and-proud professors to turn to. Today, in the Faculty of English Language and Literature alone, there are three of us—with a lot of suspicion surrounding a fourth.
“I look forward to it, Professor Swift,” Victoria says.
