(no subject)
This has been a long time in the making. I started writing it more than a year ago, on a quiet evening in the library at Tübingen, and I've come back to it again and again to add to it and to tweak it. I think it's been worth it. I don't think I've been this happy with anything I've written.
Many, many thanks to tornyourdress for reading an earlier draft and giving me feedback on it! I hope you like it even better now.
Research
Kath couldn't help it. Charlotte was answering her question and she watched as the lips moved in speech, but she couldn't concentrate on what the girl was saying. In her head, her own voice pathetically chorused, those lips, oh god, those lips.
She told herself to get a grip, but it was impossible. She felt like laughing out loud. This was ridiculous; she was teaching this class and she wasn't even sure what they were talking about anymore. All she knew was that the sight of those lips, of that face, of that girl was almost unbearable in how it edged her mind towards the all-too-fresh memories she was desperately trying to shut out.
Charlotte finished and looked at her. Kath was confused, sure her students must've seen her jump when startled out of her thoughts and clueless as to what to say. She felt like a fraud, an impostor who deserved neither doctorate nor teaching post.
"But isn't that exactly what Gramsci means?" a black-haired boy asked, looking at her from across the seminar room. Charlotte, she saw out of the corner of her eye, looked at her copy of the text for a moment and then, with a quick sweep that took in the boy who'd asked, brought her large green eyes around to meet Kath's. They were inquiring, the raised eyebrows half obscured by that neat side-swept fringe, asking whether she could answer. Her face was all business, Kath couldn't find any trace of emotion or distraction or concern in it. How does she do it?, she asked herself as she helplessly gestured at the girl. Charlotte held her gaze for another fraction of a second and a flutter of a smile played on her lips, mocking and teasing her lecturer. Then she was half turned away, speaking to the boy, leaving Kath to study her profile: the thick, blonde hair loosely falling onto her shoulders in long lines that framed the softly rounded face.
How does she do it?, she thought again, How does she manage to sit there and talk about cultural hegemony as if it was the most normal thing in the world when all I can think of is the memory of her touch?
* * *
'Thank you so much,' she typed later, back in her office, 'for saving my back in class today. I owe you for that. Coffee or a drink one of these days, perhaps?'
Charlotte had kept on discussing the theory with the other students until the end of the seminar, with nothing more than reassuring nods and the odd dazed prompt from Kath. Then, while Kath was busy answering a string of worried questions asked by a rather unintelligent girl with a southern accent, she had said a quick goodbye and with a grin slipped out of the room before Kath could return anything.
Sending the email, Kath suddenly realised she was hungry. Taking her purse from her bag and grabbing her coat, she left her office to try a café down the road that a colleague had recommended. Once there, it took her ages to decide what to have - she was forever unable to make decisions -, but in the end she settled for a sandwich and tea. It was a nice enough place, but she couldn't face sitting surrounded by students when she herself felt so much like she still was one, so she took her lunch back to the office. Unlocking the door, she paused for a moment to look at the sign that was fixed to it. White letters on black proclaimed the office that of 'Dr Katharina Lange', a sight that she had yet to get used to, along with the very fact that she had her own, if tiny, office. Now, though, the formality of her own name staring at her made her feel a little less jittery and nervous.
She had barely taken a bite of her sandwich when there was a knock on the door. Bracing herself for the sight of the long, blonde hair she would see if Charlotte were to poke her head through the door, she hastily swallowed and called for the visitor to come in. However, it was only Simon, a fellow young lecturer who had helped her carry boxloads of books into the office just a few weeks earlier and who she had had lunch with on most days so far.
"Hi Simon," she said, realising that she hadn't knocked on his door to see if he was in before she'd gone to get food.
"Hi," he said. "I was going to ask if you wanted lunch, but it seems I was beaten to it."
"Sorry, I completely forgot to see if you were in. I really don't know where my head is today."
"Oh, no problem, dear," he said. "Is this post-seminar confusion?"
She nodded, forcing a smile on her lips.
"Don't worry. Everyone gets that sometimes. How did it go?"
"Not too badly. Most of them seem to understand things well enough, they just won't discuss them. But," she added after a second's thought, "there are one or two confident ones, so at least I wasn't stuck completely."
"I have this exchange student on one of my modules. Charlotte, I think it is. Blonde hair, big eyes. Impossible to keep from talking. Do you have her as well?"
Kath felt the blood rise to her cheeks. Yes, I've had her only last night, she thought, furiously pushing away the images in her head. "Yeah. She... she's the same in mine," she managed feebly.
When Simon had gone, she looked at her computer. There was a little envelope in the bottom right corner of her screen; she clicked open the email programme. Charlotte's reply was just one single line: 'How about drinks tonight?'
* * *
Pushing open the door, Kath looked around the small bar. It was just like she had remembered it. It wasn't popular with students, but, she suddenly realised, in this older crowd the chances of a colleague of hers seeing them would be a lot higher. In the minefield of their affair, she wasn't sure which one would be worse. Whether intentionally or not, Kath couldn't tell, but Charlotte was sitting at a small table at the back of the room, so much hidden in the shadows that Kath almost didn't see her.
She unbuttoned her coat as she walked up and seeing Charlotte's mouth half-open she thought for a moment how nice it would be to kiss her right then, but of course she couldn't; it was too risky. So they just hugged, awkwardly, as Charlotte was sitting and as Kath wasn't quite sure whether it was the most appropriate form of greeting. She couldn't remember when she'd last felt so helpless.
A few minutes later, she was back from the bar with their drinks. Charlotte smiled as Kath handed her hers, the cute, slightly protruding upper teeth gleaming even in the dim light. Oh God, Kath thought once again and almost had to laugh; the way in which this girl brought her close to religiosity suddenly was too funny.
They talked, their conversation staying well clear of the previous night and revolving instead around student life; after all the years of studying first for a BA, then a Master's and a PhD, Kath had more than a fair share of stories of drunken revelries, amusing mishaps and outright catastrophes to tell, but Charlotte also brought her close to tears with her laconically detached description of her English flatmates. Raising her eyes from her second drink, Charlotte suddenly asked why Kath had become a lecturer.
"Oh," Kath hesitated, probing her mind for reasons buried deep in it, "you know, I'm not actually sure anymore. There just wasn't much else going, and it seemed a good idea at the time."
"Such the shining ambassador for the job, you are," Charlotte said with a playful smile.
"Always. Why, are you after an academic career yourself?"
The answer had more than a hint of caution in it. "I've been thinking about it."
"You'd do well, you know," Kath said, thinking of how Charlotte had almost single-handedly conducted most of the seminar earlier that day. Now, she only got a raised eyebrow in reply. "I mean it. And besides, it's not all bad. The job has its perks."
"What, seducing students, you mean?" Charlotte was grinning widely and Kath herself had to chuckle, but she couldn't help thinking, Is that how she sees it, that I've seduced her?
Later, when they walked through the pools of light cast on the nightly pavement by the streetlamps, giggling like schoolgirls after too many drinks, those thoughts were quite forgotten. In their place was an impatience to get back to Kath's flat, where she would finally be able to take off Charlotte's clothes and kiss her, touch her, fuck her.
* * *
She ran her fingers over Charlotte's skin, soft and hot to her touch, stopping to caress the hardened nipples before sucking them, licking them, biting them, sending twitches through Charlotte's body. Then she slipped lower, showering the pale skin with flutters of kisses, her hands already on the other girl's thighs, feeling the body strain towards her, impatiently, urgently waiting for Kath to go on. Fingers inching closer and closer, she shifted her body and chanced a look at the girl's face: between pink-flushed cheeks the mouth stood open and she heard the sharp breath as she touched her; then, tearing her eyes away, she made her tongue touch what her fingers just had, dancingly licking in slow circles, on and on, feeling the desire just under the skin, just a touch away, ready to break loose.
Then Kath herself pressed against the fingers that were sending shivers through her own body, making her feel light-headed. Reaching out, her hand grabbed Charlotte's breasts; underneath her fingertips, they electrified her, turned her on, made her beg the other girl not to stop, not to stop, just to keep doing what she was doing, slowly, quickly, softly and teasing, playing, circling, pressing; suddenly, she felt Charlotte's finger slide inside her and closing her eyes arched her back, pressing herself against the hand that was sliding in and out, in and out, again and again, now playing with her hard and fast and then she came, came in shockwaves that rocked her body and made her brain ring inside her head until she thought she'd faint; with the other girl's fingers still inside her she collapsed, panting, blood pounding in her ears, pulling Charlotte close so she could hold her tight, breathing the musky scent of their sweaty bodies, chaotic hair falling all over her face as reality slowly returned, emerging from the aftershocks.
Later, they lay curled up against each other in bed, the duvet warm with the heat of their naked bodies. Kath's arm was across Charlotte's stomach, the fingers just touching the soft skin at the bottom of her breasts, and she felt the girl's bottom snuggled against her own body. Kath's nose almost touched the skin between the blades of Charlotte's shoulders, the smell of her filling her nostrils.
"I love you," Kath whispered, not sure Charlotte had heard her and not sure how much she really meant it. She wished that she could have looked at Charlotte's face, the face that she now, after four weeks, knew in every last little detail but could never see enough of, but she knew that even if Charlotte had been turned towards her, like so often she wouldn't have been able to read her expression.
She had to think of the absurdity of it all; the girl she was holding was her student, and yet she felt so much like a student herself. It was as if Charlotte was her lecturer. She was learning lessons she had never learnt before, but she couldn't say whether she was being taught about love or beauty or just about life.
* * *
When Kath walked into the kitchen the next morning, having taken a shower and put on a fresh pair of jeans along with a blouse she hadn't yet got around to ironing, Charlotte was at the window. Outside, the lifeless November morning promised yet another dull day, but Charlotte seemed to be more interested in the little radio that Kath kept on the window-sill. Having switched it on and found that it had been set to Radio 4, she looked at it bemusedly.
"I hadn't realised you'd gone native this much," she said and even after four weeks, Kath often found it impossible to tell exactly how serious the other girl was about things she said.
"It's all just research, you know," Kath retorted.
"Yeah, right," Charlotte said, laughing.
A bit later, they were sitting at the kitchen table. Kath tried to pile the previous day's paper into one neat stack, but the Saturday edition seemed to have come with too many sections to allow her any chance of success, so she just abandoned it in a heap and instead started to butter a slice of toast. Charlotte, meanwhile, was stirring sugar into the large mug of coffee that sat in front of her.
"So," Charlotte asked levelly, looking at Kath, "am I just a piece of research as well?"
Kath had to laugh, hoping, again, that this wasn't a serious question. "Of course you are. Everything is. I thought you were such a good student, surely you must've realised everything is for us cultural studies folk."
To Kath's relief, a grin spread on Charlotte's face. "I know. I like a bit of research myself, you know."
She was still wondering exactly how much of their affair was just research when Charlotte's mobile rang from somewhere in the flat - Kath had a suspicion it was entangled in a heap of clothes on her bedroom floor - and the girl dashed out of the kitchen to get it. A minute later, she came walking back in, talking distractedly.
"...abend anrufen? Ja? ... Ich bin nicht zuhause, ich hab bei einer Freundin übernachtet. ... Ich weiß nicht, wir machen bestimmt heute erst noch was. Ich ruf dich einfach heute abend zurück, okay? ... Okay. Bis später. ... Ja, dir auch."
When she had hung up, Charlotte muttered something about parents being useless, but Kath only waved her hand to tell how it didn't matter, asking, "I hear we're doing something together today?"
For a second Charlotte looked utterly confused, but then she laughed. "I keep forgetting you're German, too, what with you never speaking it. Yeah, sure. I'm not exactly dying to get back to my madhouse of a flat."
* * *
She'd left the house in the morning to take up residence in the café she always went to when she couldn't work at home or just needed some distraction. Today, it was a mixture of both: as much as she needed distraction, she couldn't ignore the stack of student essays that needed to be marked before the end of the weekend. So she had brought them with her and resolved to get as many as possible done before Simon would arrive for one of their semi-regular Saturday lunches in town.
By the time he sat down at the table, startling her out of a student's particularly badly written attempt at getting a grip on media reception theory, she'd already gone through two pots of tea. She went to get a third, along with an extra mug for Simon. A minute later, as she poured his tea into one of the polka-dotted mugs, she saw he'd noticed the essay on top of the 'unmarked' pile: it was Charlotte's. When it had surfaced at the top of the stack, a quick skim had shown it to be worthy of a first in what Kath hoped was a reasonably objective analysis. But she'd still avoided dealing with it, leaving it on top of the pile and preferring to mark others first. Now Simon picked up the essay to have a look and she found it impossible to object: neither of them usually minded the other looking at their students' work and anything she could've said would have been a bit suspicious.
Instead, she looked around the café and let her mind wander. The mismatched chairs and tables, too, were doused in memories of Charlotte. Shortly after the start of term, she'd been there for a poetry open mike night when, a moment before it started, the girl who until then had only been her student had walked in and with all the frankness of certain academic relationships in Germany had taken a seat next to her. Granted, there hadn't been many other seats left and Kath doubted she'd have batted an eyelid if it had happened in the small German town where she had studied as an undergraduate, but, she'd thought, surely it should be different in Britain. But then the hosts had started to talk and by the time the night was over, she had had Charlotte's phone number and had hopelessly fallen for the blonde girl with the large eyes.
"Cheeky as always," Simon said, vaguely pointing at a passage in Charlotte's essay which Kath, not having read it properly yet, could only assume to be some sort of disagreement with her own argument or teaching. "She completely upstaged me in class again the other day."
"Oh, she does that to me all the time," Kath agreed. It was true; teaching the module was becoming harder by the week, but while she was increasingly confused and, much worse, distracted, Charlotte's mind seemed to be working as clearly as ever. "You get used to it."
"She's lovely, though, isn't she?" Simon said, blushing slightly.
And even though she'd half suspected him of having a crush on Charlotte, Kath couldn't help rolling her eyes and staring at him, watching him turn bright red while she thought, I wish I could tell him how lovely I think she is, tell him how unprofessional I am, tell him how I'm risking my job and how I can't help it, because she needed to tell someone, badly, and found that there was nobody to confide in.
* * *
"You're not going to wear that, are you?"
"Wear what?" Kath asked, confused.
"Your coat."
"But- it's winter out there. It's bloody cold."
"And there's no cloakroom," Charlotte said, taking the coat out of Kath's hand and putting it back on its hanger. "If you want to study life, you've got to live it the way it's lived."
Kath still wasn't convinced it was a good idea, but there was no arguing with Charlotte. They were going to go out, get drunk somewhere and then go dancing. And all because Kath had said she didn't really understand why students spent their nights like that. "Well, we'll just have to go and have a look at it, then," had been Charlotte's reply. "We'll go to one of those horrible, huge bars where you can't talk because the music is too loud and then we'll go to one of those horrible, huge clubs where the music is shite. And we're going to enjoy ourselves anyway."
Out in the street, they walked quickly, the icy cold cutting through Kath's skin and making her feel numb. Looking at other girls hobbling towards town in heels too high and clothes too short, Kath felt old and out of place. Charlotte, however, smiled at her and said, "You look lovely, you know. You should wear a skirt more often."
"Yeah, well," Kath said, too tetchy and worried to care. "What if we run into your flatmates?" she asked. "You said they go there regularly."
"Oh, we'll just say it's participant observation. I volunteered to help out with a bit of research for your class."
"Right." They walked silently for a bit, Kath digesting the ease with which Charlotte came up with these things. "Well, what if we run into some other student from the module?"
Charlotte's reply was an exasperated sigh and a bemused smile. "Just stop worrying, will you? We'll cross that bridge when we get there. 'Till then, remember we're here to enjoy ourselves."
She wouldn't have thought it possible, but when a few hours and more than a few drinks later she found herself on the dancefloor, she might not have been having the time of her life, but she was enjoying herself. Charlotte was dancing a little way off and she watched the head of blonde hair disappear and reappear in the sea that moved with the booming pulse of the music. Glancing around at the faces that bobbed past her in the flashing half-light, she couldn't find anyone who wasn't obviously much younger than she was. And yet she only shrugged and looked at the bottle of brightly coloured, sugary alcohol in her hand; it was just the right thing to keep all thoughts out of her head for this one night.
Charlotte appeared out of the nowhere of her distraction, leaned in and shouted, "So, how's the observation coming along?" Kath felt the hot breath in her ear; it lingered there for a moment as naked desire. She touched a hand to Charlotte's side, resting it there for a moment, and smiled. She'd actually forgotten the reason they had had for coming there.
"Now you know why students do this," Charlotte said and Kath understood that Charlotte simply knew what she was thinking. Engulfed by the music, her mind resting comfortably on a sweet alcoholic cloud, she realised how relieving it was to forget the world. She's better at doing cultural studies now than I'll ever be, Kath thought. She was just about to tell her this, when looking around she realised that Charlotte had already disappeared back into the crowd.
* * *
Rain battered Kath's umbrella as she stood at the stop, waiting for a bus to make its way up the road through the mist of rain and spray. Cars rushed past incessantly, but there was no sign of a bus and Kath was increasingly annoyed and put out: it had been one of the short Northern midwinter days she loathed so much, dawn lingering until dusk. The last thing she wanted was to stand by the side of the noisy road, gusts of wind hurling swathes of rain at her while the cold crept through scarf, coat, trousers, boots, everything.
It was well into the Christmas holidays and most students had gone home, but Charlotte, reluctant to leave England and return to her family, was still around. But what was more was that all her flatmates had left so that finally, two months into their affair, Kath could visit for the first time. The thought kept her occupied throughout the journey on the bus that had eventually turned up and on which she stood squashed against the other packed-up passengers. She didn't like to admit it even to herself, but she was getting a bit nervous and it didn't help that she almost missed the stop because she couldn't see out of the steamed-up windows.
She rang the doorbell; a minute later, Charlotte came running down the stairs to let her in, wearing an apron over a bright red top. Giving her a quick kiss as soon as they were inside the door, she apologised that she had to rush straight back to the kitchen: she was preparing dinner and it needed to be seen to. Once in the flat, she gestured at her room and told Kath to leave her things there before disappearing through a door painted a shade of green slightly more hideous than the rest to identify it as the kitchen.
For lack of a better place, Kath carefully laid her coat on the little armchair and put her bag on the floor beside it. Then, struggling out of her boots, she looked around the small room: the brown curtains clashed magnificently with the green door while the colour chosen for the walls was a grubby beige that did nothing to improve the general impression. But with the walls decorated with random posters and photographs and piles of books and papers littering the rickety desk, she immediately felt comfortable. Half wishing to be a student again, she thought she'd better join Charlotte in the kitchen before she'd be fetched.
If Charlotte's room had reminded her of her own days as a student, it was nothing compared to how the kitchen had 'halls of residence' written all over it. The chairs were blue plastic, the cupboards and tabletops bright white, glaring in the fluorescent light that also fell on the obligatory pyramid of empty lager cans in a corner.
Charlotte was following her gaze. "See, that's why I don't mind coming to yours," she said.
"Oh, it's not so-" Kath started and stopped. Dropping English politeness in favour of a long-buried native frankness that Charlotte brought out in her again, she said, "Well, actually, it's pretty horrible."
Charlotte laughed. "And now imagine it populated by my first-year flatmates" - she gestured towards the beer cans - "and you get the picture. It's fun, but sometimes it's nice to have a bit of a break." She pulled Kath close, kissing her, cheeks hot from the stove passing their heat on to Kath's still-frozen ones, hand touching, lips brushing, tongue licking, all in a flash and then breaking loose again: "But anyway, dinner's ready."
Later, having sex with Charlotte on the standard-issue student bed, she tried to block out the memories but couldn't. Unlike Kath's own, large bed this one didn't quite give the impression that sex was something it had been designed for and as she inevitably clumsily bumped into the wall or almost fell off the bed, the buried memories of her own Erasmus days pushed back to the surface: it was as if she was back in her own room in Ireland with the girl she'd met in her first class there; she had to bite her lip to focus on Charlotte, whose tongue was now between her legs, making it impossible to think of anything else anyway as she felt tip of tongue on clit, fingers pushing inside her, slow, fast, soft, hard; impossible to think of anything else as she came.
* * *
Kath was already in the hall, putting on her boots, when her sister caught up with her, asking where she was going.
"Ich wollte ein bisschen spazieren gehen. Ein paar alte Orte wieder sehen." Just a bit of a walk, see some old places, Kath told her. In truth, she desperately needed some time alone. Christmas Day at her parents' had been dragging on all day and still was far from over.
"Oh. Ich hatte noch ein paar Fotos von Anna-Marie mitgebracht. Ich dachte, wir könnten uns die ansehen."
"Später, wenn ich wieder da bin, okay?" The last thing Kath wanted now was to look at pictures of Anna-Marie, her sister's two-year old daughter. The child was around anyway and Kath found it difficult enough to deal with her in person: a deluge of photographs held little appeal for her. So when she told her sister they'd look at them when she got back, she really was hoping that something would get in the way of it.
Out in the street, the quiet afternoon dusk soothed her. In the half hour between day and night, the light of the streetlamps disappeared before it reached the ground so that the only spots of warmth were living room windows lit up by candlelight and Christmas trees: glowing rectangular squares telling stories of different lives. In the relief of being alone with the grey houses lining the deserted streets, Kath thought about how little she had in common with her family. Perhaps, she thought, it wasn't so much that unlike her sister she had neither husband nor children and no particular desire for either, but rather that she had never left academia. It happened less and less, but sometimes she still caught herself thinking she was an undergraduate student, somehow suspended at age nineteen. This country wasn't hers anymore, either; with every year she spent away from it, she felt more lost whenever she came back. Even walking through the city streets she once had known so well, Kath could not shake off the feeling of being out of place as much as out of time, the feeling which put everything behind clouded glass, unreal to the touch.
Her mind, thrown off its path by the thought of touch, was filled with Charlotte. She had a momentary glimpse of Charlotte's soft fingers meandering over naked skin with maddening precision, but then it was gone again and she felt emptier than before. Where was Charlotte now? All she had to go on was the name of the city, far away at the other end of the country, but it told her nothing about the girl that even now she knew hardly at all. Did a living room with her inside cast a yellow light out into a street somewhere?
The crisp cold night fell onto her face and seeped through her clothes. Turning the reflected sound of her heels back towards her parents', she resigned herself to pretending she wouldn't rather be alone. With the living room too full of life, Kath joined her mother in the kitchen, busying herself with the potato peeler to deflect the unavoidable question about where she'd been.
"Draußen. Nachdenken," she said as nonchalantly as possible, dropping a potato into the pan. Out. Thinking. It was as much as she would say to anyone, no matter how much the incessant overflow of unspoken thoughts would tug and tear at her senses.
* * *
Kath was in her office, reading a paper she wasn't really interested in. With two days to go before term started again and essays would flood in, she was simply trying to get through everything else that had piled up on her desk during the Christmas break.
There was a knock on the door. "Come in," she called, automatically glancing at the clock on the wall: it was too early for Simon to drop in and ask about lunch. For a moment, nothing happened and she was about to call out again when the door was carefully opened and Charlotte came in, immediately closing the door behind her. Putting down the paper, Kath was about to get up when she realised Charlotte was rooted to the spot.
"Hey. How are you? Everything okay?" Kath said, trying to shut out a whirlwind of thoughts assailing her.
"I'm sorry," Charlotte said, looking at Kath with her green eyes as she went on, quietly but firmly, "I've fallen in love."
Kath opened her mouth, but her mind was reeling and she couldn't find any words. Not with me, she couldn't help adding in her head.
"I'm sorry, but-" In the short pause, Charlotte's eyes looked into hers again and seemed to implore her to understand. "It's over."
Kath nodded, unable to speak. She's never loved me, she thought.
Neither of them said anything for a minute. Kath looked at the floor, at the clock on the wall, at her desk, anywhere but at Charlotte. She's never loved me, she thought again, how could I ever have believed she did?
"Are you okay?" Charlotte asked. Kath nodded. "Are you sure? Are you going to be okay?"
"Yes," Kath said, quietly, finally finding her voice. No, she thought.
"I'm so sorry."
"Charlotte, please, go."
For a moment, Charlotte looked at Kath. Then she bit her lip, nodded and turned around. With her hand on the doorknob, she hesitated and said, so quietly Kath hardly heard her, "Thank you, though. For everything." Then she was gone.
The click of the closing door snapped Kath out of her immobility. She wanted to be furious, wanted to hate the girl, but she realised she had known it all along, deep down, and had refused to let herself acknowledge that it was nothing more than an affair. Now she only felt drained. She stood up, feeling a bit unsure on her feet, and looked out of the window. Charlotte was just leaving the building and, walking off into the dull January morning, half turned around but then seemed to think better of it. Kath stared at the blonde head until it turned a corner and was gone.
Just a bit of research, she thought, just a bit of research.
Many, many thanks to tornyourdress for reading an earlier draft and giving me feedback on it! I hope you like it even better now.
Research
Kath couldn't help it. Charlotte was answering her question and she watched as the lips moved in speech, but she couldn't concentrate on what the girl was saying. In her head, her own voice pathetically chorused, those lips, oh god, those lips.
She told herself to get a grip, but it was impossible. She felt like laughing out loud. This was ridiculous; she was teaching this class and she wasn't even sure what they were talking about anymore. All she knew was that the sight of those lips, of that face, of that girl was almost unbearable in how it edged her mind towards the all-too-fresh memories she was desperately trying to shut out.
Charlotte finished and looked at her. Kath was confused, sure her students must've seen her jump when startled out of her thoughts and clueless as to what to say. She felt like a fraud, an impostor who deserved neither doctorate nor teaching post.
"But isn't that exactly what Gramsci means?" a black-haired boy asked, looking at her from across the seminar room. Charlotte, she saw out of the corner of her eye, looked at her copy of the text for a moment and then, with a quick sweep that took in the boy who'd asked, brought her large green eyes around to meet Kath's. They were inquiring, the raised eyebrows half obscured by that neat side-swept fringe, asking whether she could answer. Her face was all business, Kath couldn't find any trace of emotion or distraction or concern in it. How does she do it?, she asked herself as she helplessly gestured at the girl. Charlotte held her gaze for another fraction of a second and a flutter of a smile played on her lips, mocking and teasing her lecturer. Then she was half turned away, speaking to the boy, leaving Kath to study her profile: the thick, blonde hair loosely falling onto her shoulders in long lines that framed the softly rounded face.
How does she do it?, she thought again, How does she manage to sit there and talk about cultural hegemony as if it was the most normal thing in the world when all I can think of is the memory of her touch?
* * *
'Thank you so much,' she typed later, back in her office, 'for saving my back in class today. I owe you for that. Coffee or a drink one of these days, perhaps?'
Charlotte had kept on discussing the theory with the other students until the end of the seminar, with nothing more than reassuring nods and the odd dazed prompt from Kath. Then, while Kath was busy answering a string of worried questions asked by a rather unintelligent girl with a southern accent, she had said a quick goodbye and with a grin slipped out of the room before Kath could return anything.
Sending the email, Kath suddenly realised she was hungry. Taking her purse from her bag and grabbing her coat, she left her office to try a café down the road that a colleague had recommended. Once there, it took her ages to decide what to have - she was forever unable to make decisions -, but in the end she settled for a sandwich and tea. It was a nice enough place, but she couldn't face sitting surrounded by students when she herself felt so much like she still was one, so she took her lunch back to the office. Unlocking the door, she paused for a moment to look at the sign that was fixed to it. White letters on black proclaimed the office that of 'Dr Katharina Lange', a sight that she had yet to get used to, along with the very fact that she had her own, if tiny, office. Now, though, the formality of her own name staring at her made her feel a little less jittery and nervous.
She had barely taken a bite of her sandwich when there was a knock on the door. Bracing herself for the sight of the long, blonde hair she would see if Charlotte were to poke her head through the door, she hastily swallowed and called for the visitor to come in. However, it was only Simon, a fellow young lecturer who had helped her carry boxloads of books into the office just a few weeks earlier and who she had had lunch with on most days so far.
"Hi Simon," she said, realising that she hadn't knocked on his door to see if he was in before she'd gone to get food.
"Hi," he said. "I was going to ask if you wanted lunch, but it seems I was beaten to it."
"Sorry, I completely forgot to see if you were in. I really don't know where my head is today."
"Oh, no problem, dear," he said. "Is this post-seminar confusion?"
She nodded, forcing a smile on her lips.
"Don't worry. Everyone gets that sometimes. How did it go?"
"Not too badly. Most of them seem to understand things well enough, they just won't discuss them. But," she added after a second's thought, "there are one or two confident ones, so at least I wasn't stuck completely."
"I have this exchange student on one of my modules. Charlotte, I think it is. Blonde hair, big eyes. Impossible to keep from talking. Do you have her as well?"
Kath felt the blood rise to her cheeks. Yes, I've had her only last night, she thought, furiously pushing away the images in her head. "Yeah. She... she's the same in mine," she managed feebly.
When Simon had gone, she looked at her computer. There was a little envelope in the bottom right corner of her screen; she clicked open the email programme. Charlotte's reply was just one single line: 'How about drinks tonight?'
* * *
Pushing open the door, Kath looked around the small bar. It was just like she had remembered it. It wasn't popular with students, but, she suddenly realised, in this older crowd the chances of a colleague of hers seeing them would be a lot higher. In the minefield of their affair, she wasn't sure which one would be worse. Whether intentionally or not, Kath couldn't tell, but Charlotte was sitting at a small table at the back of the room, so much hidden in the shadows that Kath almost didn't see her.
She unbuttoned her coat as she walked up and seeing Charlotte's mouth half-open she thought for a moment how nice it would be to kiss her right then, but of course she couldn't; it was too risky. So they just hugged, awkwardly, as Charlotte was sitting and as Kath wasn't quite sure whether it was the most appropriate form of greeting. She couldn't remember when she'd last felt so helpless.
A few minutes later, she was back from the bar with their drinks. Charlotte smiled as Kath handed her hers, the cute, slightly protruding upper teeth gleaming even in the dim light. Oh God, Kath thought once again and almost had to laugh; the way in which this girl brought her close to religiosity suddenly was too funny.
They talked, their conversation staying well clear of the previous night and revolving instead around student life; after all the years of studying first for a BA, then a Master's and a PhD, Kath had more than a fair share of stories of drunken revelries, amusing mishaps and outright catastrophes to tell, but Charlotte also brought her close to tears with her laconically detached description of her English flatmates. Raising her eyes from her second drink, Charlotte suddenly asked why Kath had become a lecturer.
"Oh," Kath hesitated, probing her mind for reasons buried deep in it, "you know, I'm not actually sure anymore. There just wasn't much else going, and it seemed a good idea at the time."
"Such the shining ambassador for the job, you are," Charlotte said with a playful smile.
"Always. Why, are you after an academic career yourself?"
The answer had more than a hint of caution in it. "I've been thinking about it."
"You'd do well, you know," Kath said, thinking of how Charlotte had almost single-handedly conducted most of the seminar earlier that day. Now, she only got a raised eyebrow in reply. "I mean it. And besides, it's not all bad. The job has its perks."
"What, seducing students, you mean?" Charlotte was grinning widely and Kath herself had to chuckle, but she couldn't help thinking, Is that how she sees it, that I've seduced her?
Later, when they walked through the pools of light cast on the nightly pavement by the streetlamps, giggling like schoolgirls after too many drinks, those thoughts were quite forgotten. In their place was an impatience to get back to Kath's flat, where she would finally be able to take off Charlotte's clothes and kiss her, touch her, fuck her.
* * *
She ran her fingers over Charlotte's skin, soft and hot to her touch, stopping to caress the hardened nipples before sucking them, licking them, biting them, sending twitches through Charlotte's body. Then she slipped lower, showering the pale skin with flutters of kisses, her hands already on the other girl's thighs, feeling the body strain towards her, impatiently, urgently waiting for Kath to go on. Fingers inching closer and closer, she shifted her body and chanced a look at the girl's face: between pink-flushed cheeks the mouth stood open and she heard the sharp breath as she touched her; then, tearing her eyes away, she made her tongue touch what her fingers just had, dancingly licking in slow circles, on and on, feeling the desire just under the skin, just a touch away, ready to break loose.
Then Kath herself pressed against the fingers that were sending shivers through her own body, making her feel light-headed. Reaching out, her hand grabbed Charlotte's breasts; underneath her fingertips, they electrified her, turned her on, made her beg the other girl not to stop, not to stop, just to keep doing what she was doing, slowly, quickly, softly and teasing, playing, circling, pressing; suddenly, she felt Charlotte's finger slide inside her and closing her eyes arched her back, pressing herself against the hand that was sliding in and out, in and out, again and again, now playing with her hard and fast and then she came, came in shockwaves that rocked her body and made her brain ring inside her head until she thought she'd faint; with the other girl's fingers still inside her she collapsed, panting, blood pounding in her ears, pulling Charlotte close so she could hold her tight, breathing the musky scent of their sweaty bodies, chaotic hair falling all over her face as reality slowly returned, emerging from the aftershocks.
Later, they lay curled up against each other in bed, the duvet warm with the heat of their naked bodies. Kath's arm was across Charlotte's stomach, the fingers just touching the soft skin at the bottom of her breasts, and she felt the girl's bottom snuggled against her own body. Kath's nose almost touched the skin between the blades of Charlotte's shoulders, the smell of her filling her nostrils.
"I love you," Kath whispered, not sure Charlotte had heard her and not sure how much she really meant it. She wished that she could have looked at Charlotte's face, the face that she now, after four weeks, knew in every last little detail but could never see enough of, but she knew that even if Charlotte had been turned towards her, like so often she wouldn't have been able to read her expression.
She had to think of the absurdity of it all; the girl she was holding was her student, and yet she felt so much like a student herself. It was as if Charlotte was her lecturer. She was learning lessons she had never learnt before, but she couldn't say whether she was being taught about love or beauty or just about life.
* * *
When Kath walked into the kitchen the next morning, having taken a shower and put on a fresh pair of jeans along with a blouse she hadn't yet got around to ironing, Charlotte was at the window. Outside, the lifeless November morning promised yet another dull day, but Charlotte seemed to be more interested in the little radio that Kath kept on the window-sill. Having switched it on and found that it had been set to Radio 4, she looked at it bemusedly.
"I hadn't realised you'd gone native this much," she said and even after four weeks, Kath often found it impossible to tell exactly how serious the other girl was about things she said.
"It's all just research, you know," Kath retorted.
"Yeah, right," Charlotte said, laughing.
A bit later, they were sitting at the kitchen table. Kath tried to pile the previous day's paper into one neat stack, but the Saturday edition seemed to have come with too many sections to allow her any chance of success, so she just abandoned it in a heap and instead started to butter a slice of toast. Charlotte, meanwhile, was stirring sugar into the large mug of coffee that sat in front of her.
"So," Charlotte asked levelly, looking at Kath, "am I just a piece of research as well?"
Kath had to laugh, hoping, again, that this wasn't a serious question. "Of course you are. Everything is. I thought you were such a good student, surely you must've realised everything is for us cultural studies folk."
To Kath's relief, a grin spread on Charlotte's face. "I know. I like a bit of research myself, you know."
She was still wondering exactly how much of their affair was just research when Charlotte's mobile rang from somewhere in the flat - Kath had a suspicion it was entangled in a heap of clothes on her bedroom floor - and the girl dashed out of the kitchen to get it. A minute later, she came walking back in, talking distractedly.
"...abend anrufen? Ja? ... Ich bin nicht zuhause, ich hab bei einer Freundin übernachtet. ... Ich weiß nicht, wir machen bestimmt heute erst noch was. Ich ruf dich einfach heute abend zurück, okay? ... Okay. Bis später. ... Ja, dir auch."
When she had hung up, Charlotte muttered something about parents being useless, but Kath only waved her hand to tell how it didn't matter, asking, "I hear we're doing something together today?"
For a second Charlotte looked utterly confused, but then she laughed. "I keep forgetting you're German, too, what with you never speaking it. Yeah, sure. I'm not exactly dying to get back to my madhouse of a flat."
* * *
She'd left the house in the morning to take up residence in the café she always went to when she couldn't work at home or just needed some distraction. Today, it was a mixture of both: as much as she needed distraction, she couldn't ignore the stack of student essays that needed to be marked before the end of the weekend. So she had brought them with her and resolved to get as many as possible done before Simon would arrive for one of their semi-regular Saturday lunches in town.
By the time he sat down at the table, startling her out of a student's particularly badly written attempt at getting a grip on media reception theory, she'd already gone through two pots of tea. She went to get a third, along with an extra mug for Simon. A minute later, as she poured his tea into one of the polka-dotted mugs, she saw he'd noticed the essay on top of the 'unmarked' pile: it was Charlotte's. When it had surfaced at the top of the stack, a quick skim had shown it to be worthy of a first in what Kath hoped was a reasonably objective analysis. But she'd still avoided dealing with it, leaving it on top of the pile and preferring to mark others first. Now Simon picked up the essay to have a look and she found it impossible to object: neither of them usually minded the other looking at their students' work and anything she could've said would have been a bit suspicious.
Instead, she looked around the café and let her mind wander. The mismatched chairs and tables, too, were doused in memories of Charlotte. Shortly after the start of term, she'd been there for a poetry open mike night when, a moment before it started, the girl who until then had only been her student had walked in and with all the frankness of certain academic relationships in Germany had taken a seat next to her. Granted, there hadn't been many other seats left and Kath doubted she'd have batted an eyelid if it had happened in the small German town where she had studied as an undergraduate, but, she'd thought, surely it should be different in Britain. But then the hosts had started to talk and by the time the night was over, she had had Charlotte's phone number and had hopelessly fallen for the blonde girl with the large eyes.
"Cheeky as always," Simon said, vaguely pointing at a passage in Charlotte's essay which Kath, not having read it properly yet, could only assume to be some sort of disagreement with her own argument or teaching. "She completely upstaged me in class again the other day."
"Oh, she does that to me all the time," Kath agreed. It was true; teaching the module was becoming harder by the week, but while she was increasingly confused and, much worse, distracted, Charlotte's mind seemed to be working as clearly as ever. "You get used to it."
"She's lovely, though, isn't she?" Simon said, blushing slightly.
And even though she'd half suspected him of having a crush on Charlotte, Kath couldn't help rolling her eyes and staring at him, watching him turn bright red while she thought, I wish I could tell him how lovely I think she is, tell him how unprofessional I am, tell him how I'm risking my job and how I can't help it, because she needed to tell someone, badly, and found that there was nobody to confide in.
* * *
"You're not going to wear that, are you?"
"Wear what?" Kath asked, confused.
"Your coat."
"But- it's winter out there. It's bloody cold."
"And there's no cloakroom," Charlotte said, taking the coat out of Kath's hand and putting it back on its hanger. "If you want to study life, you've got to live it the way it's lived."
Kath still wasn't convinced it was a good idea, but there was no arguing with Charlotte. They were going to go out, get drunk somewhere and then go dancing. And all because Kath had said she didn't really understand why students spent their nights like that. "Well, we'll just have to go and have a look at it, then," had been Charlotte's reply. "We'll go to one of those horrible, huge bars where you can't talk because the music is too loud and then we'll go to one of those horrible, huge clubs where the music is shite. And we're going to enjoy ourselves anyway."
Out in the street, they walked quickly, the icy cold cutting through Kath's skin and making her feel numb. Looking at other girls hobbling towards town in heels too high and clothes too short, Kath felt old and out of place. Charlotte, however, smiled at her and said, "You look lovely, you know. You should wear a skirt more often."
"Yeah, well," Kath said, too tetchy and worried to care. "What if we run into your flatmates?" she asked. "You said they go there regularly."
"Oh, we'll just say it's participant observation. I volunteered to help out with a bit of research for your class."
"Right." They walked silently for a bit, Kath digesting the ease with which Charlotte came up with these things. "Well, what if we run into some other student from the module?"
Charlotte's reply was an exasperated sigh and a bemused smile. "Just stop worrying, will you? We'll cross that bridge when we get there. 'Till then, remember we're here to enjoy ourselves."
She wouldn't have thought it possible, but when a few hours and more than a few drinks later she found herself on the dancefloor, she might not have been having the time of her life, but she was enjoying herself. Charlotte was dancing a little way off and she watched the head of blonde hair disappear and reappear in the sea that moved with the booming pulse of the music. Glancing around at the faces that bobbed past her in the flashing half-light, she couldn't find anyone who wasn't obviously much younger than she was. And yet she only shrugged and looked at the bottle of brightly coloured, sugary alcohol in her hand; it was just the right thing to keep all thoughts out of her head for this one night.
Charlotte appeared out of the nowhere of her distraction, leaned in and shouted, "So, how's the observation coming along?" Kath felt the hot breath in her ear; it lingered there for a moment as naked desire. She touched a hand to Charlotte's side, resting it there for a moment, and smiled. She'd actually forgotten the reason they had had for coming there.
"Now you know why students do this," Charlotte said and Kath understood that Charlotte simply knew what she was thinking. Engulfed by the music, her mind resting comfortably on a sweet alcoholic cloud, she realised how relieving it was to forget the world. She's better at doing cultural studies now than I'll ever be, Kath thought. She was just about to tell her this, when looking around she realised that Charlotte had already disappeared back into the crowd.
* * *
Rain battered Kath's umbrella as she stood at the stop, waiting for a bus to make its way up the road through the mist of rain and spray. Cars rushed past incessantly, but there was no sign of a bus and Kath was increasingly annoyed and put out: it had been one of the short Northern midwinter days she loathed so much, dawn lingering until dusk. The last thing she wanted was to stand by the side of the noisy road, gusts of wind hurling swathes of rain at her while the cold crept through scarf, coat, trousers, boots, everything.
It was well into the Christmas holidays and most students had gone home, but Charlotte, reluctant to leave England and return to her family, was still around. But what was more was that all her flatmates had left so that finally, two months into their affair, Kath could visit for the first time. The thought kept her occupied throughout the journey on the bus that had eventually turned up and on which she stood squashed against the other packed-up passengers. She didn't like to admit it even to herself, but she was getting a bit nervous and it didn't help that she almost missed the stop because she couldn't see out of the steamed-up windows.
She rang the doorbell; a minute later, Charlotte came running down the stairs to let her in, wearing an apron over a bright red top. Giving her a quick kiss as soon as they were inside the door, she apologised that she had to rush straight back to the kitchen: she was preparing dinner and it needed to be seen to. Once in the flat, she gestured at her room and told Kath to leave her things there before disappearing through a door painted a shade of green slightly more hideous than the rest to identify it as the kitchen.
For lack of a better place, Kath carefully laid her coat on the little armchair and put her bag on the floor beside it. Then, struggling out of her boots, she looked around the small room: the brown curtains clashed magnificently with the green door while the colour chosen for the walls was a grubby beige that did nothing to improve the general impression. But with the walls decorated with random posters and photographs and piles of books and papers littering the rickety desk, she immediately felt comfortable. Half wishing to be a student again, she thought she'd better join Charlotte in the kitchen before she'd be fetched.
If Charlotte's room had reminded her of her own days as a student, it was nothing compared to how the kitchen had 'halls of residence' written all over it. The chairs were blue plastic, the cupboards and tabletops bright white, glaring in the fluorescent light that also fell on the obligatory pyramid of empty lager cans in a corner.
Charlotte was following her gaze. "See, that's why I don't mind coming to yours," she said.
"Oh, it's not so-" Kath started and stopped. Dropping English politeness in favour of a long-buried native frankness that Charlotte brought out in her again, she said, "Well, actually, it's pretty horrible."
Charlotte laughed. "And now imagine it populated by my first-year flatmates" - she gestured towards the beer cans - "and you get the picture. It's fun, but sometimes it's nice to have a bit of a break." She pulled Kath close, kissing her, cheeks hot from the stove passing their heat on to Kath's still-frozen ones, hand touching, lips brushing, tongue licking, all in a flash and then breaking loose again: "But anyway, dinner's ready."
Later, having sex with Charlotte on the standard-issue student bed, she tried to block out the memories but couldn't. Unlike Kath's own, large bed this one didn't quite give the impression that sex was something it had been designed for and as she inevitably clumsily bumped into the wall or almost fell off the bed, the buried memories of her own Erasmus days pushed back to the surface: it was as if she was back in her own room in Ireland with the girl she'd met in her first class there; she had to bite her lip to focus on Charlotte, whose tongue was now between her legs, making it impossible to think of anything else anyway as she felt tip of tongue on clit, fingers pushing inside her, slow, fast, soft, hard; impossible to think of anything else as she came.
* * *
Kath was already in the hall, putting on her boots, when her sister caught up with her, asking where she was going.
"Ich wollte ein bisschen spazieren gehen. Ein paar alte Orte wieder sehen." Just a bit of a walk, see some old places, Kath told her. In truth, she desperately needed some time alone. Christmas Day at her parents' had been dragging on all day and still was far from over.
"Oh. Ich hatte noch ein paar Fotos von Anna-Marie mitgebracht. Ich dachte, wir könnten uns die ansehen."
"Später, wenn ich wieder da bin, okay?" The last thing Kath wanted now was to look at pictures of Anna-Marie, her sister's two-year old daughter. The child was around anyway and Kath found it difficult enough to deal with her in person: a deluge of photographs held little appeal for her. So when she told her sister they'd look at them when she got back, she really was hoping that something would get in the way of it.
Out in the street, the quiet afternoon dusk soothed her. In the half hour between day and night, the light of the streetlamps disappeared before it reached the ground so that the only spots of warmth were living room windows lit up by candlelight and Christmas trees: glowing rectangular squares telling stories of different lives. In the relief of being alone with the grey houses lining the deserted streets, Kath thought about how little she had in common with her family. Perhaps, she thought, it wasn't so much that unlike her sister she had neither husband nor children and no particular desire for either, but rather that she had never left academia. It happened less and less, but sometimes she still caught herself thinking she was an undergraduate student, somehow suspended at age nineteen. This country wasn't hers anymore, either; with every year she spent away from it, she felt more lost whenever she came back. Even walking through the city streets she once had known so well, Kath could not shake off the feeling of being out of place as much as out of time, the feeling which put everything behind clouded glass, unreal to the touch.
Her mind, thrown off its path by the thought of touch, was filled with Charlotte. She had a momentary glimpse of Charlotte's soft fingers meandering over naked skin with maddening precision, but then it was gone again and she felt emptier than before. Where was Charlotte now? All she had to go on was the name of the city, far away at the other end of the country, but it told her nothing about the girl that even now she knew hardly at all. Did a living room with her inside cast a yellow light out into a street somewhere?
The crisp cold night fell onto her face and seeped through her clothes. Turning the reflected sound of her heels back towards her parents', she resigned herself to pretending she wouldn't rather be alone. With the living room too full of life, Kath joined her mother in the kitchen, busying herself with the potato peeler to deflect the unavoidable question about where she'd been.
"Draußen. Nachdenken," she said as nonchalantly as possible, dropping a potato into the pan. Out. Thinking. It was as much as she would say to anyone, no matter how much the incessant overflow of unspoken thoughts would tug and tear at her senses.
* * *
Kath was in her office, reading a paper she wasn't really interested in. With two days to go before term started again and essays would flood in, she was simply trying to get through everything else that had piled up on her desk during the Christmas break.
There was a knock on the door. "Come in," she called, automatically glancing at the clock on the wall: it was too early for Simon to drop in and ask about lunch. For a moment, nothing happened and she was about to call out again when the door was carefully opened and Charlotte came in, immediately closing the door behind her. Putting down the paper, Kath was about to get up when she realised Charlotte was rooted to the spot.
"Hey. How are you? Everything okay?" Kath said, trying to shut out a whirlwind of thoughts assailing her.
"I'm sorry," Charlotte said, looking at Kath with her green eyes as she went on, quietly but firmly, "I've fallen in love."
Kath opened her mouth, but her mind was reeling and she couldn't find any words. Not with me, she couldn't help adding in her head.
"I'm sorry, but-" In the short pause, Charlotte's eyes looked into hers again and seemed to implore her to understand. "It's over."
Kath nodded, unable to speak. She's never loved me, she thought.
Neither of them said anything for a minute. Kath looked at the floor, at the clock on the wall, at her desk, anywhere but at Charlotte. She's never loved me, she thought again, how could I ever have believed she did?
"Are you okay?" Charlotte asked. Kath nodded. "Are you sure? Are you going to be okay?"
"Yes," Kath said, quietly, finally finding her voice. No, she thought.
"I'm so sorry."
"Charlotte, please, go."
For a moment, Charlotte looked at Kath. Then she bit her lip, nodded and turned around. With her hand on the doorknob, she hesitated and said, so quietly Kath hardly heard her, "Thank you, though. For everything." Then she was gone.
The click of the closing door snapped Kath out of her immobility. She wanted to be furious, wanted to hate the girl, but she realised she had known it all along, deep down, and had refused to let herself acknowledge that it was nothing more than an affair. Now she only felt drained. She stood up, feeling a bit unsure on her feet, and looked out of the window. Charlotte was just leaving the building and, walking off into the dull January morning, half turned around but then seemed to think better of it. Kath stared at the blonde head until it turned a corner and was gone.
Just a bit of research, she thought, just a bit of research.