One Perfect Summer

and I were conversing about Minkowski spacetime.’ I refrain from commenting. ‘And she was fawning all over Matthew,’ he adds. ‘It was embarrassing.’
    ‘Lukas!’ I hiss. ‘Give her a break. She’s just split up with her boyfr—’
    ‘Exactly!’ he interrupts loudly.
    ‘Shh!’
    ‘I would have thought she’d behave better,’ he continues. ‘She can’t be that heartbroken.’
    ‘A little flirting never hurt anyone,’ I say reasonably.
    ‘That’s what you think, is it?’ A chill goes through me at the iciness of his stare. I’m lost for words as he turns his back on me and switches off the light.



 
    A little under a year and a half later Rosalinde gets married. She wears a beautiful cream-coloured gown decorated with lace and a shower of Swarovski crystals, with a five-metre train. Her long, blonde hair is intricately twisted into a bun below a diamond tiara that has been handed down to her by her mother and her grandmother before that. Four hundred guests attend her wedding.
    I am not one of them.
    Lukas is. I think he wants to put some closure on their relationship. He said it would be inappropriate for me to go.
    And so I read about it online. The wedding is a big deal in German high society, and I can understand the majority of what went on, thanks to the German lessons which I continue to take, even though I have long since graduated. I got a 2:1, just missing out on a First. Lukas blamed my spending too much time on the river, but I was happy with my result. Naturally he graduated with a First.
    I’m currently working in a primary school in the city, after spending a year doing a Graduate Teacher Programme. I’m now fully qualified and I’m enjoying having a class of six- and seven-year-olds all to myself. Mind you, it’s only been two weeks, but so far so good, as they say.
    The phone rings. It’s nine o’clock on a Sunday morning and I’m sitting on the bed, propped up with pillows. We’re still in our little cottage on Conduit Head Road. It feels like home now. I reach across to my bedside table and pick up the handset.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘It’s me.’ Lukas.
    ‘Hi!’ I put my laptop to one side and sit up properly. ‘How was it?’ He’s still in Germany. The wedding was yesterday, but he didn’t call me last night.
    ‘It was fine.’
    ‘She went through with it, then?’ I say with a shaky laugh.
    ‘There was never any doubt in my mind that she would.’
    I’m glad he could be so certain. I spent yesterday on tenterhooks, wondering if Lukas’s parents would succeed in getting him to do a last-minute intervention. Maybe now we can all get on with our lives – I feel like I’ve been ever-so-slightly in limbo since she got engaged. Was that the longest engagement in the history of engagements? I guess not. It felt like it to me, though. And now that it’s all over I’m surprised I’m not more relieved. I still feel numb, to be honest.
    ‘I’m coming back on Tuesday,’ Lukas says in a quiet voice.
    ‘Are you?’ He isn’t supposed to return until Saturday. ‘Why?’
    ‘There’s no point in me staying.’
    ‘Are you okay?’ I ask hesitantly.
    He sighs. ‘I’m fine. I’ll speak to you when I get home.’
    I feel uneasy and tell him as much.
    ‘It’s okay,’ he tries to reassure me. ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m just exhausted, that’s all.’
    I’d like to blame his work and the hours he does, but I have a feeling this exhaustion is emotional. The tone of his voice reminds me of when he returned from Germany at the beginning of the year, after Christmas. He seemed mentally fatigued. I suspected his parents had put pressure on him to fix things up with Rosalinde. He didn’t deny it when I brought it up. I still haven’t met his father or the rest of his family. His mother hasn’t come back to England and I haven’t been invited to Germany. I should feel slighted – I do feel slighted – but I actually have no inclination to go there when I know the reception I’ll receive. They don’t – and probably never will – approve of me. Maybe now Rosalinde is out of the picture, Lukas will get some respite. A few months ago they tried to persuade him to return to Germany to live and work. His father had lined up an interview for a research position in the Faculty of Physics at Munich University. Lukas point-blank refused. I’ve never seen him so angry. He’s usually so composed, but on this occasion he lost it. I still