A couple of months into the course, Cooper arrived late at the lab to find Bridget nowhere to be seen. Justin, lost in a journal, simply shrugged when he asked him about it. A few minutes later he found her, crouched on the floor in the back of the cleaning cupboard, head buried in her arms.
‘Hey, Widget,’ he whispered, moving a mop bucket out of the way so he could sit alongside her. ‘What’s happened?’
She lifted a tear-streaked face, so stricken with sadness in the shadows that Cooper’s own eyes welled up. ‘I had a one-to-one tutorial with Cole,’ she sobbed.
‘And it didn’t go well?’
‘He said my project was unviable. I’ve messed up the planning and I’m clearly incapable of executing the required standard. That some people are fine at parroting other people’s theories in an exam, but when it comes to actual research in a real lab then that requires being able to think for yourself. He told me to switch to psychology.’
‘Ouch.’ Cooper reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. There was nothing wrong with psychology, unless you were Professor Angus Cole, who considered it to be a course designed to allow dimwits and women to get a degree. Neuroscientists performed science, psychologists merely thought about it.
‘I told him it was too late, if I switched I’d have to resit this year, and probably second year, too, and he said well that was up to me but either way he wanted me out of his lab so why not make at least one intelligent decision since starting university and face up to my own limitations,’ Bridget said all in one watery breath.
‘What?’ Even by Prof’s standards, that was cruel. And untrue.
‘Don’t worry, he’s sure I can find a nice little job to suit me with a psychology diploma. Oh, and me responding by crying is further proof that I’m not cut out for a career in the discipline of neuroscience.’
‘He’s an arse.’ Cooper had to let go of her hand to avoid crushing it. His fists were itching to go and wipe that smug smirk off Cole’s face.
‘I love neuroscience, Cooper, it’s all I ever wanted to do.’ She broke down into a wave of fresh tears. ‘I don’t want a psychology diploma. I want to study actual brain tissue but how can I when he’s thrown me out of the department?’
Cooper shifted position so he could wrap Bridget up in his arms. Pressing her gently against his chest, he stroked her hair, wiping her tears with the cuff of his jumper. ‘You know he can’t do that. You’re top of the year.’
‘Not in epigenetics.’ She sniffed.
‘Well, I couldn’t let you be first in everything, could I?’ He leant back to look at her face, gently wiping another stream of tears with his thumbs. What kind of monster could make someone as sweet as her cry, and then be so callous about it? ‘You need to talk to the head of Life Sciences, Professor Johnston. He knows what Cole is like. He probably says this to every female student who ends up in his lab. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some sort of test to see if you had the determination to challenge him.’
‘What if he’s right, though? What if I’m not cut out for it? What if I need to make an intelligent decision and face up to my own limits?’
‘He’s not right. You know he’s not right.’
‘But that doesn’t matter, does it? Because I’ve been thrown out either way, and even if Prof Johnston made him take me back, he’s going to fail my project.’
Cooper handed Bridget a tissue from a box on a shelf behind him, tucking her hair back behind her ear. ‘It’ll be okay. We’ll figure something out. I promise. If the worst comes to the worst, you can share my project, and we both know mine is awesome.’
‘That’s true.’ She managed a watery smile. ‘Thanks, Cooper. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
She looked up at him through her thick eyelashes.
And then it happened.
Crouched in the grimy shadows, surrounded by bottles of bleach and cobwebs, Bridget looked into Cooper’s eyes and finally, after two and a half years, one month and nine days, he couldn’t hold it in any more. He ignored the voice in the back of his head yelling at him to stop, that this would ruin everything, that, even if she did feel it too, it was never okay to kiss someone in a committed relationship. He flicked that voice a mental two fingers, and he leant forwards to do what he’d wished and prayed for ever since she’d bounced into his life and changed it forever.
For the tiniest moment, she gently pressed her lips back against his, into the kiss, and her body swayed towards him, so subtly he wouldn’t have noticed if he’d not been so acutely aware of exactly where she was.
At the precise second that the door burst open to reveal Justin, silhouetted against the bright lights of the corridor behind him, Bridget sprang away. When Cooper replayed that moment a million times in his head later on, he wanted to convince himself that she’d pulled away because the door opened. That microsecond made all the difference. But he knew he was kidding himself. The way her eyes widened in shock and horror, and how she scrabbled to her feet, pushing past him without waiting to see if he followed her, refusing to stop even when he chased her down the stairwell. The fact that she didn’t answer his texts, and made an impromptu visit home for the weekend, pretending it was because of what Professor Cole had said, not what happened afterwards.
Add to that the awkward few weeks until Cooper got himself a sort-of-girlfriend, to show her that it was a stupid moment in a cleaning cupboard, caused by high emotion and the stress of final year. All the evidence made it perfectly clear to the second-best neuroscience student in the year that the only scientific conclusion was that Bridget Donovan had not wanted to kiss him, was not secretly in love with him instead of Paolo, and that he was a total idiot who had to get away from her as soon as possible in order to preserve his own sanity as well as his dignity.
So, yeah, four years later he was trying not to think about what happened the last time he was in this cupboard every time he sat at his desk.
Emma
The last weekend in March, I persuaded Bridget to go wedding-dress shopping. She readily agreed, on the basis that Mum was visiting her cousins in London for the weekend. The future bride and groom were still dithering about a date, and I hoped that, by engaging Bridget in one of the more fun parts of wedding planning, I might help kick-start her into sorting some of the rest.
Not that it mattered to me when they got married – I loved living with my sister, and dreaded the hassle of finding either a new flatmate or a cheaper flat. But not knowing when that needed to happen was stressing me out almost as much as it was annoying Mum.
We headed into Nottingham town centre and hurried through the drizzle to a boutique bridal shop on the fringes of Hockley.
