The Lost Swimmer (3 page)

‘I was hoping it could be in the next fortnight?'

‘So soon?' My heart sank. ‘It'll be tricky putting things in place that quickly.'

‘I just feel . . .' Melinda's eyes teared up in a very un-Melinda-like way. ‘Frankly I feel the Faculty's falling to pieces and there's nothing I can do about it.'

I reached out a hand but Melinda sat down heavily and started shuffling papers. ‘I was around in the fifties when people were witch-hunted for all sorts of things. In the sixties I partied so hard I didn't notice anyone but myself. In the seventies I never really became a feminist but I always admired those women.'

I had no idea where she was heading. I perched on a corner of her desk, interested.

‘You know that my husband and I split up ten years ago?'

‘I remember it was just after I met you.'

‘And I really felt then I was too old to do much, now I was on my own again. But I . . . I see so much going on here . . .' Melinda delicately brushed away a tear and, reaching out with trembling hands, picked up a letter. ‘You don't deserve this, Bec.'

I read the details of my first mediation session with Priscilla, set for next week.

‘It's demeaning and that letter is just full of lies,' said Melinda.

There was nothing much new from yesterday's meeting except a warning that formal action might be taken if I failed to attend and that the focus would be on my communication and leadership skills.

‘It's okay, Mel. Who knows, maybe I'll come out a new and improved person?'

‘You don't need improving and you haven't got time.'

‘It's a gross waste of money and Priscilla's a hypocrite, I agree. Cutting staff, cutting budgets and yet she pushes all this rubbish.'

Melinda was looking at me with pity.

‘Well, I'm made of sterner stuff than that,' I continued firmly, ‘I'll just do what she says. Better that she picks on me than someone weaker.' I stuffed the letter into my pocket. ‘What's annoying is that I'd planned to stay home and write that day.'

I was working on a book about Santorini in the seventeenth century BC and was in the middle of a chapter on the volcanic eruption where people had fled from their settlement in Akrotiri. Many items had been found at the settlement, either forgotten or left in haste; my favourite was a gold ibex figurine hidden inside a larnax, a clay chest. The little ibex, which looked like a child's impression of a goat mixed with a baby horse, stood in relaxed repose. The gold was pure with a sublime lustre. It was likely his owners had run high into the hills and only then realised that their most precious possession had been forgotten. After the eruption Akrotiri was buried in lava, houses entombed, the ibex waiting patiently for millennia until it was again cherished. But its precise use was lost in the mists of time. What was its significance?

‘You're not going to think badly of me are you, like a rat abandoning ship?' Melinda's voice cut through my thoughts.

‘Never. Email me the details and I'll sign off and send it to HR. Won't New York be cold at this time of year?'

‘Freezing. I want a change of everything, including the weather. I'm hoping it'll be cloaked in snow.'

‘And how long are you going for?'

Silence.

‘Mel?'

She suddenly looked old. ‘I was thinking until the end of next semester.'

‘But that's a lifetime!'

‘I have enough leave owing. I want to travel around, catch up with friends in Seattle and San Francisco. I thought you could get Justine in here? She'll watch your back. I've run it past her and she said she'd wrangle a temporary transfer from Politics.'

‘Really? Well, I guess . . .' Melinda looked desperate. ‘I'll call her. I'm sure we'll be able to make this work for you.'

‘You're a brick.'

I smiled, doing my best to hide my concern. What would I do without her?

•  •  •

Their bellies stretched in front of them like two boulders. Pam Edwards, rushing straight from an Ancient History lecture, wore a body-hugging T-shirt and tapered trousers to accentuate her impossibly long legs; she matched these with killer stilettos that gave her the height of a giraffe and was accessorised to the hilt with chunky jewellery. Josie Sweeney was decked out in the traditional hide-all smock over bare legs; her feet reclined in Birkenstocks. Their faces were alike – both tragic.

‘She's sent us another letter.' Pam passed it across.

Josie's voice was a whisper. ‘It's so awful, being made to feel worthless. My husband and doctor think I should take the package.'

‘You might feel that now, but when you're home alone with your child you may want this place, at least part-time in the first few years, which we can manage,' I replied. ‘You're anything but worthless. You know how highly the students rate you. And the way through our trouble is to get more enrolments, not keep shrinking the department out of existence.'

Josie nodded, sniffing back tears. ‘I've always loved coming to work.'

‘My family want me to leave too,' said Pam as she rubbed her belly. ‘I've become unbearable around the house. I'm screaming at everyone. I'm really worried what I'm doing to our baby. Ooh!' A smile split her face. ‘He just kicked!'

Josie thrust out a hand. ‘I can feel him, there's another one!'

‘Little bugger,' chuckled Pam, her hand on her belly noticeably lifting as he kicked again. ‘I reckon he's going to be a footballer like his granddad. Or a horse. I do really want to stay,' she added, looking at me with pleading eyes. ‘I'm thinking of going to the union.'

‘Priscilla says the next round won't be voluntary,' said Josie.

I quickly read the letter, trying to quash my feelings of inadequacy. There it was in black and white: the threat of forced redundancies if not enough people took the voluntary packages. ‘Get the union to speak to me. We'll coordinate our actions,' I said.

Pam nodded but I could see she didn't mean it; she didn't believe I'd be an asset.

‘We'll get through this,' I said.

•  •  •

Troubling irregularity found in accounts. Urgently need to meet.

I sighed as I re-read the email from Alison Wishart, our School Administrator. Alison had been seconded across from Architecture after I became Head, at Priscilla's insistence, the Dean claiming I lacked experience with money. To Priscilla's annoyance, Alison and I had grown close and I relied on her when it came to budgets.

Come straight over
, I shot back, and she arrived minutes later in a luscious yellow dress with black stripes. She looked like a bee – and a rather angry one.

‘There's a very strange account that's been opened in Athens,' buzzed Alison as soon as she sat down. ‘Do you know anything about it?'

‘No. Athens . . . why would we have an account there?'

‘Well, that's what anyone's going to ask who looks at these books. And, Rebecca – it would appear that you've approved this account.'

‘What's it for? Why on earth would I have signed off on an Athens account? I can be a bit preoccupied when it comes to paperwork but surely I wouldn't be that vague?'

‘It's like it's written by a drunk. Sorry, not casting aspersions . . . but listen to this: “Account for food and wine and accommodation and wine/travels.” '

I quickly scanned the printouts. One was a bank statement in the name of Coastal University School of Classics and History with a very large deposit and multiple small withdrawals.

‘Embezzlement is what it looks like.' Alison peered over the rims of her fashionable glasses with a frosty stare. ‘I'm going to have to report this to Faculty straightaway. You can't just go opening accounts overseas in the university's name.'

‘Oh God, Alison, can't we get to the bottom of it here? That's all Priscilla needs, ammunition against me that makes it look like I'm party to fraud – and hedonistic fraud at that. There must be an explanation. For a start, if someone was trying to hide that sort of thing they wouldn't be so explicit, would they?' I looked up, seeking her approval.

Alison stiffened. ‘I don't know, there've been a few irregularities I've picked up. This one's just for a great deal more money. And Athens as the location is unacceptable.'

‘Who's accessed it?'

‘It would appear to be Josie Sweeney.'

‘But Josie has nothing to do with anything Greek.'

‘That's exactly what I thought,' said Alison. ‘Whereas . . .' She paused and her face bloomed. ‘Your work is generally based in Greece, isn't it?'

‘Oh, maybe I do understand . . .' I said, as a thought occurred.

Alison waited in tense silence as I shuffled through more of the paperwork.

‘Pam Edwards took a student tour to Greece in January last year in semester break to study pre-historic Hellenic culture. We had a lot of older students sign up and we hoped it would be a money-spinner. In the end we only broke even, but people had a great time – and who knows, we still might get some endowments or donations from the happy alumni.'

‘Imbibing a lot of Greek wine, by the looks of it.' Alison's voice dripped with disapproval.

‘Anyway, Josie went with Pam to help wrangle the students, and she was also interested in the itinerary.'

‘I'm not surprised.'

‘Okay, so they, we – I – made a mistake. This separate account shouldn't have been opened, should it?'

‘Absolutely not! What were you thinking, Rebecca? You know all finances have to go through the central system.' Alison's flesh was now as red as a tomato.

‘I'm sorry, I do recall now. Pam told me she'd set it up in the way it had been done before and I didn't check what that meant. I just approved it. Which means there must have been other accounts like it in the past.'

‘Not my problem. I'm only going back one financial year, thank the Lord.' The last muttered under her breath.

‘Do we really have to report this? Can't we just clean it up? It wasn't fraud, just an innocent mistake. No one was hurt.'

‘I'll think about it.' Alison scooped up the papers and flew out.

Her dangerously noncommittal answer showed me that Alison's allegiance was not as strong as I'd thought. No doubt she'd run to Faculty to ensure she wasn't implicated in any manner.

I felt a wave of fear as I imagined Priscilla's response.

I
t was mid-afternoon and the tide was out as I ran on the hard sand, Big Boy lolloping beside me, salty, misty droplets swirling off the crashing sea. I tried to force thoughts of Alison and Priscilla from my mind; I needed to focus on the surprise party I was holding tonight for Stephen's fiftieth birthday – but that only made me more apprehensive, because when I'd sent the invitations ages ago, I'd included the Vice-Chancellor.

All morning I'd been cooped up. After reading the Saturday newspapers Stephen and I had each gone into our study to write. He thought the evening's activity was going to entail chasing a comet, due to be visible in the dusk sky, and then dinner with the kids. He had no idea what really lay in wait, especially because his actual birthday wasn't until next week.

The wind was buffeting as I ran towards the bluff, over slimy reef rocks that smelled deliciously of ocean tides. A young woman dressed in a vivid orange sari stood waist-high in the churning water beside a man stripped to his Y-fronts, a formal three-piece-suit on top. Laughing and hugging as a grey wall of waves rose behind, the orange cloth stood out boldly like a beacon as another be-suited man photographed them. He chuckled as he took the shot – two frail, loving humans about to be engulfed by the sea, captured forever in their hope.

Be careful! It's dangerous!
I wanted to call. Just last month, two Indian students had drowned a little further up the coast. But the trio was engrossed, another photo underway, the photographer now wading into the turbulent water. They were wildly happy. I stopped and hung my body down towards the sand, taking a breather until they finally came out safely onto the beach.

I resumed my run, bounding through leathery piles of kelp to the bay side of the bluff. The sea here was much more placid, friendly waves capped with white tips of salty froth, small sailing craft bobbing as though viewed in a painting. Children in wetsuits frolicked in the shallows; surfers further out rode the swell.

A kite-boarder took off, his rainbow-coloured sail catching the wind, filling up, and he was away, surfing over the waves, roaring along the shoreline, his muscular arms hanging tightly to the crossbar as he was swept effortlessly along. One minute he was close to shore, the next he was a dot on the horizon. Then he'd catch a wave and come zooming in again. I thought of Stephen. He used to windsurf but had stopped about ten years ago when he'd hurt his back. The kids had been teenagers and he hadn't wanted to be incapacitated. He'd always insisted on taking his turn with them, ferrying them around, letting me get on with my work. I smiled as I remembered our first date here at the beach when I was twenty-two and he'd tried to get me to windsurf, but I'd refused. When he realised I wouldn't go in the water he was kind. Later, he didn't want me to go into my dark house alone, walking me to the door, waiting until I'd turned on the lights, then heading chivalrously back to his car after a soft, lingering kiss. The next date I'd invited him in and we'd been together ever since. I desperately wanted tonight to go well for him.

As I puffed up the cliff path the windsurfer was a distant speck out to sea. At the main road I clipped the leash onto Big Boy and we waited for a break in the line of gleaming cars making their way along the coast. As I crested the hill, the golf course lay below. To me, the sight of the mob of Eastern Grey kangaroos hopping among the golfers was always surreal. About a hundred roos were scattered around the fairways, and it was miraculous that they avoided being hit by the potentially lethal golf balls. The kangaroos loved grazing on the short sweet grass of the greens, and many a visiting golfer had been terrified as they hit up. But somehow the kangaroos, even the joeys, moved just in time to avoid the ball.