The Lessons by Naomi Alderman Read Free Book Online

fireplace and picked up the glass-eyed animal by its stiff brush tail. She looked around the room for a suitable place to deposit it.
    ‘Bathroom?’ I suggested.
    ‘God, no. Wouldn’t want to come face to face with that at 4 a.m.’
    ‘Under the bed?’
    ‘Might come to life. Feels like that sort of house, don’t you think?’
    Jess surveyed the view out of the window. An enormous privet hedge was beneath, grown wildly out of shape. She grinned, ran round behind me and pushed me towards the window, the touch of her hands on my back both firm and thrilling. One-handed, she pushed up the sash, leaned out of the window holding the stuffed skunk by its tail and dropped it gently into the centre of the privet.
    ‘There,’ she said. ‘Released back to its natural habitat.’
    In the evening, the party began in earnest. Three men in rugby shirts had run cables through the house, stuck down with rug-shredding gaffer tape. A few hours after dark, with pizza boxes already littering several of the living rooms, and groups of people making fires in the unswept grates, a sudden thunderclap of music struck across the house. The bass was insistent, distorting through the walls and ceilings. And more people arrived.
    Jess said, ‘Come downstairs with me. It’ll be fun.’
    I said, ‘Not yet. In a few minutes. Promise.’
    She tipped her head and looked at me, a little puzzled.
    And I thought, and I could see she thought, who is this man? Who have I brought here?
    She left and went downstairs.
    After ten minutes, I went to stand on the balconied landing. I looked down through the banisters to the hall three floors below. There were blonde girls in pink cocktail dresses and fur-collared coats laughing, and a pile of coats and handbags and shoes spilling across the marble-chequered floor.
    In the hall below, a girl said, ‘How high is it? How far up does it go?’
    She tipped her head back, a blue and silver scarf tied around her neck, and said, ‘Oh! There’s someone up there.’
    Mark’s head came into view in the oval of floor space.
    ‘It is the gloriously good-looking James,’ he said. ‘Jess found him first, though, so hands off. Why are you loitering up there, James? Get down here and let us ogle you!’
    And, while in my mind I dithered and wondered, somehow his command had set me free. I went downstairs.
    ‘And what are you?’ said a man whose name was Llewellyn, or Montgomery, or Noel, or St John or Stephan or Bobo or Kit.
    ‘This is James,’ said Mark, and took my arm. ‘He’s at college with Grunter – you know Grunter?’
    ‘What, that Norwegian bloke? I met him at Rhodes House drinks. Emmanuella brought him. Friends with him, are you?’
    Before I could respond, Mark said, ‘Certainly not. Grunter is the most boring man in Oxford and you know I’ve had that statistically confirmed. I couldn’t possibly have any friend of his at my party. You think he’s boring too, don’t you, James? Never talks about anything but work, barely talks to anyone but Manny.’
    ‘I, um, yes,’ and suddenly I saw that yes, Guntersen was boring. He was. Boring. Yes.
    ‘I’ve told Manny time and time and time again,’ Mark continued, ‘but does she listen? No. Tall blond men with broad shoulders, she can’t see past them. Whereas –’ he looked me up and down appraisingly – ‘yes … What she needs is a nice pretty English boy like you, don’t you agree?’
    ‘I … um,’ I said.
    ‘Don’t you worry,’ said Mark. ‘I’m going to convince her sooner or later that Grunter is too boring for anyone to bear. So if Jess turns you down, we’ll fix you up with Manny.’
    Something must have shown in my face then. A flash of desire, a momentary indication that, my God, for someone to fix me up with Emmanuella was all I had hoped for in life. I tried to hide it but, looking back, I think it must have shown in my face.
    I was unwilling to wander from this theme, but the conversation moved on. A girl in a black