3rd Place in the Cambridge Flash Fiction Prize 2025
*
He is sitting in his chair when I come. I close the door behind me. A girl I knew in high school told me that university staff are supposed to keep their doors open if they ever meet their students alone. He doesn’t tell me to open his again.
There are two chairs in the office. The bookshelves behind him are full of thin works of criticism and fat novels written in the nineteenth century. I am wearing a skirt. He takes off his glasses, gesturing with them to the empty chair, then he cleans the lenses on his shirt. I wonder if he’s doing this because he wants to see me better, and if I’m supposed to have noticed the gesture, which I have. I cross one leg over the other so he can see it up close. Already we’re speaking the private language that comes out when we’re together: loaded silences, secreted under the guise of plausible deniability. The leather cushion on the seat I’m sitting on sighs.
Hello Patrick, I say.
His hands stop in his lap for a second, almost imperceptibly, when I call him by his first name.
It’s hot, I say.
Patrick’s office window looks out onto the quadrangle, where students are sitting in squares of sunlight. The thought that they are unaware of what’s unfolding above their heads makes my insides tighten.
It’s a shame we’re stuck in here, he says. He smiles. Like he isn’t that disappointed.
His smile makes me think about myself, and I think about the first time we met. I remember sitting at the back of his tutorial on the Romantics, amused by how hard he was trying to make the other students feel like their answers were thoughtful. I waited until he was almost ready to give up before I raised my hand. I can’t remember exactly what I said now. I think it was about how the text unmasked marriage as a patriarchal institution that legitimises the treatment of women as property and enshrines monogamy in law, or something.
You certainly know your stuff, he said.
I had always privately suspected that was true, but it was embarrassing to have it pointed out in front of everyone else. I wanted to tell them that I’m just normal, really, and I might have if I didn’t think that they probably would have believed me. When I looked up from my shoes they were all looking at theirs, but Patrick was smiling at me. After that, he always looked to me in class to save the discussion.
There is a thick pen from the Trinity gift shop with no lid and a moist nib poking out of his shirt pocket. I chew on the end of my middle finger. According to Patrick’s Facebook profile he is eleven years older than me. His profile picture is of him and his wife. I wonder if they still have sex with each other.
I’m wearing white cotton socks and a pleated skirt that reaches just past my knees. I ask Patrick what I missed in last week’s class and, while he’s talking, slide my wet finger up the lip of a pleat. Where the pleat is tightest I use my finger and thumb to open the fold. I watch him watch as the rest of the fabric follows, like a wave breaking down my leg.
I missed class last week because I had to visit my father who worries about how much I don’t love him. I looked up Patrick’s profile from my bedroom, back home, and messaged him to arrange a meeting.
I’m sure you’ll have no problem catching up, he wrote. But: happy to meet if you’d like.
I read his message twice, admiring its affected informality. I imagined his wife checking his messages when he was in the shower. That would be great, I replied, playing along. Thanks again. Kiss.
When I make little circles near his knee with my right foot, the pores in my socks stretch and open.
Was there anything else you wanted to talk about, he asks. His voice sounds strained.
It’s a shame, I say, that there’s no point me asking if there’s anything I can do to improve my grade.
His eyes flick to the door and back. Excuse me? he says.
He’s good at this. He’s going to make me say it. I smile at him to show him that I understand, and hold his look as I trace the outline of my naked collarbone with the finger that opened the pleat.
He swallows.
We can work on my grades on your desk if you like? I say.
The way he blinks at me is unpleasant.
He takes a deep breath. He says, I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here.
I am beginning to feel confused. I touch his knee with my pump.
He shifts in his seat, out of reach. If you are implying what I really hope you aren’t implying, he says, it is incredibly inappropriate.
I know? I say.
Oh god, he says. I’m married.
I laugh.
He doesn’t. Don’t you have a boyfriend? he says.
Yeah, of course, I say.
Well?
Well, what? I say. I don’t understand what he means. Why is he acting so dense? I’m so confused, I try the only other thing I can think of. You can hit me, I suggest, if you want, during.
But he’s just looking at me now with an expression on his face that I can’t read at all. I want to throw his stupid books off the shelves. Does he not know how this is supposed to work? What century was he born in? Has he never read a modern novel?
***
Jamie Redgate grew up on the north edge of Scotland. He has written and lectured on a variety of topics, from cannibalism to Tolkien to Christianity in Japan, and his most recent book MEATFICTION is forthcoming from Palgrave. Jamie’s essays and literary criticism have been published by Routledge, Cambridge University Press, Electric Literature, Extra Teeth, and elsewhere, while his fiction has appeared in Ninth Letter, Propagule, twice in Gutter: The Magazine of New Scottish Writing, and was chosen as the “Best of 2021” by The Rush. Jamie is working on a novel or two. www.jamieredgate.co.uk.