She had texted him to say she would be late, but he hadn’t expected it to be this late. He felt for his phone in the darkness and looked at the time: 4:10 in the morning.

As so often lately, he started worrying. What had happened to her? She hadn’t taken the car and he didn’t like the idea of her having to walk back home from the campus at this time of the night. It was still only April; the sun wouldn’t start coming up for another couple of hours and there had been a number of stabbings in the city recently, one fatal.

Heidi, he thought: Heidi, Heidi… He liked saying her name to himself. It was a childish habit, no doubt, and it didn’t bring her any closer, but she was the first solid, dependable thing that had come into his adult life and there was something comforting about repeating her name nonetheless.

He wondered if she wanted him to come and fetch her; he could always ring and ask. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t be wise. Heidi didn’t appreciate being fussed over and might think he was being possessive, or even paternalistic. Mind you, there were times when she welcomed such gestures. It all depended…though on quite what it depended, he hadn’t yet learned.

Then, the obvious occurred to him. Chloe would give her a lift back. Chloe Hennessey, from the School of Media Studies, was a close friend of Heidi’s and they had been working together at the University overnight.

He began to feel less anxious—although not by much. As it was, he had stayed awake until long after midnight because he’d had some news for Heidi: bad news. They had called him into the office yesterday morning and told him that, as of next academic year, his hours were to be cut. It wasn’t his fault; they were perfectly happy with his work; it was simply that in the current economic climate their budget was being downsized drastically and cuts were going to have to be made across the board.