A Heart Beneath the Ruins

The Things We Keep

Lyla sent the photographs to her solicitor before she could persuade herself not to.

The message took longer to write than it should have. She deleted the word strange, then concerning. Both made her sound as if she had already decided what the date meant.

In the end, she wrote: The acceptance date on this says 12 October. Is that correct? I thought the application went through in November.

She attached the final page and pressed send.

Then she went downstairs.

Mrs. Wren sat behind the reception desk with a pair of reading glasses low on her nose. In daylight, the desk’s surface was crowded with the mundane evidence of her work: a parcel awaiting collection, three maintenance requests, a mug with a tea stain down its side.

Lyla placed her agreement beside the mug.

“I think there’s a mistake.”

Mrs. Wren finished the line she was writing before looking up.

“Where?”

Lyla pointed.

The woman read the date. Her gaze moved to the top of the page, then returned to it.

“Admissions can check that.”

“Can I speak to them?”

“Mr. Keene works from home on Mondays. I’ll send him a message.”

“I’d prefer to ask him myself.”

Mrs. Wren studied her for a moment, then opened a drawer and took out a card.

“His email address. Copy Dr. Hale into the message so he can follow it up.”

It was an ordinary response. Lyla had no reason to feel disappointed by it.

“Was my room reserved in October?”

Mrs. Wren took off her glasses.

“Rooms are allocated provisionally throughout the term.”

“But for me?”

“I’d need to look at the records.”

“Could you?”

The woman glanced at the wall clock.

“Yes. After lunch.”

Lyla picked up the agreement.

“Thank you.”

“You needn’t sign anything you haven’t understood,” Mrs. Wren said.

It stopped her halfway through turning away.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

Lyla could not decide whether that was reassurance or approval. She put the card in her pocket and left.

Her appointment with the academic adviser was at two. Until then, she had several hours with nothing to do except think about the date, Adrian’s voice, and the possibility that lack of sleep was making a fool of her.

She chose to go outside.

Beyond the dining hall, the lawn sloped toward a low stone boundary. A gravel path curved around the college, passing a sports court, a greenhouse, and a squat brick building that smelled of sawdust. She heard a machine start inside it, followed by a shout and laughter.

The college was less forbidding from this side. Drainpipes had been replaced with modern plastic. A bicycle leaned against a wall. Someone had hung a bright yellow raincoat over a windowsill to dry.

Lyla followed the path until the central tower disappeared behind the west wing.

An orange barrier blocked the next stretch.

TEMPORARY CLOSURE. ELECTRICAL WORK.

Beyond it, three steps led down to a narrow door beneath the building. Its lower edge was stained with rainwater. There was nothing unusual about it, except that Lyla stopped looking at anything else.

She knew how the handle would feel.

Not hot. Cold enough to sting, with a rough patch underneath where the plating had worn away.

She curled her fingers into her palm.

It was a metal handle on an old door. Anyone could guess that it would be cold and worn.

Still, she did not move.

“You’ll get soaked standing there.”

Dorian stood beneath the projecting roof of the brick workshop. He held a cardboard cup and wore a dark jacket with the collar turned up.

She had not heard him come out.

“It isn’t raining.”

He looked upward.

A drop struck her cheek.

“Give it a minute.”

She stepped back from the barrier.

“Do you follow all the new students?”

“Only the ones standing outside the building where I work.”

He shifted, revealing the workshop door behind him.

Lyla looked at it, then at the smear of pale dust on his sleeve.

“What do you do?”

“Repairs. Mostly furniture.”

“You’re a carpenter?”

“I’m a student who knows how to mend a chair.”

The distinction sounded important to him. She did not ask why.

Rain began to stipple the gravel. Dorian stepped farther under the roof, leaving enough space for her if she wanted it.

She joined him, keeping an arm’s length between them.

Inside the workshop, a man in safety goggles pushed a plank across a bench. Lyla watched until he glanced up. Dorian raised his cup in acknowledgement.

“That’s Mr. Ellis,” he said. “Don’t let him hear you call his workshop a shed.”

“Was that a traumatic lesson?”

“For someone else. I learn from other people’s mistakes.”

“Convenient skill to have here.”

He looked at her. She waited for a comment about fires, but none came.

The rain grew heavier, filling the silence with its soft hiss against the roof.

“What’s through that door?” she asked.

Dorian followed her gaze.

“West basement.”

“Storage?”

“Some. Old classrooms. They haven’t been used for a while.”

“Because of the electrical fault?”

“No. That’s recent.”

She could feel him watching her now.

“I’m not planning to break in,” she said.

“I didn’t think you were.”

“People keep making that face at me.”

“What face?”

She regretted saying it. Her mother’s careful expression. The nurse who had asked whether Lyla understood what she had done. Adrian in the passage outside the dining hall.

“Never mind.”

Dorian drank his coffee. He did not try to pull an answer out of her.

After a while, he said, “The path on the other side stays open. You can get all the way around without using this stretch.”

“You sound like the evacuation plan.”

“More attractive, though.”

She looked at him in surprise.

He remained perfectly serious until she laughed. Then his mouth curved, and she understood that he had been waiting for it.

She looked away first.

The rain eased. Lyla stepped out from beneath the roof.

“Thanks for the weather report.”

“Mercer.”

She turned.

“Whatever brought you here, you’re allowed to look around.”

For a moment, she had nothing to say.

Then the man inside the workshop called his name, and Dorian went back to work.

At two, Lyla sat across from a woman named Ms. Lennox, who wore red-framed glasses and had printed her transcript on paper already covered with notes.

“Your marks were good,” she said.

“Before.”

“They’re still good marks. The circumstances don’t retrospectively change your essays.”

Lyla looked down at her lap.

Ms. Lennox moved a course list between them.

“We can offer two history modules this term, plus research methods. I’d suggest a manageable start rather than filling every available hour.”

“I can work.”

“I’m assuming you can. I’m also assuming moving here is work of its own.”

They chose the modules. One concerned social history; the other examined how private documents became public records. Diaries, correspondence, household accounts. The sort of fragments Lyla had once loved because they proved that history had been lived by people who misplaced things and complained about money.

Ms. Lennox wrote the room numbers on her timetable.

“Your first seminar is tomorrow. You’ll need the introductory reading. Ms. Bell has copies in the library.”

“Dr. Hale said I’d be working there.”

“Yes. Bell asked for someone who could handle an inventory without treating it as a personal insult.”

“That sounds optimistic.”

“I told her you’d be suitable.”

Lyla looked up.

“You haven’t met me before today.”

“I read your essay on the use of parish records. You noticed a missing page where most students would have quoted the next available entry. That’s a useful habit.”

For the first time since arriving, Lyla felt something other than the need to defend herself.

“Thank you.”

Ms. Lennox nodded as if they had settled a practical matter.

“Library’s through the east cloister. If you hear someone complaining about a trolley wheel, you’re close.”

She was right.

Ms. Bell stood inside the library entrance, attempting to steer a loaded trolley away from a display table. She had a grey braid, a knitted waistcoat, and an expression of concentrated dislike for the wheel that kept turning sideways.

Lyla caught the front corner before it hit a stack of journals.

“Thank you,” Ms. Bell said. “I’ll put that on your first report.”

“You’re assuming I’m the new placement.”

“You’ve got Lennox’s reading list in your hand. She writes more in the margins than most people put in the text.”

Lyla helped her push the trolley to the desk.

The library occupied two connected rooms. The first held study tables, computers, and shelves of textbooks. The second extended beneath a gallery lined with older volumes. Afternoon light fell through tall windows, turning dust into bright flecks above the floor.

Lyla had missed places like this.

Then she saw the fire extinguisher beside the inner door and remembered why she had lost the last one.

“Your hand up to lifting?” Ms. Bell asked.

“If the boxes aren’t too heavy.”

“They won’t be. Three hours on Thursday, to start with. Today I’ll show you what we’re doing.”

She led Lyla into a small workroom behind the desk. Two tables had been covered with sheets of clean paper. Boxes stood beneath them, numbered in black marker.

“The west-wing reading room is being cleared while the wiring’s sorted. We’re checking its books against the old accession records. Anything damaged gets set aside for assessment.”

Lyla looked toward the boxes.

“Was the reading room in the basement?”

“Ground floor. Those windows have been leaking for years.”

Ms. Bell handed her a pencil and a record sheet.

“No pens near the books. And no heroic attempts to save the unsaveable. If something’s mouldy, leave it closed and call me.”

Lyla nodded.

Ms. Bell demonstrated with three volumes, then left her to check a small stack while she dealt with a student at the desk.

The work was simple. Author, title, accession number, condition. Lyla wrote carefully and discovered how much she wanted to do a small thing correctly.

The fourth book had a green cloth cover, faded along the spine. Its title was stamped in worn gold: A Guide to the Flora of the Northern Counties.

She placed it on the paper and opened the front cover.

A pressed flower lay against the flyleaf.

It had become little more than a brown stem and a few brittle petals. Someone had secured it with two narrow strips of paper. Beneath it, in small, slanting handwriting, was a date.

18 May 1891.

Lyla bent closer without touching it.

The smell changed.

The library’s dry-paper scent became damp earth, then warm air carrying the sweetness of crushed leaves.

She lifted her head.

For a second, the workroom table was still in front of her.

Then sunlight struck her wrist.

She stood beside an open window. Not the library window. This one had a deep stone sill, and beyond it, beds of flowers sloped toward a wall covered in climbing roses.

Her sleeve was dark green, fastened at the wrist with a row of tiny buttons.

Someone stood close behind her.

“You said you’d put it in a vase.”

Dorian’s voice.

She turned.

He wore a dark coat and held a pair of gloves in one hand. His hair was longer, pushed back from his face. There was no scar beside his jaw.

He looked at her with an openness she had never seen in him.

“It would die in a vase,” she heard herself say.

“It’s going to die in a book.”

“But I can keep it.”

She was smiling. She could feel it, though she had not decided to smile.

Dorian reached toward her.

His fingers stopped short of her wrist.

“You keep everything,” he said.

A sharp c***k broke the sunlight apart.

Lyla jerked backward.

The pencil had fallen from the worktable and struck the floor. Beyond the door, a student was asking Ms. Bell whether the printer had eaten his credit again.

Lyla gripped the edge of the table.

Her sleeve was cream-coloured wool. Her palm bore the healed burn. The window looked onto a narrow paved yard with recycling bins against the wall.

She dragged air into her lungs.

Ms. Bell appeared in the doorway.

“Everything all right?”

Lyla could not answer immediately.

“I stood up too fast,” she said at last.

“Sit down.”

The librarian brought a chair. Lyla sat because her legs had begun to tremble, and because refusing would mean explaining.

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes.”

“Water?”

“Please.”

Ms. Bell fetched a glass from the staff kitchenette. Lyla drank half of it before she trusted herself to look at the book again.

The flower lay exactly where it had been.

“That needs leaving in place,” Ms. Bell said. “We record anything tucked inside. Sometimes it matters as much as the book.”

“Who did it belong to?”

“We might find an inscription. Or an entry in the old catalogue.”

Lyla looked at the pencilled date.

“Could someone have put the flower there recently?”

“They could have. We wouldn’t establish its age by looking at it.”

An ordinary answer again. A sensible one.

Lyla nodded.

“I should go.”

“Yes. We can finish this on Thursday. If you’re still dizzy, stop at the medical room.”

Lyla left her incomplete sheet on the table and walked out carrying only her reading list.

She made it through the cloister before her phone vibrated.

Her solicitor had replied.

I have no record of an application before November. I’ve asked the college to clarify. Please hold off signing until they respond.

She read the message twice, then lowered the phone.

Rainwater dripped from the cloister roof. A group of students crossed the lawn, talking about a deadline. Somewhere behind her, the library door opened and closed.

Lyla pressed her burned palm against the cold stone wall.

The date on the agreement was something she could photograph, question, and send to someone else.

There was no such way to explain the feel of those tiny buttons against her wrist.

Or the brief, unbearable disappointment she had felt when Dorian decided not to touch her.