Jim returned to Newcastle to negotiate a contract with the university. They made him an offer he felt he could not refuse; he needed a job, and yet he knew Annabel would not follow him up to Newcastle, even though Olivia was doing her chemistry degree in Hull. The post came with a furnished property with a front garden and some land to grow on. The university offered Jim a start date after Christmas, but he could move into the house from the beginning of December.
He called Annabel to tell her about the offer; she sounded pleased for him but he sensed foreboding in her voice and in her image, which kept freezing.
He felt it was the right thing to do, but stories of academics migrating to universities in the midlands and, more commonly, the south plagued him.
At 5pm, there was a power cu
