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I found myself worrying less and less about his secret when I was around him, only to find that the moment he left I was wondering and wandering aimlessly through the questions that were left unanswered, never bei
ng able to unravel the mystery.
I got the feeling that Marty would be relieved if I could work out his secret, that he hated not being able
to be totally honest with me.

I had two lectures that day, one for drama and one for English, split
with a two and a half hour gap.
Having not been in the frame of mind for making friends at the start of the academic year, I didn’t have a group of people that I knew v
ery well in any of my lectures.
Everybody was polite and kind, and I always had a partner to work with, or a group to discuss topics with: but whereas everyone else was young, living away from home and having a great time, I’d felt like I’d aged a decade since my parents died and I no
longer fitted into that world.
I hated lunchtimes and breaks in lectures the most – the conversations seemed trivial and unimportant to me, the excitement and funny stories bore no relev
ance or resemblance to my life.
I’d started spending more and more time in the library, which had a good reflection on my
essay grades.
In a way, I’d started feeling detached from my choice of degree – I’d always loved singing and acting, especially when I was in a show and my parents came to watch; that wasn’t ever
going to happen for me anymore.
I hadn’t sung at all sinc
e the accident.

I didn’t have a ch
oice in avoiding singing today.
The first lecture was part
of a module on Musical Theatre.
This had been my favourite type of act
ing before my parents had died.
Our lecturer, Donna, told us we would be working towa
rds putting on a show of a musical called
‘
Starlet
’
and we would be graded on our teamwo
rk, as well as our performance.
She looked pointedly at me when she said, “Drama is an active subject, you can’t read and write your way through this, you have to act your
way through it.”
I wante
d the ground to swallow me up.
We all had to learn the words to the main song
‘
Starl
et
’ and then she would be decidi
ng on a cast list by next week.
I found the whole situation difficult – the words of the song stuck in my throat, especi
ally the line about ‘
from crib to grave, time doesn’t behave, death wins every
time
’ and the last thing I felt like doing was performing in front o
f so many people I barely knew.
There were two reasons I didn’t quit right there and then: I didn’t want Donna to think she had beaten me, and I didn’t want my peers to t
hink of me as the poor orphan.

We had to learn a short section of a
dance, which came easily to me.
In a way, I found it easier to immerse myself in the movement than to memorise the
words of the song.
My head was swimming with thoughts of Marty’s secret, but focusing on learning the choreograp
hy offered me a brief respite.

Once we’d all learnt the song and the dance, we had to perform, one b
y one, in front of each other.
I just desperately wanted to get this over with, so I volunteered to go first – something
I would have never done before.
Previously, I would like to see other people audition, so I could gage how to perform and what chances I wou
ld have of getting a plum role.
Now, I just didn’t care.  I belted out the number, ignoring the knotted feeling in my stomach, refusing to let my nerves or tears appear; using that brave façade I had mast
ered during the past few weeks.
When I got to the end of the song, my classmates gave me a polite round of applause, and I guessed
it couldn’t have been that bad.
The dance solo was less stressful; again, it was a case of getting throug
h it as painlessly as possible.
This audition was so alien to me – in the past I would have given my all
, desperate to win a lead role.
It had always meant so much to
me, but now it was meaningless.
Being in the chorus would be plenty: I no longer cared for the spotlight.

I sat through all the other auditions, but I didn’t really notice what the ot
her performers were like.
I joined in the applause at the appropriate times, but it was just a cas
e of going through the motions.
My head was still
filled with thoughts of Marty.
Some of the t
hings he said were so strange.
Although I trusted him implicitly, I was unnerved when he told me about trying to get close to me to earn his trust; that he could only remain with me if it appe
ared that we were just friends. Something didn’t add up.
He’d tried to distance himself when he felt himself falling for me – why wa
sn’t it OK for him to love me?
Then there was the mysterious ‘they’ that couldn’t know I loved him – he seemed bound to keeping this secret and spoke about ‘they’ with a respectful reverence – almost as if he fea
red them, whoever ‘they’ were.

I was jostled out of my puzzled thoughts by the person next to me moving and I
realised the lecture was over.
I hadn’t been listening to Donna, but it di
dn’t look as if anyone noticed.
My classmates left quickly, giggling, chatting, checking mobile phones, eager to get t
o the canteen and have a break.
I gathered up my bag and slung it over my shoulder, planning to avoid lunch an
d head straight to the library.
My plan was foiled.

“Claudia?” Donna’s sopr
ano voice cut through the air.
I wasn’t in the mood for more of her well meant encouragement – to me it was bullying.

“Yes, Donna?”
I forced myself to remain pleasant.

“You haven’t been at any auditions since you left school, have you?” To give Donna credit, she was at least trying to be tactful, but I knew she’d chosen the words ‘left school’ i
nstead of ‘lost your parents’.

“No, no I haven’t.
I haven’t sung at all since then.” I avoided saying it too;
I didn’t want to embarrass her.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, hinting that I wanted to get out of the room and transferred my bag to the other shoulder.

“I thought so.”
She turned away and
headed back to her belongings.
I guessed our conversation was over and I was shocked that she hadn’t tried to tell me that drama could be therapeutic for people in my situation, or warned me to pay more attention, or sympathetically told me that
time would make things better.
It had appeared that this time
I had got off lightly.
I st
arted heading towards the door.
Donna remained turned away from me.

“You were better today than in the last show you did.”

“Sorry?” I was taken aback and stopped walking mid-step.

“You performed better tod
ay, compared to your last show.
You
were trying too hard before.” She still hadn’t faced me.
“You’re better when you don’t give a shit.”

I was speechless.
Her language shocked me almost as much as
what she was saying.
“You saw my last show?”

“Yes and I didn’t care much for it.”

“Oh,” I didn’t know how to respond. “Thanks for the feedback, I guess?”

“You’re welcome.
You can go now.”

I hurried out of the drama studio, distracted by the conversation, glancing back over my shoulder and r
an straight into a man’s chest.
Embarrassed, I looked up to see it was James, Marty’s friend, who I had met in the pub.

“Oh, James, I’m sorry, I really should look where I’m going.”

“No harm done, you’re Claudia, right?” He smiled when I nodded, “My memory from
the other night is a bit murky.
I didn’t puke on you or anything, did I?”

“No, it’s fine, Belinda took you guys out
before any vomiting happened.
You missed the drama though – there was a fight and one of the guys had a knife, didn’t Marty tell you?” I noticed that even just mentioning Marty’s name caused a fluttering sensation in my chest.

“No, in fact, I haven’t seen or hear
d from Marty since that night.
Though I don’
t know him that well, really.”
James shrugged his shoulders, but his comment made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“You don’t?
I thought you were good friends.” I tried
to keep panic out of my voice.

“Oh, he seems really nice, but I’ve only k
nown him…about a month I think.
He stopped to help when my car got a flat tyre, we started chatting and found out w
e went to the same university.
As a thanks for his help, I bought him a drink, and he met Belinda and Russ then,” James smiled.

“That was nice of him to help you out.” I wanted to ask more, but didn’t know how to go about
it without looking suspicious.
I cleared my throat and decided now was not a good time to test my acting skills; my brain was working overtime, absorbing the fact that nobody seemed to know anything about Marty prior to a mo
nth ago.
“He always seems to be in the
right place at the right time.
Speaking of which, I was heading to the library, but
it was nice to see you again.”

“Yeah, take care and perhaps we can all go out again sometime, I know Belinda loved having a girl
in the group for a change.”
We exchanged waves and headed off in different directions.

I spent my time in the library, quietly surrounded by books, look
ing quite the perfect student.
The outward appearance was a complete fabrication, for the only thing my br
ain was focussed on was Marty.
I
barely knew anything about him.
Neither did his friends and as I thought about his interview with Aunt Sandra and myself, I realised we had taken e
verything he said for granted.
We hadn’t verified his story about the flatmates falling in love and having a baby, we’d just checked his re
ferences and taken his deposit.
I tried to recall the names of the referees he’d given but, for some reason
, my mind kept coming up blank.
I knew Aunt Sandra had been thoroughly convinced that he would be a perfect lodger; she would not have allowed him to move in othe
rwise – only applicant or not.
Now I wondered why we
’d both trusted him so easily.
He’d lied about being a medical student – was it possible he was lying about other things, too?

I read and re-read the same paragraph five times before giving up and putting the books back and deciding to
get a coffee from the canteen.
On my way back down the library’s main staircase, I passed the second floor, where the barely-used compu
ter room was positioned.
A few years ago, this had been one of the most popular parts of the university, with students queuing to spend an hour on the computers, but since technology had moved on, and mobile phones could often accomplish the same jobs as computers, this r
oom had become almost defunct.
Now the computer room was only busy when essays and dissertations were due in and studen
ts needed to use the printers.
On this occasion, there were only two other students working in this room and around twenty
computers waiting to be used.

I hit on an idea, not belie
ving I hadn’t tried it before. I would Google ‘Marty Glean’.
My heart pounded as I sat down at one of the computers,
away from the other students.
Part of me felt excited that I might find out what his secret was and the other part felt nervous in case I found someth
ing that I didn’t want to know.
I didn’t want to believe there was anything bad about Marty, but t
hings weren’t adding up for me.
I tapped my fingers agitatedly on the desk, as I waited for the computer to reach the search engine and the other students looked up mo
mentarily from their computers.
I stopped tapping and started typing
Marty’s name into the computer.
The somewhat archaic computer whirred into life and I involuntarily held my breath as I waited for the informat
ion to flash up on the screen. What I saw shocked me. There was nothing of interest. Nothing.
I’d at least expected to have to wade through Facebook pages of ‘Mart
y Glean’ that weren’t my Marty.
But ther
e was nothing.
Just a random list of pages featuring either the word Marty or the word Glean.

I felt disappo
inted as I started to log off.
I’d wanted something, anything, that would cast some light on this man
that I’d fallen in love with.
I was just about to close the computer down when I thought of another possible
lead for information on Marty.
He’d told me, just that morning, that he wa
s working at a cancer hospice.
I quickly found the website for the hospice,
and looked at the staff page.
I was relieved to see that there was a Dr Glean working there but, unlike the rest of the care team, his profile was awaiting
a photo and extra information.
They must have known som
ething about Marty to hire him.
I quickly wrote down the address and phone number for the hospice in my notebook, not sure of what I plann
ed to do with the information.
I checked my phone to see what the time was and realised I would be late for my lecture if I didn’t leave now.

The lecture passed in a blur, as I spent the whole time tryin
g to work out what to do next.
A stronger woman would just ask him outright why nobody seemed to know he existed until four weeks ago, but I didn’t want to break out of
the spell he had me under yet.
I needed to believe that he had his reasons for
not telling me the whole truth.
I needed to
believe that he was a good man. I needed him.
I thought about going to the hospice and trying to spy on him, but I was thwarted by the fact I didn’t drive and places like that would have quite strict policies on who
would be allowed to gain entry.
I decided my best course of action would be to ring up the hospice and see what they
would tell me over the phone. I had two possible plans.
One would be to ring up as myself and to ask to speak to Marty – after al
l, I did live with him.
I could say my mobile phone was out of power and I needed to talk to him, however, they would probably put him on the phone and I’d have no opportun
ity to ask questions about him.
The other option was to pretend to be someone else and try to ask the right questions, although I wondered how much they would tell someone over the phone without any proof of who they were.

I was still debating the best course of action with myself as I left the lecture hall, after taking in zero content
of the two hour talk.
I was toying w
ith the locket around my neck.
After a day of thinking constantly about the possibility of Marty not being what I needed him to be, it brought me comfort to have
something from him near to me.
As I got to the door, I saw that it was starting to rain and I hadn’
t brought a jacket out with me.
And at that moment, I saw Marty standing outside, und
er an umbrella, waiting for me.
My day of doubting ev
aporated and all I saw was him.
Whatever it was that he couldn’t tell me, it could w
ait.
This was our time now.

I desperately wanted to run to him and throw myself into his arms, but I
caught myself before I moved.
We had to ap
pear as just friends in public.
I feared my smile, and the blush spreading through my cheeks, mi
ght give me away.
I saw my happiness reflected in his eyes.  We shared a s
mile that held all our secrets.
I tried to saunter casually over to him, a flimsy disguise for my feelings.

“Hello, stranger,” I said, realising my greeting rang very true – he rea
lly was a stranger to me.
“What are you doing here?”

“I knew you wouldn’t have brought a jacket with you
and there was rain on the way.
I thought I’d come and
save you from getting soaked.”

“You know
me better than I know myself.
How was your day?”

“It was tough – a f
ew patients passed over today.”
He looked drained.

“Oh, I’m sorry…” I didn’t know what to say.

“It was time for them, they’d be
en in pain and they were ready.
It’s always sad, but I was gl
ad to be with them at the end.
There was nothing else that could be done for them here.”

We walked along
in silence for a few moments.
It felt strange to be standing so clos
e to him without touching him.
I longed to hold his han
d, to close the gap between us.
I didn’t know how I would keep up this pre
tence.
Not knowing why I had to pretend made it more difficult.

“I bumped into your friend, James, today.” I
glanced over at Marty’s face.
It was a picture that showed no emotion.

“Oh, yes, how is he?”

“He’s fine.
He mentioned that he had only known you
for four weeks.
And that got me thinking…nobody seems to have known
about you before a month ago.”
I phrased it as a statement, even though there was a question underlying my words.