‘Professor Caborn.’ I extended my hand and walked the three paces to his chair so he didn’t have to get up. ‘How nice to see you. Please forgive the intrusion.’
‘Er . . . no intrusion. I was just tidying up my inbox.’ He glanced at our clasped hands through oval spectacles, his forehead wrinkling. His lips were slightly parted, framed by his small, tidy beard. ‘Um, can I help you?’
‘Yes, I very much hope so. I’m Abigail.’
‘Oh, yes. Abigail . . .’ Professor Caborn withdrew his hand. He had the look of a man who had walked into a film halfway through and was trying to get a handle on the plot. I kept smiling, reassuringly. He returned the smile, then cleared his throat, very delicately. ‘I’m sorry: I feel like I should know who you are, but I don’t. I’m afraid I’m not very good with faces.’
I laughed. ‘That’s quite all right. We haven’t met. You recognize me from my profile picture. I’ve emailed you a few times. Abigail Williams. I’ve come to take you to lunch.’
‘Oh. That’s . . . odd.’
I shrugged. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Um, maybe a little. I’m not quite sure. This is . . . Abigail, would you take a seat for a moment?’ He gestured to the other chair in his office. It was against the wall, between an overfilled bookcase and a teetering stack of journals.
‘Yes, thank you. That’s very kind. I’ve just walked from the train station and I could do with taking the weight off my feet.’
‘Where have you come from?’
‘London.’
‘Just to see me?’
‘It’s only an hour. Not very far.’
‘Yes, but still. It’s . . .’ He trailed off.
‘Odd?’
‘Yes. Odd.’
This conversation was going nowhere fast. I decided to lay my cards on the table. ‘Professor Caborn. I woke up at three o’clock this morning and decided to take a punt. I’ve come here hoping that you can spare just a small portion of your day to talk to me. But if you don’t want to, that’s fine too. I’m perfectly prepared to hop on the next train back to London, and I promise you’ll never hear from me again. Just say the word.’
Professor Caborn didn’t say a thing. He looked like a man who’d been asked for his interpretation of an unyielding piece of modern art, all primary colours and abstruse geometry. I took his silence as leave to continue.
‘Good. I can see you’re at least interested.’
He put a hand to his chin and glanced away for a few seconds as if turning this statement over in his mind, assessing its validity.
I waited. A few more moments passed.
‘Coffee,’ he said eventually.
‘Coffee?’
‘I think I could manage a coffee.’
‘Wonderful.’ I rose from my chair. ‘So let’s go get a coffee. And maybe some cake?’
Professor Caborn nodded, slowly, as if in a trance.
I gestured to the door with my open palm. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Er, yes. I suppose I am.’ He switched off his monitor, stood up, and parked the swivel chair neatly under his computer desk.
‘Oh. Just one more thing,’ I said. ‘Will we be going out via reception?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I ask you a small favour? Sarah, the receptionist: well, I’m not especially proud of this, but I wasn’t sure she’d let just anyone in to see you. So I told her we were old colleagues, from Liverpool.’
Professor Caborn digested this information. ‘I suppose that should seem odd too, but given everything else . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Fine. So we’re old colleagues. Anything else I should know?’
‘Yes: I also told her my name was Dr Julia Walters.’
‘Dr Julia Walters?’
‘Yes. I’m a primatologist. You supervised my Ph.D. That’s how we know each other. Please don’t contradict this. She seemed nice and I’d hate to embarrass her.’
Professor Caborn sighed at length. ‘Tell me, Abigail. Is this a normal day for you? Because it isn’t for me. I just wanted you to know that.’
I could see where he was coming from, of course; on reflection, some of my actions that morning had been slightly eccentric. But what choice had he left me? I’d tried to arrange a meeting by conventional means. That had failed, so I’d decided to get a bit creative. Standard journalistic practice.
‘This isn’t an entirely abnormal day for me,’ I told him.
Then we went for coffee.
‘I suppose you must need that?’ Professor Caborn twitched a nervous forefinger at my double espresso. ‘You mentioned you’ve been up since three. Unless you go to bed unusually early, I can’t imagine you’ve had much sleep.’
I did the calculation in my head. ‘Three hours ten minutes, I think. Give or take. But I suppose it must have been deep sleep. It was one of those mornings when I just woke up fresh as a daisy. They happen to me sometimes, especially in the summer. I think it must be something to do with the light. That was something I was going to ask you about, actually. I have a theory – a hypothesis – that I’m hoping you might substantiate.’
I smiled. I was letting my mouth run a bit, but I was confident that at least some of what I was coming out with might interest him. It was sciencey. We’d already covered the basic pleasantries: Oxford, the beautiful weather, the equally beautiful parkland that enveloped the Department of Experimental Psychology. But Professor Caborn still seemed slightly wary of me. I thought that talking science might help him to relax, and my insomnia seemed a relatively benign place to begin. I didn’t want to jump straight in at the deep end and start talking about Simon’s corpse.
‘So, my bedroom window faces east,’ I went on, ‘and my curtains are lousy, so summer is always a big problem. The room starts getting bright from about three in the morning, and by four, you might as well be trying to sleep in a solarium.’
Professor Caborn processed this metaphor, then nodded that I should continue.
‘I’ve been thinking about evolution recently,’ I told him, ‘mostly on account of your work, and it got me wondering about how our minds have evolved – or haven’t evolved – to cope with extended daylight in the summer. I mean, we all came out of Africa, right, not so long ago, so presumably we’re not adapted to these big seasonal variations? Now that I think about it, I’m fairly sure I’ve always suffered with sleeping in the summer, whereas I can be a real dormouse in the winter. Perhaps I should hibernate?’
Professor Caborn didn’t give me an answer to any of these questions straight away. Maybe it was just that he was an exceptionally deep thinker, and refused to open his mouth until he had every detail of his reply mapped out. Or maybe I was being rather impatient. In any case, his response seemed to take an unnecessary amount of time. I tapped my nails in sequence on the tabletop. Then, eventually, he said, ‘Tell me: how much do you know about circadian rhythms?’
I answered instantly. ‘I’ve heard of them. However, it’s probably best if you assume, from this point on, that my knowledge of science is extremely limited. I think I understand how the toaster works, but not the microwave. Imagine that you’re talking to an intelligent twelve-year-old.’
‘Oh.’ Professor Caborn thought for a few more moments. ‘Well. Microwaves work by agitating the hydrogen atoms in water molecules. Food contains water, microwaves wobble some of the atoms in that water, and this makes the food hot. As for circadian rhythms, they refer to all the processes in animals and plants that recur on a cycle of approximately twenty-four hours. The normal sleeping-waking cycle is one such process. It is affected by light, in that light is one of the cues that inform our body clock. But because seasonal changes happen very slowly, we have plenty of time to get used to them, so few people are adversely affected. It’s possible, of course, that you’re unusually photosensitive. Or maybe something else is causing you to wake and then the morning sunlight is preventing you from getting back to sleep. Either way, you should probably get some thicker curtains.’