Steeplechase by Krissy Kneen

will be no uni people there? No friends of friends? Or even friends of friends of friends?’
    â€˜Do you want to wear a disguise? I think we have time for you to put on a fake beard or maybe just a moustache.’
    â€˜You know what I mean.’
    â€˜Do you have a coat? You’re going to get cold if you don’t cover your chest.’
    â€˜I’m overdressed, aren’t I?’
    â€˜No! You are not overdressed. You are beautiful. You have beautiful breasts.’
    â€˜Too much cleavage?’
    â€˜Never. How can you say that? Too much cleavage? Whoever heard of such a thing?’
    My smile is my reward for him. I should be laughing because he likes to make me laugh but I am too tense to laugh. In the car I ask him if there will be anybody else the same age as me.
    â€˜I went to high school with these people,’ he says. ‘Maybe someone repeated a year or two but I don’t think anyone was held back that long.’
    â€˜I’ll drop you there. I should just stay home. Really.’
    â€˜Can you just shut up? Really?’
    I miss the turn and we have to negotiate a series of one-way streets before I finally get us back on the right path.
    â€˜You know I’m proud to be seen with you,’ he tells me suddenly. ‘I wouldn’t want to take you if I wasn’t.’
    â€˜Okay.’
    When we pull up outside the low brick house he asks me about my grandmother. ‘How was she?’
    â€˜We are about to go into this party aren’t we?’
    â€˜Dinner party.’
    â€˜Dinner party then.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜And you ask me now about my grandmother?’
    â€˜Long story, huh?’
    I wrench the handbrake on and put the car into gear. It is a steep hill and I wonder if I should find a brick. I glance around the perfectly manicured suburban gardens. The car will be fine. I lock the doors and take a deep breath. He puts out his elbow like a leading man from a forties movie and I take it with that same thin smile.
    â€˜You look nice,’ he says, and kisses me lightly on the cheek.
    The truth is my grandmother did not look well. She has lost weight. When I was free of the angry tapping of her finger and the implied threat of her half-scowl I realised how frail she actually seemed. The right side of her body has been thin and slack-skinned since the stroke. I am used to a certain emaciated drag, but it has been too long between visits. She seemed old.
    Still, in the safety of retrospect it would be easy to misread exhaustion for a softening. You have a boyfriend. All the accusations were there in her silence. Even if she could speak there would be no questions. Oma never asked questions. You must not take your students as boyfriends. You are a disappointment to me. You should be smarter than this.
    She would never approve. Not even I approve. The only way to hide John from her is to see her less often. I will abandon her, the last fragment of my family, for someone who is just over half my age. The weight of guilt makes me slump-shouldered.
    I wonder if John’s friends will see me the way I saw my own grandmother, a physical reminder of the grave we are all slouching towards.
    He knocks. I slip my hand off his arm and his fingers reach for mine so that we are holding hands when the door opens.
    The young man at the door is a child, a fresh-faced Aryan boy. He has a thick leather band around his wrist and a short leather jacket to match. I did not even know that this was a style. Certainly none of the art students wear leather wristbands and the jacket is padded at the shoulders like the jackets I remember from the eighties.
    â€˜Well,’ he says and he is looking at me. Pale blue eyes and a stare that could cut glass. He is smiling and he sways just slightly and I realise that he is a little drunk and we are only just arriving. ‘Welcome,’ he says and John shrugs.
    â€˜Bec, Charles, Charles, Bec.’ The boy tilts his