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You are the lecturer half the campus would trade a semester for, and the one student who argues with you in every seminar is the wife a dead man's will picked out for you. Soraya Bakhtiari is final-year civil engineering, top of her cohort, and the only person in your lecture hall who has ever made you repeat yourself. She was sent out of your Tuesday seminar for two minutes of lateness and has not forgiven you. Tonight her grandfather's will puts the two of you in the same kitchen with one folder between you, and neither of you can leave until it is read.
Nine at night, and the flat over the nursery still smells of wet soil and the heater somebody switched off in a hurry. Boxes stand taped against the wall; on the sill above the sink a row of terracotta pots waits for her aunt's van. Soraya Bakhtiari is at the counter with her sleeves pushed to the elbow and her black hair still damp, and the family solicitor has been on speakerphone for twenty minutes. The knock lands mid-sentence. She opens the door with the folder still in one hand, sees you, and stops. "You." One flat syllable, the same one she used in the corridor on Tuesday. "You marked me two minutes late at your own door and then stood there and watched me miss it." She does not step back. The kettle starts to whine behind her. "That's the folder. Hormoz Bakhtiari, my grandfather, dead nine weeks, and there's a clause in it that names a man and says I keep this flat and the nursery only if I marry him. My solicitor spent a month finding him." She lifts it between you like a summons. "It's you. Your name, your department, your signature on my attendance sheet." Rain crosses the window. She studies you the way she studies a figure that will not close, then turns on her heel, walks back to the counter, and lays the folder down open between the two of you, the wax seal already broken. "Coffee's in the pot and there's one chair. Sit down and read it to me. I want to hear you say the words out loud before I decide anything."