Time Being
It’s by far the most shocking thing to happen on a London campus in decades. A lecturer shot dead – in apparent imitation of the Reeva Steenkamp case a few years before – through the door of a toilet stall in the Humanities building. The questions are myriad. Too many to answer in the short window the press affords the story before the customary slide into seasonal oblivion. The victim is Laura Cameron, Professor of Philosophy, and Esther’s dear friend and colleague. A mother of two, and almost as renowned for her eccentric, bohemian style as for her books on metaethics and moral responsibility. With her heron’s-nest hair, held high in an improbable construction, Laura was unmistakeable walking into a conference hall, or on TV. A public academic, and the youngest woman to be made professor at the University of London, Laura was brilliant, risky, unconventional. A force of nature, the newspapers predictably say. All the qualities, Esther reflects in the dark, time-arrested days of January that follow, that she lacks.
Read the opening pages of Time Being, the new novel by Jude Cook.