Catcher Told Me I Was Rotten

>Four:

"Can you tell me what your relationship to the victim was?"

"She would have been in my second-year general law class. Yes. Quite the enthusiastic student." The Professor gave a reserved sort of smile, glancing over towards the door of the small room they were sitting in. God, it was a fucking terrible shade of yellow.

"How did she seem in class? Disagreements with any other students or mood shifts, that sort of thing, they're always helpful. If you could give me some sort of timeline, maybe..." As Liam waited for the dark-haired young man in front of him to formulate an answer, he reached for the personnel file that the university had provided, to have a flick through. In the ensuing chaos after the discovery of the poor girl's body, he hadn't had nearly enough time to do the research that he'd wanted.

"Ah... well... I suppose in the weeks leading up to the... well. She and a number of friends were all competing against each other for the Bentham internship. Maybe a fortnight after the results were announced, she was dead." The Professor could feel himself getting just slightly antsy as he watched Inspector Collins slowly turning the page of the yellow file in front of him, but he knew it was important to keep himself poised, retain his sense of calm. The initial interview was the most important, by far. "I tried to lend as much support as I could, of course, but sometimes it just... isn't enough."

"Right..." Suddenly, Liam felt his attention shift, shadowed eyes flickering up to focus on the Professor again; what he had assumed would just be a regular, routine interview had just changed course. For the better, certainly not.

"Professor, I'd like to ask you why Charlotte Weller attempted to file an injunction against you."

There was a different kind of buzz going in the classroom on Monday. Out of the entire second-year law group – around 200 students – sixty had been chosen to move onto the next round of the Bentham interviews, and that was really all anyone was talking about.

That made it a little harder for Lottie to forget about the whole fiasco on Friday. It did seem a tad stupid – after all, there were plenty of students who had bounced back effortlessly from the rejection – but she couldn't help but feel crushed by the disappointment of the whole thing. It was like for that fifteen minutes, her hard work had amounted to fuck all—

"Congratulations, Louise! You did so great. I knew you were going to nail the interview."

"Ella, thanks!" Of course, the Unwanted Reminder in the form of her best friend sat down, managing to catch Lottie at her lowest ebb that morning. "Oi. For fuck's sake, are we really going to sit through this again, Lottie? It's an internship, you're not being kicked out of uni or anything. Come on, you're just being stupid, now."

Great, thanks. It's not like you get it. Everything comes effortlessly to you. Lottie gave a little shrug, and opened up her notebook on a clean page. It was thin, cheap paper, and sorely wrinkled by the pressure that she'd put on it while scribbling away. "Yeah. "

"What did you do for the rest of the weekend? Lounge around the house and study, I suppose." Louise grinned wickedly, withdrawing a slim but stylish leather binder, that she'd occasionally take notes in if she felt like it.

And Lottie shook her head. I'm not as much of a dry shit as you think, Louise. "No, I'm helping Tracey and Elliott out with this – march thing, I don' t know. It's about the law around blood transfusions and stuff for LGBT people. They needed like signs, and bunting, and..." You know how it is whenever Trace gets involved in something. "Actually, I meant to ask – what are you doing Saturday the 13th? It's just that they need more numbers for the rally..."