Scripps is trying to work out some things about the future. In particular… her.
Chapter 1 - Target
Scripps had never envied the sex. Only Dakin's being up for it. That, to him, was a much bigger deal. Posner's defence had been to want exclusively, excruciatingly the unattainable. Aktar had had his huge and traditional family between him and any such possibilities. Timms wouldn't have been many girls' choice, and Scripps himself had had the rule books of religion on his side but Crowther, Lockwood, Rudge and Dakin – they'd all been up for it. Well up for it. If Scripps were honest with himself, their sexual activities were the last thing he would have judged his classmates for. His religious beliefs had nothing particular to say about sex. It was him that had the problem with it. It wasn't wrong for anyone, it just wasn't right for him. Not then. But now… maybe. His college had been one of the first to admit women. They nearly outnumbered the men, actually. And there was this pretty physicist. Except that it wasn't that she was pretty - it was that she sang better than Pos, she joked better than Dakin, she argued better than Irwin, she knew, and more to the point loved, all Hector's stuff… And above all that there was something more to her, something that was just her, which he wanted. He wanted to hold it, he wanted to know what it was, he wanted to be able to name that something about her – something about the way she walked, the way she thought, the way she played with her hair, the way she spoke. Through school it had all been about getting the grades, for the sake of the future, and then, for that last extra term, about getting to Oxford, for the sake of the future. Now it was all about getting her, for the sake of the future. Perhaps, if he got her, he might be able to live in the present…