Zoe rolled her eyes and returned her attention to the path ahead–only to go splashing straight through the next puddle. Grimy water was seeping up the hem of her trousers.
‘I’d be better if you weren’t asking me that every other minute,’ she replied crossly.
‘You nearly fell asleep in that seminar, Zoe.’
She groaned and threw her hands in the air. ‘Right, yeah, how crazy. Shakespeare’s sonnets don’t exactly send me into ecstasies.’ She kicked a stone sulkily across the path and it skittered onto the lawn. In summertime, students would lay out their jackets and sit on the grass between lectures, turning their library-wan faces towards the sun. Now, it, too, was dotted with puddles.
‘Why don’t we ever analyse anything contemporary? There’s good poetry being written today, you know. Like, we could talk about Rupi Kaur, for example. She talks in plain language about stuff that actually speaks to me. I’m so sick of listening to the same old crap spewed by dead white men.’
‘Shakespeare is one of the most important dramatists in the history of world literature.’ I eyed her sceptically. Zoe loved Shakespeare, I knew she did. In the single year we’d been friends, she’d talked me into going to see three separate productions ofRomeo and Juliet.
But, judging by the look on her face, she had forgotten all of that. ‘Rupi Kaur is a modern-day internet icon,’ she added stubbornly.
I shook my head. ‘You shouldn’t be studying English if you wanted to read stuff from this century. Anyway, not all poems are sonnets and?—’
‘Stop it.’ Zoe interrupted, taking the cup out of my hand. ‘I love you, but if I don’t get another dose of caffeine I won’t be able to handle another minute of you being a smart alec.’
I watched her down my coffee–her third of the day–with a furrowed brow. ‘Are you sure you’re okay? You’ve been knackered all week. Since Friday night, to be exact.’
Frankly, ‘knackered’ was a euphemistic term for Zoe’s state of mind since the strange party. After leaving the book-lined room and going back downstairs, I’d eventually found her and Ashton on a velvet sofa in the corner. For a moment I thought they were kissing, but when I looked again I saw that Zoe wasn’t really with it anymore. She was slumped against his shoulder, eyes closed, her face peaceful and relaxed. It took a few minutes to get her upright and on her feet. I declined Ashton’s offer to walk us home. Zoe had been so out of it the whole way back to college that I started running through worst-case scenarios in my head–what had she taken? But the next morning, she said she hadn’t even had that much to drink, and wasn’t sure why she was so tired. All weekend long, she had headaches and nausea, spending most of it in her room. Still, she did say she’d had a ‘great night’. I found her optimism uncanny.
Now she shrugged, yanking at the belt of her coat. ‘I just had a late night, that’s all.’ Her voice grew softer, less defensive. A sign that she was ready to talk about it.
‘Did you go out again?’
‘No.’ She paused, chewing her lip. ‘Ashton said maybe we could do something. But then he didn’t get back to me.’
Bitterness welled up into my mouth, furring my tongue. ‘So. You stayed up half the night waiting for him to call.’
I tried not to make it sound like an accusation, but immediately Zoe tensed up again. ‘Yeah, and? I’m twenty years old, Mabel. Not all of us want to tuck up in bed with a good book every night, put the lights out promptly at ten and spend the whole night dreaming abouteven more books.’
My cheeks flushed, my heart on fire. I gripped the leather strap of my bag more tightly and focused on the paving stones ahead. Zoe got like this sometimes: when she fought, she hit below the belt. She had a sixth sense for her opponent’s weak spots, and when in an impulsive mood, she used it.
She knew how important this degree was to me. I loved to learn, and I was certainly learning a lot–but I didn’t do it just because I wanted to, I did it because I had to. My bursary depended on me doing well, and my future depended on my bursary. I knew I should be grateful simply for the opportunity, but I couldn’t help but feel the pressure. Every time I got the sniffles and couldn’t study properly for a day or two, I panicked. Basically, she was right: I couldn’t afford to lose out on sleep, unless I was pulling an all-nighter at the library.
For a few minutes we were silent. The blue-bellied clouds parted slowly to reveal the sky, bathing the buildings around us in sunlight and streaking the brown stone with threads of gold. Gold and silver. On days like these, I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful place than our university.
After a while, Zoe let out a huge sigh. ‘God, that was somean. I’m acting like a diva from one of those American high-school movies. I’m sorry.’ She linked her arm through mine and blinked up at me contritely. ‘That was the exhaustion talking. And the coffee. And the psychological wounds inflicted by Professor Walton’s heinously boring lecture. Do you forgive me?’
I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t repress a tiny smile. ‘It’s fine.’
Usually I found it more difficult to be forgiving. But with Zoe I could never stay angry for long. As my mum used to say, ‘To truly love means to forgive’. Since meeting Zoe, I’d come to realise what she meant.
Before I could say anything else, I heard a long, drawn-out whistle coming from somewhere near by. Zoe gave a snort of annoyance and wheeled around, obviously gearing up for a tirade. But then, abruptly, she stopped.
Confused, I did the same, following her gaze. Only six feet away from us, sitting on the steps of the iconic fountain in the middle of Great Court, was a group of people. My eyes were drawn automatically to the young man on the bottom step. The hem of his coat grazed the stone and his shoes were sodden with rain, but he still managed to exude a particular grace. His hair gleamed in the light. A bit like the buildings, but more golden.
Ashton smiled languidly up at Zoe, although his eyes were watchful. ‘Anima, how nice.’
It was all he needed to say, and in an instant, the exhaustion was banished from Zoe’s face. She blushed prettily. ‘Hi,’ she answered in a dreamy tone. Evidently she’d forgotten all about being stood up.
I cleared my throat, and Zoe jumped. Ignoring my meaningful scowl, she shot me a look of aimiable severity. ‘Well, well, well, what a coincidence! Mabel, these are the lovely people you would have met at the party if you hadn’t gone AWOL for hours on end.’
Suppressing an eye-roll, I surveyed the rest of the group. Sitting on the step behind Ashton was a girl who seemed vaguely familiar. Maybe we’d met on Friday, or maybe I’d just seen her around town somewhere. She had one of those instantly recognisable faces–no matter how briefly you’d noticed her, you could still pick her out of a crowd. Delicate features, high cheekbones. Large, pale blue eyes. An elven face in shades of pastel. Her fox-red hair, playing across her face in the breeze, struck a vivid and contrasting note that made her all the more attractive. She paid me the briefest flicker of attention before returning to her phone.
My eyes drifted to the young man next to her, and before I’d even registered what I was seeing, my heart began to thud. I stared for three or four seconds before it really sank in what Iwas looking at.WhoI was looking at. Cliff.
Black rollneck, plaid coat, a tattered book in his lap and an uneasy twist to his mouth. He wasn’t looking at me, but I could tell from the crease between his brows that he’d noticed me. Noticed me and recognised me. Not that he wanted anyone else to know, that much was obvious. The way he was ignoring me, he didn’t exactly seem pleased to see me again. I shouldn’t have cared, but I felt my stomach knot unpleasantly, and I hurried to look away.
