My room is pretty and pale, simple but gorgeous, in a pastel-pink kind of way, a soft rug placed under the king-sized bed and an en suite with copious Jo Malone toiletries. I’ve got my eye on the bath oil and the rolltop bath and hope there’s time for a soak. The toiletries are full-sized and brand-new. Ben’s mum has gone to quite some trouble to welcome his new friends to their home for the weekend.
Ben’s room is opposite mine, and on the tour I note that it has leaving pictures from his ‘Upper Sixth’, as he calls it. I think he means Year Thirteen. In one photo Ben’s in a navy-blue uniform.
‘You look sweet,’ I say.
‘I look young, even though it was only taken in July,’ he replies over my shoulder. He rests his head on me for a moment and I enjoy the feeling, his closeness to me. His mum is still in the room, and I never asked Ben what he told his parents about me – about who I was to him. It occurred to me, as his dad picked us up from the train station and we were all introduced, that perhaps I’m just someone Ben lives with. But his quick kiss on my cheek says everything that he isn’t saying, or hasn’t said.
‘A little drinky?’ Ben’s mum asks once we’ve completed the tour and have dumped our bags in our bedrooms.
As we stand in a pretty cream Shaker-style kitchen, Liv and I take the bar stools and Ben’s mum quizzes us about our courses, how we’re finding living in London (although it’s the dingy outskirts) and about everything we’ve been doing. She reminisces about her university days and it sounds like an idyllic other time, full of dances and balls, tuxedos andgowns. It’s a far cry from the kind of grubby nights out we’re having. We listen to her talk, and every now and again I dart a glance at Ben. Does he feel he’s missing out on all of this glamour by choosing an ex-polytechnic over an established, ancient university?
‘I met Ben’s father at Oxford,’ Chrissie, Ben’s mother, divulges as if it’s a huge secret. She’s all glossy highlighted hair and sensible-length skirt, and she pushes glasses of champagne in our direction and makes a toast to university days.
Ben looks grim at the mention of Oxford, his expression firmly set, and he downs his champagne in one go.
‘A proper drink now, I think,’ David, Ben’s dad, suggests, discarding his near-empty champagne flute on the worktop.
It’s immediately rushed towards the sink by Chrissie, who I sense might be a bit neurotic. We’re invited through to the drawing room, and Ollie and Ben pep up as whiskies are poured from a crystal bottle on the sideboard. David throws another log on the fire, settles into a plump armchair, and Ollie takes Ben’s empty flute from his hand. I notice Ollie necking his champagne quickly, keeping up with proceedings as a second drink enters the equation. I wonder if he feels a little out of place in this sort of elegant, affluent home, although if his dad is a hotshot lawyer, then I assume he’s loaded too. But Ollie looks slightly awkward here. I feel it too, but I’m almost determined not to show it. Despite the neurosis, there’s something faintly judgemental about Chrissie, or perhaps she just doesresting bitch-facereally well, asI catch her features lift into a too-fast not-quite-there smile when our eyes connect.
David, however, looks very at home entertaining, regaling his son and Ollie with his own university stories, all three leaning conspiratorially forward and talking in hushed tones, peppered with loud laughter.
Chrissie asks Liv about her family, where they’re from and what they do, and Liv’s cut-glass accent, I think, ticks a lot of Chrissie’s conversational boxes – her wants and requirements for someone associated with her only son.
Liv’s father does something high up in the army, and her mother is something even higher in the NHS. Liv starts chatting amiably about socialist values and I hear David stop talking as he overhears. Then his wife, without any hint of humour asks, ‘Are you socialists?’
I spit champagne, and Chrissie forgets her slightly rude question and hastily hands me a tissue from a marble tissue-box holder.
After a dinner of Thai takeaway, Chrissie and David leave us to it and Ben suggests we take a trip down the road to the pub.
‘Did you hear my mum ask if you’re a socialist?’ Ben laughs loudly as we settle into the prettiest little pub, with a thatched roof and yet another fire going strong. It’s full of locals with dogs, wooden floors and craft ales.
‘She asked as if the word is so dirty. I thought she was joking!’ Liv guffaws, sipping her drink.
‘No. Deadly serious. Are you, though?’ Ben asks.
‘I just want everyone to be equal.’
‘Equally poor?’ Ben asks. ‘Everyone at the bottom together?’
‘OK, enough of this,’ Ollie cuts in immediately. ‘I don’t think we should go down this road.’
‘What road?’ Ben asks and my eyes swivel between the three of them.
‘Politics,’ Ollie says. ‘It’s a grown-up subject that leads to some very ungrown-up-like responses.’
‘We’re old enough to vote now,’ I tell him. ‘Shouldn’t we talk about it?’
‘No,’ Ollie replies strongly. ‘We’ll argue, as I suspect none of us will vote the same way and, believe it or not, we’ve got a good thing going here, the four of us. Don’t ruin it. Next subject.’
‘Ollie!’ Liv says admiringly. And then pushes, quietly, ‘You want to be a doctor. You know how much the NHS is struggling. I assume you and I see eye-to-eye on things like this.’
Ollie’s quiet. I sort of want to hear what he has to say. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘And if we don’t … what then?’
‘You’ll have to tell me at some point,’ Liv continues. ‘We can hardly be a long-term thing if we don’t see eye-to-eye on the fundamentals.’
Ollie shifts in his seat, lifts his pint to his mouth and drinks. He puts it down, glances at Ben – I assume to instruct his only wingman to save him. Ben does nothing of the kind, but I notice his pint is already at the halfway mark.
I do a double-take. ‘How do you drink so fast?’ I ask, mainly to shut this conversation down, as Ollie is right: it’s going nowhere good.
