‘Yeah,’ he agrees. ‘I’m doing all right. Took me a while to find my feet.’
‘One year down, a thousand to go?’
‘Something like that,’ he says, finally taking a sip of his drink. ‘How’s Ben been over the summer? Hardly saw you two, after we went home for the holidays.’
‘Good. I still can’t believe his parents bought him a car for his birthday.’
‘Yeah, crazy,’ Ollie utters. ‘A BMW at our age. Even though it’s an old model, the insurance must be astronomical. It’s going to get stolen or broken into within days, parked out there, looking all shiny and expensive.’
‘I hope not. His parents do nice things for him, but they don’t see the reality of their actions, don’t really get too involved with his life. They’re kinda hard work.’
‘Still?’ Ollie asks.
‘Still,’ I agree. ‘Ben’s used to it, though – their mad up-and-down energy.’
‘Which is probably where Ben gets it from,’ Ollie points out, his gaze flicking up to the TV and then back down to me.
I frown, thinking about that. ‘Ben’s not up-and-down.’
‘Yes, he is,’ Ollie says automatically. ‘Life and soul of the party one moment, like his dad, doling out the drinks and telling all the jokes. And then an over-anxious mess the next, like his mum.’
‘Ollie,’ I exclaim in total surprise, ‘that’s—’
‘Spot-on?’ questions Ollie.
‘Rude, I was going to say. About so many people.’
‘Rude, spot-on … same thing,’ Ollie says, only half joking, I’m sure. ‘You don’t like his parents, either.’
There’s a silence between us, with only the sound of other drinkers clinking glasses and talking. On the TV thedin of football is on, although I’ve no idea who’s playing. I wonder why Ollie’s being like this. There’s no need for it. There’s no point arguing. ‘Shall we finish these and get the fish-and-chips? Liv and Ben will be wondering where we are.’
‘No, they won’t,’ Ollie remarks, taking me aback a bit. But he sinks his drink anyway and makes to stand. And I wonder what’s got him so snarky all of a sudden, on moving-in day when our second year is about to begin, when a whole new year of opportunity awaits us.
But he’s pissed me off with his comment about Ben and so I’m not going to ask him.
Ben and Liv have already cracked open the fizz when we get home and, by some miracle, my bookshelves are finished, although they look a little rickety. I give Ben a quick thankful kiss as we dispense vinegary, salty fish-and-chips and eat from plates on our lap around our charity-shop ugly brown wooden table and chairs. We’ve had to coordinate charity-shop purchasing and associated deliveries – an art I’m adept at, but which Ben and Liv had no idea was a ‘thing’. To them, charity shops are where their parents might donate clothes, but they certainly don’tshopin them. I often wonder how grounded in reality Ben is compared to me. But so far our obvious economic differences haven’t marred our first year together.
I can’t believe we’ve made a year together work, right through being separated by Ben’s month-long tour of French vineyards and then a beach break in the South of France withhis parents, and me being stuck back at home with Mum and waitressing throughout the summer. Liv and Ollie went away together for a bit and I did get a funny message from Ollie, asking if he could delay signing the rental contract while he ‘sorted some things out’. The fact that the four of us became couples so quickly does worry me a little, every now and again. I’m petrified someone will dump someone else, and that’s the house-share over and done with. The four of us, like this, living together: it’s a risk. But it felt so right.
We’ve still got a couple of days to get ourselves sorted before lectures and tutorials start again, and there’s a general thrum of excitement to everything we do, from grocery shopping in the newly opened supermarket down the road, to discovering all the local pubs and takeaway shops. We still need to unpack properly, but now that we’re closer to the Tube line it makes it easier to get into central London, so I want to make the most of that.
I should be reading Keats, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I know all the work that awaits me after I start and, if I put off the reading, I can put off the work. Instead I bounce into Liv’s room to find her texting someone. ‘What you doooiiing?’ I drawl, in a voice that essentially says,Are you free to come out to play?
‘Nothiiing,’ she drawls back.
‘Great. Want to go shopping in Oxford Street?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘You and Ollie broke up? And you didn’t tell me?’ I squeak as Liv and I queue for the changing room in Topshop in OxfordStreet. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you message me?’And why didn’t Ollie tell me?
‘Because it was no big deal, and because we got back together almost immediately afterwards,’ she says nonchalantly. ‘See? No big deal.’
I’m not so sure about that. ‘But you broke up. What was that like? Who instigated that? And why, more importantly.’
‘I did, because Ollie was annoying me, because he was paying me no attention, because I’d had enough. It was warning shot after warning shot over the course of last year and he wasn’t listening, Aurora, he just wasn’tlistening. So I told him I didn’t think it was working, that we were far too young to be settling down with each other and that living together wasn’t a good idea.’
‘Is that why he had a wobble about living with us?’
