by Penny Parkes
‘Of course,’ she said, by way of distraction, ‘then we would actually need a few memories to call on – and I’m not sure derring-do is right up my street.’
Kate grinned. ‘Give it time. You’ve got three years to find your feet and find your groove. I’m honestly not sure why this lot are in such a hurry.’ She waved a hand around to encompass the packed JCR, little clusters of bravado and flirtation all somehow reeking of urgency and desperation. ‘I like a slow burn, not an inferno.’
‘I had no idea it would be like this,’ Anna said, sipping at her Diet Coke and trying to make it last. £1.20.
It wasn’t just the cost of being sociable that had astounded her, even as her meagre bank account dwindled, it was the priorities. Hadn’t they all studied and sacrificed to get here – and yet now here they were, lectures were being skipped, deadlines missed, all in favour of a great night out or a cheeky hook-up. Relationships didn’t happen. They were fluid and flexible, as shown by the number of tearful girls Anna had seen, who apparently hadn’t received the memo until it was too late.
Oxford was – for want of a better description – a jungle. A jungle where all the animals were eloquent, intelligent and driven. Though without the restrictions of parents and school, it was already clear that decency and consideration were no longer a given. It really was a little David Attenborough, if you sat back and watched.
And thankfully Kate and Anna, together, were able to do just that.
The resilience that had carried Anna through the last decade now held her in good stead: she had no need to find herself, or express herself; she just wanted to explore her own abilities and potential. Hardly the stuff of popularity, yet she didn’t care. With Kate and a few girls from her English tutor group around her, she was never lonely. She was never adrift on the seas of uncertainty that seemed to ebb and flow through the colleges and bars.
If there was one small spanner in the works, it was in seeing how she was perceived by others.
Her clothes were old. Unfashionable.
Her budget didn’t stretch to make-up and rounds at the bar.
And whilst, yes, technically, Social Services and a lifetime of shit meant that she was getting – or possibly had earned – a free ride through university, she couldn’t bring herself to get into debt to buy camaraderie or friendship.
Popularity would have been a stretch too far, whatever her means.
So, instead, she worked hard, she was pleasant and polite – she would have to settle for respect.
Until, just after Easter of her first year, she met Max Howard.
And then suddenly, just like that, little Anna Wilson understood that frenetic drive to conform, to be approachable, desirable. And yes, for a little popularity to underscore that she wasn’t just the star of the English Lit program, she was also someone to be singled out and worthy of his attention.
Chapter 34
Oxford, 2008
It was hard to put into words the effect of Max’s tawny eyes on hers. Let alone the surreal feeling of being the only girl in the room when the full focus of his attention fell on her. It was as though the breath merely held in her chest, stilled to inaction, waiting on his words.
‘So, you’re the girl everyone’s talking about – the one to watch,’ he said, slipping into a chair beside her in the library, his voice necessarily quiet, leaning in close so that she could hear him without incurring the wrath of the indomitable librarian.
She’d had no answer to that one, had even been a little freaked out – it was a fine line between complimentary and creepy after all. As she pulled the air into her protesting lungs, she felt the colour rise up her neck, and any hope of a witty comeback desert her.
‘I mean,’ he continued, clearly bemused by her reaction, perhaps used to a little more fawning and flirtation, ‘that the assignments are back and you beat all of us by a head and a half, Anna Wilson. You really are a dark horse.’
He studied her, as though the answers to her success might be found in her tousled ponytail, or the cheap, over-the-counter reading glasses from Boots that stopped the headaches that had appeared from studying long hours. He reached out and flicked her books closed. ‘Come on, I’ll take you out to celebrate. It’s not every day you become the darling of the entire English department, is it?’
And, to her amazement, against everything she thought she knew about herself, Anna had gone with him. Sitting in a small bistro in Turl Street, Anna had allowed herself to listen; mopping up sumptuously vibrant olive oil with hunks of warm sourdough, she had allowed herself to be that girl – like the ones she had seen around town, hanging on the arms of the rowing squad or the rugby team.
The girls that she and Kate had looked down their noses at for dulling themselves down just to be seen as a catch.
‘Where did you say your people were from again?’ Max said, refilling her wine glass.
Her ‘people’? Had she tumbled into one of the arcane novels they’d been studying?
But the part of her that wanted to mock was completely overruled by an insistent desire to watch his lips as he spoke, to imagine running her hands through the unruly mop of hair that was highlighted by long summers in the sun.
‘We moved around a lot,’ she said easily, the lie only really a half-truth.
‘I can’t even imagine that,’ he said with a smile. ‘We’ve literally lived in the same house my whole life. Well, technically, my mum has too. And she’s sixty. We Howards like a steady home base.’
‘Sixty years? That’s amazing. And you – you’ve never been away from home before?’
He gave her a weird sideways look. ‘Well, apart from boarding school since the age of six and, you know, sailing, skiing and stuff – I guess not.’
‘Boarding school at six?’ Anna said, probably missing the point of his super-casual allusion to his wealth and privilege. ‘Isn’t that, well…?’
She wanted to say ‘cruel’. She wanted to say ‘a travesty of parental obligation’.
But then who was she to talk? Only twelve months older when she’d been entirely alone, but for Social Services stepping in. No fancy trunk full of uniform, or tuck box full of treats.
True, her knowledge of boarding schools was more Enid Blyton than Anthony Powell, but she liked to think she had a little idea of how he must have felt, shipped off from the family home.
Instead, he simply shrugged. ‘Duncan was already there, so it was hardly a stretch. Couldn’t lift my bloody trunk for the first two years though.’ He laughed, and for a fleeting, vulnerable moment, Anna saw the boy behind the carefully curated façade.
It made her like him just a little bit more.
Attraction had never been in doubt. There was an almost visceral pull towards him that she’d last encountered in a library at Hinchworth Comprehensive, and, just as Lucy Graham had pulled Anna into her orbit, so too did Max Howard. Drawn in by his conviction and his absolute sense of where he stood in the world. Grounded. Secure. At ease in his own skin.
Even if she didn’t entirely agree with a lot of what he was saying, or indeed how disdainfully he treated the waitress rushing from table to table. Even if his life was so different from hers as to be unrelatable.
Her heart seemed determined to overlook these minor inconveniences, simply for the promise of one touch, one kiss, one more moment of his undivided attention.
* * *
‘You do know he’ll break your heart,’ Kate said one evening, as they sat huddled together on the parapets of the college, well and truly out of bounds, but also away from the mad revelries below them.
Prelims were finished, the end of term approaching, and the sun had obligingly cast their small city, their small college, into a honeyed phase of blissful ease. All the stresses and revision seemingly forgotten as cafés and restaurants tumbled their patrons onto patios and pavements and Oxford itself felt like an idyllic haven.
Anna sipped at the sickly bottle of cider, still uncomfortable around alcohol, but s
oftening in her willingness to settle in with the status quo.
‘I know,’ she replied quietly. ‘But somehow that doesn’t feel like enough of a reason to step back.’ Tilting her head backwards she squinted her eyes against the Oxford skyline and breathed slowly out. ‘It’s just another rite of passage anyway, right? A little heartbreak?’
Kate scowled, her opinion of Max sinking further with every interaction they shared. ‘He’s a buffoon, though, Anna. All that intellect, all that potential and privilege and he’s too lazy to put in the work.’
‘He’s not lazy; he’s just relaxed,’ Anna defended him. ‘He’s not like us, you know, stressing over every detail and deadline. He just goes with the flow and – annoyingly – he always seems to land on his feet. So, he can’t be entirely wrong. Even if I have no idea how he manages it.’
‘Hmm,’ Kate replied sceptically, as though she suspected exactly how he managed it. ‘He takes advantage of your good nature, Anna. He knows you’ll never say no when he wants to borrow your notes, or needs you to proofread his essays. And by proofread, we’re talking rewrite. I just – well, I don’t get what you see in him.’
‘Really?’ Anna gave her a look that made it all too clear where the attraction lay.
‘Argh, just let me know when you start thinking with your head again, then, okay?’ Kate laughed. ‘And maybe we’ll have to implement some house rules for next term?’
‘Good idea,’ Anna replied, distractedly, still thinking about Max and the insatiable desire he had stirred up in her. Their afternoons lazily spent in his bed seemed to make the summer more vibrant, her body more alive and the small tendrils of hope for her future seemed to have finally taken hold.
She was living again.
Out in the world, as a normal student, doing normal everyday things.
Like falling in love.
She took a slug of the cider, wincing at the cloying sweetness, but needing something to offset the very idea.
Was that it; was she in love with Max Howard?
Was he actually – possibly, maybe – the person she could build her life with? Together?
‘It’s not love, it’s just lust,’ she said out loud, as much to placate herself as Kate.
‘Good to know,’ Kate laughed. ‘But I’m serious about next term. We’ve got really lucky with our house and sharing with Hannah and Nicola is going to be epic. We all get on so well and we’re all on the same song sheet when it comes to partying and studying and stuff. Just – let’s not fuck up the dynamic from the get-go with Max Howard loafing his way through our lives.’
Anna frowned. ‘Are you saying he’s not welcome?’
‘No. But I am saying he can buy his own food, and not leave chaos in his wake. You know what he’s like, Anna. He’s never washed a dish or picked up his crap in his whole life. He’s so used to having a cleaner, or a housekeeper, or a nanny to do his bidding that he’s barely even house-trained.’
‘Point taken,’ Anna said. It was hardly something she could disagree with. Even she had been shocked by the state of his room in College, even though he paid cash to one of the housekeeping staff to come in twice a week to sort it all out.
One room.
And yet still he needed a cleaner.
She couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t judged him for that.
Just as she couldn’t pretend that Kate’s take on Max was fair: if Anna didn’t almost love him, she probably wouldn’t even like him.
It was confusing at best.
Yet still, day after day, the fascination of those few hours in bed with their limbs entwined overwrote any concerns her imagination could formulate. Hope, it seemed, had finally got the upper hand over the catastrophising lizard part of her brain that had been running the show for so long.
‘If it comes to it, I’ll stay at his place,’ Anna said, unable to disguise the tightness of disappointment in her voice.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Anna. That’s not what I was saying and you know it. And why would we knowingly send you over there, so you can become their unpaid skivvy and cook? Don’t be daft.’ Kate sighed. ‘And please – let’s agree never to let any bloke, no matter how foxy, come between us? Promise?’
Anna nodded. ‘Promise.’ She took another slug of cider, feeling distinctly nauseated, the courtyard now somehow looking further and further below them. ‘And anyway – it might be a moot point by October. He’s travelling all summer, Kate, so let’s not kid ourselves that he’ll be saving himself for me.’ A small sob escaped her and she thrust the half-empty bottle of Diamond White out of reach, as though it were to blame for her rollercoaster of emotions.
‘Ah, shit, Anna. Come here, I didn’t mean to make you cry!’ Kate said.
‘It’s not you.’ Anna sniffed, wiping her nose on the back of her hand and not even caring in that moment how disgusting that was. ‘It’s me. How on earth did I fall for this guy, Kate? He’s so far out of my league it’s laughable. He’ll be off sailing with the Sophies and Lucys and Camillas, and I’ll be here all summer, pulling pints and walking dogs just to get enough cash for next year.’
The thought of money was never far from her mind. It wasn’t so much a question of class, as survival. Even with her life here so heavily subsidised – possibly the one benefit of a ‘looked-after’ childhood – she was constantly aware that there was no buffer, no Bank of Mum and Dad if she overspent.
‘Look – I’m not listening to this crap,’ Kate said, taking her hands. ‘If you ask me – or anyone in our tutor group actually – we would all say that he’s out of your league. Everything you’ve just listed comes from his parents’ achievements, his parents’ bank account. Hell, he can barely scrape a Third without you holding his hand. Can we look at this logically and say that by any measure: independence, resilience, talent, ability? Good old-fashioned hard work? He’s the one that comes up wanting, not you.’
Anna blinked hard, thrown by the ferocity of Kate’s words.
They made sense. They did. And yet still she couldn’t bring herself to believe them.
Max Howard carried with him an emotional cushion from a life well led – his confidence so absolute it was alluring. As though, simply by being at his side, just a little of that patina might rub off on her. As though, simply by sharing his bed and their mutual attraction, it made Anna herself a little more worthy of this gilded existence at Oxford University.
And even if this thought deeply offended her very sensibilities, it was nothing compared to the allure that Max Howard wore like a cloak of unshakeable belief.
Chapter 35
Oxford, 2008
Anna stood in the recess of her dormer window, her top floor bedroom feeling a little like the writer’s garret she had so often dreamed of, even if it did come with an avocado bathroom suite, generic magnolia walls and beige carpeting. This was her space – one of four bedrooms in this student terrace on the Cowley Road – and hers alone for the next two years.
Although, of course, should she choose to share…
She thought of Max, his occasional texts increasingly infrequent from the hotspots of Europe – cities, beaches, mountains – he certainly seemed to be making the most of his summer vacation. She thought of their last call, late at night, his clearly having knocked back one too many Stella Artois, and it still made her feel uncomfortable. She wasn’t a prude; she just didn’t feel okay about what he’d been asking her to do. Talking dirty to get him off in some anonymous hotel room didn’t feel right to her. The pretence of a loving relationship was wearing thin.
Somehow, over the course of the summer, working long hours and setting up the house with Kate, Max had receded from her thoughts. Without his very presence making her mind abdicate responsibility to her body, she struggled to remember what it was about him that made all rationale leave the building.
‘Can I come in?’ Kate said, tapping at the door and piling in with an armful of towels before Anna could even respond. ‘So, Mum says we should save our money f
or fun stuff, not domestic crap, and she’s given us these.’ She tossed the bale of soft, navy bath sheets and flannels and hand towels onto Anna’s bed. ‘Personally, I think it’s because she saw some beautiful cream ones in The White Company and wanted an excuse to update, but never look a gift horse in the mouth.’
Anna reached out to touch them, their sumptuous softness belying any attempt to write them off as hand-me-downs.
‘They’re from the guest bathroom, so I guess they haven’t been used much,’ Kate said, watching her face carefully.
‘Tell your mum I said a huge thank you,’ Anna said, despite the tiny demon on her shoulder stamping his feet and raging about not being a charity case. Yet. ‘They’re lovely.’
Kate visibly relaxed. ‘Cool. So that means we’ve got the kitchen and bathroom sorted, we can hit IKEA and get a desk each, maybe even a comfy chair to go with it – let’s face it, we’re going to be spending more time studying than anything else.’
‘Are we though?’ Anna smiled. Her stellar results at the end of the first year had not only brought her acclaim and confidence but a scholarship from her college towards this year’s expenses. She half wondered if she could dare to slack off a little, join a few societies, expand her horizons beyond the Bodleian.
‘Well, obviously, you’ll need to schedule in some shagging with that eejit Max,’ Kate teased her, still trying to keep an open mind about Anna’s boyfriend. ‘Just try and keep it down a bit, yeah. Who knows how sound travels in this house!’
Anna chucked her pillow at Kate’s head, laughing, feeling wonderfully, blissfully at peace with their new living arrangements. ‘I might dump him actually. Absence doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder, you know.’