by Vivien Brown
I was just eating the last mouthful and folding up the foil to keep, in case I might need it again, when the train started to slow down. Several passengers were getting up and grabbing for their bags, bending to peer out to see if it might be raining outside before deciding whether to wear or carry their coats, and starting to make their way towards the exits. The train slid into a station and jolted to a halt, and I turned my attention to the platform that teemed with busyness outside the window.
The girl who climbed on board and made a beeline for one of the seats in front of me was about my age, small and slim, her hair as fair as mine was dark. ‘Do you mind?’ she said, edging my coat aside and plonking her stuff down anyway.
I shook my head. ‘It’s a free country,’ I said.
‘Is it?’ She laughed. ‘Tell that to the rail company. The price I’ve just had to pay for my ticket! Anyone would think us students were made of money.’
‘You’re a student?’ I asked as the train moved off again and a pile of heavy reference books slid out of the open bag she’d balanced on her lap, and landed on the floor with a thud.
‘Yeah, second year at Brydon,’ she said, bending to retrieve them. ‘Just heading back after the hols. Lectures don’t kick off for another week, but I want to get settled back in, make sure nobody’s taken over my room or nicked my boyfriend while I’ve been away. You?’
‘I’m going there too. Starting my first year.’
‘A fresher, eh? What are you studying?’
‘English.’
‘Yuck! All that Shakespeare and stuff. I’m more of a science girl myself. Never happier than when I’ve got a test tube in my hand. Well, that’s not strictly true, of course. A vodka and orange is probably top of the list. Or a man! Anyway, if you’re anything like I was this time last year, you’ll feel a bit like a fish out of water for a while. It’s a big campus, lots going on, but you’ll soon get your bearings. God, what is that awful pong?’
‘Oh, sorry. Probably my egg sandwiches. But I’ve eaten them now, don’t worry. Maybe we could open the window a bit, let some fresh air in?’
‘No, you’re all right. It’s chilly out there, and wet! So, what’s your name? I’m Beth, by the way. Beth Carter. Well, Elizabeth really, but no one calls me that anymore except my mum and dad. And that’s usually only when I’m in the doghouse for something!’
‘And I’m Eve.’ I laughed. ‘Eve Peters. Which can’t really be shortened to anything much.’
‘Eve! I don’t suppose you’ve got an apple in that bag of yours, have you?’
I’d heard it all before, of course. The silly Adam and Eve jokes about serpents, and walking around the garden naked, and having kids trying to count my ribs. But I laughed anyway.
‘I did, but I’ve eaten it.’
‘Shame. I’m bloody starving! Anyway, you can stick with me if you like, when we get off the train. Share a taxi, keep the costs down, unless you were planning on getting the bus. It’s cheaper but I wouldn’t recommend it. Takes ages, and you still have a bit of a trek at the other end. If we arrive together I can show you the ropes maybe. Well, where to report in and all that. Might make it seem a bit less daunting.’
‘I’d like that. Thanks. Do you live on campus?’
‘No. House share, not far away, but you won’t be putting me out, if that’s what’s bothering you. I was heading straight to uni anyway, to meet up with friends and see what my Lenny’s been getting up to without me.’
‘Lenny?’
‘Boyfriend. A local lad. Works in the uni shop, part time, in between helping out on his dad’s farm. He did come and visit me at home a while back, but I haven’t seen him for a few weeks now. Long summer break, and all that. Not that I keep him on a lead, but you know …’
I nodded and tried to make out that I did indeed know, but obviously I didn’t. Leads were just for dogs where I came from, and boys were very definitely off the agenda, as far as I was concerned.
We settled into an easy silence. I picked up my book and Beth disappeared behind the pages of a glossy magazine. Bristol came and went, and with it more passengers, but none of them tried to join us.
‘Not long now,’ Beth said after a while, putting her magazine down, squeezing around the table to sit in the empty seat beside me and pointing vaguely out of the window. ‘Rain’s stopped. Tunnel ahead. Time to say goodbye to good old England, Evie Peevie. You’ll soon be entering the land of the dragons. And sheep. Passports at the ready!’ She giggled. ‘Oh, and I do hope you like leeks, and lots of cheese on toast, because the Welsh hardly eat anything else, you know!’
Chapter 2
SARAH
It felt strange that first night, lying in the dark and not hearing her breathe. For as long as I could remember I had shared a room with my big sister Eve and, despite my initial excitement at having all that extra space to myself, to be honest I would rather have had her still there. I missed her clothes, both clean and dirty, dropped haphazardly in messy piles all over the carpet, the smell of her body lotions and sprays hanging in the air, and knowing there was always a secret stash of vodka tucked in behind her T-shirts in the wardrobe which, if she wanted me to keep quiet, I would be allowed to sip from time to time.
Mum had been in a tidying and cleaning frenzy all afternoon. I’d sat on my bed, half reading a book, half watching her as she flicked a duster around in places she had been unable to access for months, and shoved the long hose attachment of the hoover into all the nooks and crannies under both our beds, dragging out a mucky plate and a couple of odd socks and dislodging an enormous spider in the process.
I think she just needed something to do. Like me, she was going to find Eve’s absence a bit odd at first. She even inadvertently laid four places at the table for dinner that night and Dad had to eat a double portion of pie, while I no longer had anyone to share clearing-away or washing-up duties with and had to do it all myself. Being a family of three was something we were all going to have to adjust to – until Christmas anyway.
It had taken me a long time to get to sleep that first night, and yet I woke up earlier than ever. I could hear the birds chirping away in the tree outside the window, and later the rattle of the letterbox that signalled the arrival of Dad’s newspaper, courtesy of Jenny Harper, a girl from my class at school, who had bagged herself a paper round when she was thirteen and was still doing it every morning, whatever the weather, two years later. Rather her than me.
Eve’s big fluffy red dressing gown was still hanging on the left-hand hook on the back of the bedroom door. Too big and bulky to lug all the way to Wales, that had been the general consensus, and it wasn’t as if she’d have to cover up and go wandering about the corridors at night anyway, because she’d told me she had a small shower and toilet of her own in a little cubicle in the corner of her university room. I peered at the gown hanging beside my slightly smaller pink one, and decided, then and there, to swap them over. Why shouldn’t I have the left-hand peg for a change? These things didn’t have to be written in stone. The room was mine now. I could put my things wherever I chose. I climbed out of bed and did it, feeling strangely rebellious, but somehow they didn’t look right that way round. I lay back against my pillow and stared at them, the two dressing gowns, mine on the left and hers on the right, all back to front, and knew that was exactly how my life was starting to feel. Changed. Back to front. And I didn’t like it, not one little bit.
‘You getting up, Love?’ Mum called from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Only, I think Buster could do with a bit of a walk before school, don’t you?’
That was another thing. Buster, who, despite Mum’s obviously rhetorical question, we all knew needed a walk every morning. It had always been something Eve and I took turns over, or did together sometimes if we were both up and about and fancied a chat. But although we all loved him and he was as much a part of the family as any of us, he was Eve’s dog really. She was the one who had begged and pleaded to get a puppy, and he’d arrived on
her eleventh birthday, with a big bow around his neck and so excited he’d promptly made a puddle on the carpet at her feet. Now she’d gone I supposed the walking duties, just like the kitchen ones, were going to revert very definitely to me alone.
‘Coming!’
I got up and pulled on my old jogging bottoms and a pair of trainers, leaving my pyjama top on to save dirtying up a T-shirt, and after a quick visit to the loo, ran down to grab my coat and Buster’s lead. ‘Come on, you little tinker,’ I said, rubbing the old mongrel’s wiry neck. ‘Your lamp post awaits.’
Buster wasn’t as quick on his feet as he used to be, and tended to amble along the pavements sniffing into corners, as if he had all the time in the world, rather than run about chasing anything that moved, the way he once had. He was seven and a bit. Was that old, for a dog? I didn’t think it was, but Buster clearly had other ideas, and would not be hurried, no matter how late for school I might be, or how heavy the rain. Luckily, I wasn’t late that day, and the sun was out and looking like it was there to stay, so I let him have his way, the lead hanging slackly between us as we did our usual once round the block, stopping at all seventeen trees and all twelve lamp posts. A creature of habit, our Buster!
I couldn’t help my mind wandering as we walked, wondering where Eve was now and what she might be doing. Still asleep, knowing her, although a small unfamiliar bed and the uncertainties of life in a totally new place, surrounded by strangers, would have kept me awake, I was sure. But then Eve, at two and a half years older than me, was always more confident and more adaptable than I would ever be, or at least that was the way it seemed from where I was standing. She had absolutely shone in the end-of-term sixth-form production of Romeo and Juliet, her poetry was all over the library walls, and her exam results had won her one of the silver cups the school gave out at the end of every year. And yet, university would be the making of her. I’d heard Dad say that, with pride brimming over in his voice. As if she wasn’t pretty much perfectly made already. A flicker of jealousy had run through me when I’d heard that, knowing that she was his blue-eyed girl, the one destined to go far, and that, for now anyway, with another year at school, or maybe as many as three, to negotiate, I was still a kid. Just predictable, plod-along Sarah, washer-upper and dog walker extraordinaire, with dubious potential and not a poetic bone in my body.
‘Come on, Boy.’ Buster looked up in surprise as I tugged at his lead and tried to head for home. His big brown eyes gave me one of his not yet looks as he lifted his leg at a ridiculously high angle and peed, long and strong, against a tree. One final sniff, his nose twitching with interest at his own urine as it ran, stream-like, towards the road, and we were off.
‘Weetabix or cornflakes?’ Mum said, pulling the milk bottle from the fridge as we came back in through the back door. ‘I can’t do you any toast this morning, I’m afraid. We’ve run out of bread. I used the last of it doing your sister’s sandwiches for the train. And there’s only one egg left, which your father’s bound to want.’
‘I don’t even like Weetabix,’ I mumbled, letting the dog off his lead and running upstairs to get my uniform on. Last on the list again, I thought, as I slipped out of my pyjama top, grabbed a clean blouse and stepped into the pleated navy school skirt that had once been Eve’s. Only offered what scraps were left when everybody else had had first pick.
‘Cornflakes it will have to be then,’ Mum said, as if there had been no gap in our conversation, and throwing the last of Friday’s cold sausages to Buster, as I arrived back at the table. ‘Either that or starve …’
Faced with a choice like that, there was only one thing I could do, I suppose, so I ate up, making sure I sprinkled the tasteless little own-brand flakes with enough sugar to power me with energy for the day, or at least to set my teeth on the fast track towards my next filling, and quickly left for school.
I hated wearing a tie. Well, what self-respecting teenager wants to dress like an office worker? And a male one, at that? I hitched my skirt up a few inches higher and rolled the waistband under, pulled a lip gloss and mirror from my blazer pocket and tried to make my lips look at least half kissable. Paul Jacobs might be on the bus today. He’d only joined our class at the start of term, having just moved to the area, and all the girls had their sights set on him.
Paul was tall and dark and quiet, in an appealingly mysterious sort of way, and I was determined to get him to notice me. I just hadn’t expected to do it in quite such a spectacular way. The step must have been slippery, that’s all I can say. From someone spilling a drink, probably. Either that or one of the other girls had deliberately stuck out a foot or a bag or something. Why else would I have tripped and ended up on my face on the floor of the bus with what felt like a hundred eyes looking down at me and the sound of the sniggers ringing in my embarrassingly red ears? Even Tilly, who lived next door and was supposed to be my best friend, was laughing.
The hand that reached out and helped me up was warm, its fingers firm as they gripped and tugged me to my feet. In the fleeting moment before I regained my balance and looked up into the eyes that went with it, I hoped beyond all hope that the hand might belong to Paul Jacobs, and that he would guide me to a seat and fuss over me and sit next to me all the way to school. It didn’t. The hand was Colin Grant’s, a fat kid from a year below me and, as unlikely rescuing heroes went, he looked just as awkward and red in the face as I must have done.
‘You okay?’ he muttered.
‘Think so,’ I muttered back.
And then we moved down the bus quickly, heading for separate seats, aware of the queue forming behind us in the aisle, and I spent the rest of the journey nursing a sore knee and refusing to look up at all, even to talk to Tilly who had plonked herself down next to me, just in case Paul was there somewhere on the bus and laughing at me. It would take more than a bit of lip gloss to help me recover from a setback like that, I realised. In fact, I might as well just give up right there and then and let one of the other girls have him. And it was double English first thing. The day could hardly get any worse!
Chapter 3
EVE
That first Christmas seemed to take forever to arrive. Settling into university was a weird experience, a mixture of excitement and boredom and, at times, sheer terror.
My home for the next year, maybe longer if I decided not to move off-campus as so many second years seemed to do, was to be a room at the far end of a short hallway, on the top floor of a concrete block called Perseus, but known to students only as P. It was tucked away at the edge of the campus with a view, partially blocked by a line of tall spindly trees, over open fields. I would be sharing a very plain and functional kitchen and a small white-tiled bathroom, for those times when a shower just wasn’t enough, with five other girls. We’d tentatively introduced ourselves as each arrived, plonking cases down, unopened, in our rooms and then congregating in the kitchen, where we unloaded assorted mugs and new sets of cheap cutlery and favourite plates from home, and emptied carrier bags that clattered with tins of soup and beans.
‘Hi, I’m Eve.’
‘Jodie.’ Jodie was tall and thin, with long hair that could have done with a brush, and slightly crooked teeth.
Ruth came next. She was small and mouse-like but was wearing very high, very red shoes that pointed out beneath a pair of ordinary holey-kneed jeans. Odd.
‘And I’m Fran.’ Fran had darker skin than the others and shiny, almost black, hair, utterly unlike her rather pale, balding father who was dropping her off and insisted on coming right inside to check us all out. Fran had a touch of Spanish blood, I decided, with no evidence at all to back up my totally unsubstantiated theory. I was sure I’d find out soon enough, and sure enough I did when her Portuguese mother and two younger sisters turned up in a car the next day delivering enormous boxes of kitchen equipment which they seemed convinced their Francesca would not be able to live without.
The next girl to arrive that first day was Lauren, who tripped as she c
ame through the door, but didn’t laugh it off the way I probably would have done. She just looked scared, and pale. She reminded me of my sister, the way I’d last seen her, looking all forlorn at the station and in need of some serious mothering, and I couldn’t quite decide if that was a good thing or not.
‘Sorry, am I last to the party?’ A big ungainly girl – horsey, as Mum would undoubtedly have described her – strode in as it started to get dark outside and pumped everyone’s hands up and down as if she was expecting water to come running out down our arms. ‘I’m Suzanne. Stupid name. Just call me Annie.’
There was much smiling and nodding, a few basic questions about home towns and family, most of the answers to which I was sure I would forget, and the awkward unfamiliarity of half-hearted hugs with strangers. Fran’s father beat a hasty retreat and we all propped our doors open so we could stay connected and carry on talking, or shouting more like, as we unpacked. From my room I could hear Annie’s feet thump across the hall as she went to help Fran open a tricky lock on one of her bags, and Ruth making coffee and unwrapping a cake her mum had made and asking if anyone would like a slice.
Within a day or two the initial wariness had worn off and we had become friends of a sort, despite probably having very little in common beyond finding ourselves at the same place at the same time, and all of us feeling more than a little out of our depth.
It didn’t take long to sort out who would have use of each shelf in the cupboards and how to divide up space in the two enormous fridge freezers, and where the washing machines were, once Fran had found them in another building a good five minutes’ walk away. We’d meet up in the kitchen sometimes and have a chat, maybe share a packet of biscuits but, beyond that, I spent a lot of time alone, lying on the narrow bed in my own room, listening to music, poring over leaflets for way too many clubs and societies I knew I would never join, and trying to make sense of the map of the campus and the notes I’d made during the first introductory lectures.