Chapter 4
‘Look,’ Mark from the student union sighs, wiping down the bar ahead of another night of thirsty students darkening his door. ‘As long as you get people in, buying drinks, behaving themselves, we’re pretty much up for anything. What kind of night was it you wanted to do?’
I describe the ‘concept’ of ThrowBax, which seems to satisfy him.
‘It’s different to anything else we have,’ he says, shrugging, ‘so worth a try. When were you thinking?’
‘Oh! Um . . . I hadn’t actually thought about the when of it all . . .’ I say, furrowing my brow.
‘Two Saturdays’ time?’ he asks hopefully. ‘We’ve had a band cancel their gig because they couldn’t get a visa to tour the UK, so we have an empty slot to fill.’
Many people would be intimidated at the idea of their DJing debut being a Saturday night. Not me. I nod decisively. ‘Sounds good.’ I only have eyes for the outfit opportunities. Well, maybe the flirting opportunities too.
‘You going to make a flyer?’ Mark asks.
‘I hadn’t thought about it, but I can do that!’ I say brightly. And I am struck with the fiendish plan to hand them out when I distribute copies of the next Quad Magazine the week of my club night. Everything is truly falling into place.
Mark seems slightly bemused by my perky demeanour. Many people are; I’m used to it. ‘Right, well, if you’ve got any questions, you know where I am, otherwise I’ll add it to the schedule and put it on the published listings for that weekend.’
I salute him. ‘I won’t let you down, Mark from the student union.’
He just nods, a baffled smile on his face, and I head back to my little nest in Tufnell Park.
* * *
On the bus home, I check my ‘Ask M-E Anything’ email address and am delighted to find that I’ve received a couple of questions.
I read them and settle on one for my next column, from a girl who’s started seeing someone new and thinks she likes him too much.
I even start scrawling down my response in my very chic little notebook from the fancy stationery shop in Covent Garden (that’s what student loans are for .
. . right?) and get so into it that I almost go sailing past my bus stop.
We only moved in right at the end of the summer, just before term started a few weeks ago, but already Aleesha, Morgan and I have developed a weirdly functional home life for three students. We eat dinner together whenever we’re all at home, taking turns to cook. No instant ramen here!
‘Morgan,’ I say, very businesslike over our pasta alla vodka.
‘Yeeeees,’ Morgan says, raising her blonde eyebrows, knowing a request is coming her way.
Aleesha holds up a hand. ‘Wait, let me guess.’ She closes her eyes and places both hands down on the table like she’s at a seance. ‘You want Morgan to design the flyers for your club night.’
‘How do you do that?!’ I burst out.
‘She’s a witch,’ Morgan sighs.
Aleesha is extraordinarily perceptive. Scarily so. It’s almost impossible to lie to her, or evade telling the truth, and she often just knows what you’re going to say before you say it.
‘Says you!’ Aleesha protests.
‘We all have our little powers, don’t we?’ Morgan laughs. ‘Aleesha knows what you’re thinking, I always know what time it is without looking at a clock, and Mary-Elizabeth –’
‘Can make anyone fall in love with her,’ Aleesha says, nodding.
‘With a bit of time, energy and persistence, I’ve never failed,’ I say lightly, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
‘I think maybe of all of us, you’ve got the most useful skill,’ says Morgan.
Look, I’m not saying it works on everyone, but I’ve found that if I fancy someone, even if at first they don’t seem interested, if I put in the legwork, they will, at some point, develop a reciprocal crush on me.
I can’t explain why, or how. All I know is that it happens.
Which is why I feel so confident about Felix Balfour.
‘I’m right though?’ Aleesha smiles broadly, knowing she’s got me. ‘About wanting Morgan to make you a cheeky little flyer?’
‘You’re right,’ I say grudgingly. ‘Morgan, what do you think?’
She shrugs. ‘What’s the point of studying fine art at one of the best art schools in the country if you don’t use your powers for good?’
‘Precisely,’ I say.
I can barely draw a stick man, and was gently encouraged not to take art at GCSE, so it’s kind of funny that I’ve ended up a fledgling art historian, but you don’t actually have to be good at art to be good at reading art and thinking about art and analysing art.
But Morgan on the other hand? She’s got proper talent.
And she’s not wrong: the Powell School of Art at Queen Anne’s is one of the best art schools in the country.
‘So, what kind of thing do you want?’
‘Nothing too extravagant!’ I say, already feeling guilty about calling on her services. ‘Just something basic but eye-catching, which has all the information about time, date, location and vibe.’
‘And the vibe is, like, vaguely retro-flavoured?’
‘Exactly.’ I nod.
She turns around and grabs the unlined notepad and Sharpie that we use for writing shopping lists off the work surface behind us. ‘Talk among yourselves.’
‘You don’t have to do it now,’ I protest. I glance down at my phone.
There’s a text from my stepdad, Stephen.
Can you call Mum, please? She says she hasn’t heard from you in ages.
Stephen is all right. He’s not, you know, an evil step-parent from a fairy tale, he’s just a bit useless.
A bit wet. A bit bumbling. Which I suppose suits my mum just fine, because then she gets to be the boss.
Her and my actual dad got divorced when I was about five – old enough to know I used to actually have a dad who lived with us, but not old enough to have built up loads of bucolic childhood memories.
Now he lives in Hong Kong with his new family and visits once a year.
Or thereabouts. I mean, he’s busy and has a really important finance job, so it’s not that surprising he doesn’t come back that often.
And there’s such a big time difference, isn’t there?
It’s just hard for us to talk on the phone or on Zoom when he’s going to bed and I’m waking up.
‘Ssssh.’ Aleesha presses a finger to her lips. ‘The genius is at work.’
Morgan rolls her eyes but smiles. ‘I’m not exactly a genius.’
Aleesha and I do as we’re told and talk among ourselves as Morgan scribbles away at the rickety kitchen table.
But I’m distracted – I have another column to write for the next issue and I can feel bloody Laurie’s bloody rival column hanging over me like a dark cloud.
Maybe it was a one-off. Maybe he’ll be bored of it by the next issue, will have forgotten about it and given up.
All I can do is exactly what I’ve always been doing.
I can’t let him distract me. Then he wins.
‘It feels like shit’s even more intense than last year already,’ Aleesha says, grimacing.
Not to play into the cliché that humanities are ‘soft’ while STEM subjects are ‘real’, but it does always sound like Aleesha’s natural sciences degree is just a little bit more hard-going than whatever me and Morgan are getting up to.
‘You smashed the end-of-year exams though,’ I remind her.
‘But now I know I should be operating at that level, man,’ she says, shaking her head, her braids swishing in a very satisfying way.
‘Don’t put too much pressure on yourself,’ I tell her.
‘Nothing good is going to come of that. Obviously, it’s great to know you’ve got the potential to achieve amazing things like you did in your first year, but it’s fucking tough – such a tough degree – and there’s no point psyching yourself out about it and getting inside your own head.
You’re exactly where you’re meant to be. ’
She swallows. ‘I hope so.’
‘Hope?! Hope didn’t get you here, baby girl! It was hard work and determination!’
Aleesha instantly bursts out laughing. ‘I feel like you need to monetise your pep talks,’ she says, shaking her head.
‘Did I take it too far?’ I ask with a smile.
‘Nah, just the right amount.’
Uni is so expensive these days that there’s this added layer of pressure that just permeates everything we do.
It was kind of a foregone conclusion that I would go to uni, but that’s not the case for everyone, which means it’s a constant tightrope-walk of trying to have fun and live our best lives, but also not waste this incredibly expensive opportunity to . . . ugh, improve our prospects. Grim.
Morgan slams the Sharpie down on the table. ‘How’s that for a first draft?’ She holds up the pad and displays a riotous, eye-catching flyer that borrows the aesthetic of a Nineties DIY zine.
I gasp with delight. ‘I love it. It’s perfect. Don’t change a thing. I’m going to take it to the magazine office tomorrow and illegally scan a hundred copies.’
Morgan beams. ‘Happy to be of service! But you know, I can do better than this, right? It’s just a brain dump.’
‘I won’t hear of it,’ I say. ‘I value your artistic labour. Hey, if I make any money on the door, I’ll give you a cut as compensation.
’ My dad sends me an ‘allowance’ every month to compensate for his absence, and I think he thinks it’s paying my rent, but really it’s not enough for that, so I keep trying to come up with creative ways to make money.
Selling my mum’s friends’ old clothes online and taking a cut .
. . phoning Queen Anne’s College alumni in university fundraising drives .
. . I even did flu camp last year, which made me so sickly I can’t face doing it again.
And now, DJing? Anything to prevent me having to get a sensible part-time job like anyone else.
Still, I can swing some Morgan’s way for her work.
She shrugs. ‘If you insist.’
‘It really feels like things are coming together!’ I clap my hands, delighted. ‘I can’t believe that two days ago this club night wasn’t even a thing and now it’s got a date and a flyer!’
Aleesha smiles wryly. ‘This is classic Mary-Elizabeth Baxter though. Always up to something, always making something happen.’
‘Like your column!’ Morgan chimes in. ‘One day you were doing wise advice over hash browns in the Anselm Hall dining room, the next you were making your case to Emily Daly to be Quad Magazine’s next agony aunt.’
‘I guess I do like making things happen,’ I say, blushing.
In a world that seems to value apathy and coolness, is it a bit cringe to be a person who likes to do things?
Maybe. But I have to own my cringe. It’s too late to change; my enthusiasm and zeal are baked into me like chocolate chips in a cookie. I am what I am.
‘Speaking of making things happen,’ Morgan says smoothly. ‘What’s the situation with your current crush? That blond boy?’
‘She’s locked in – the crush is deep and official,’ Aleesha says. ‘He was feeling up her thigh last night.’
‘So things have escalated,’ Morgan says, nodding.
‘I don’t know if I would go that far. But they’re definitely escalating.’ I don’t want us to get ahead of ourselves here.
‘I noticed Tyler didn’t seem to be a fan when we were chatting last night,’ Aleesha says, getting up and switching the kettle on to make tea.
‘So what’s the beef?’ Morgan asks.
I shrug. ‘I guess there’s an argument to be made that Felix is just a tedious little posh boy, but . . . the heart wants what the heart wants.’
‘Oh, so it’s your heart now, is it?’ Aleesha looks at me with intense scepticism mixed with deep affection.
‘Fine, my swimsuit area.’
‘That’s more like it.’ She tips three teaspoons of instant coffee into mugs and pours the boiling water over, stirs in some whole milk.
‘As long as you know he’s a tedious little posh boy.’ Morgan shrugs.
‘I think he’s all right,’ I say, once again feeling myself blush.
I just fancy him. This is purely about riding him like a pony, not falling in love.
I want to keep all of this in the realm of lightness and fun, and revel in his delicious hotness, so feeling any urge to defend him from criticism is .
. . unwelcome. ‘He can be my tedious little posh boy.’
‘Is he going to come to your club night?’ Morgan asks, accepting a steaming mug from Aleesha.
‘I hope so,’ I say coyly. ‘I feel like it could be the perfect opportunity for . . . something.’ I take a sip and sigh. ‘Aaah. Lovely, horrible milky coffee,’ I say, savouring the comforting taste of instant.
‘Did you start a whole club night just to give you a vehicle to get with your crush?’
‘I know that sounds exactly like something I would do, but on this occasion I’m pleading innocent. It was in direct response to how vibeless the DJ at the union was last night – I’m not lying, am I, Aleesha?’
Aleesha shakes her head resolutely. ‘Nope. Very much not lying.’
‘Well,’ Morgan says, sipping her coffee, ‘vibeless is one thing you could never be accused of. The vibes are strong with this one.’
‘I suppose I’d better google how to be a DJ.’