Chapter Thirteen
Nine years ago
Ollie runs down the stairs two at a time in our new house-share, with his flatpack boxes stacked up, at exactly the same time as I try to go up the stairs with mine.
‘We’ve been here before,’ I tell him as I reverse backwards quickly. ‘I nearly died, remember?’
‘Bit dramatic,’ Ollie says with a smile as he hurtles past me and into the tiny entrance hall of our narrow terraced rental. ‘You didn’t nearly die,’ he calls back. ‘I caught you.’
‘Just before I fell to my death,’ I shout back darkly, before brightening.
‘I can’t believe that was a year ago. I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since we all met each other,’ I go on, and then turn back to see that Ollie is long gone to the wheelie bins to recycle his empty boxes, leaving me to reminisce alone.
As I take my remaining ones up the stairs to my room, I find Ben unpacking my flatpack bookshelf and analysing the instructions, because they make no sense to me.
He’s made zero start on his own room, so it’s sweet that he’s trying to help me first.
The four of us agreed months ago that we’d find a house-share together.
Ollie nearly didn’t join us, as some of his medical crew were putting in for a house and asked him to join them.
In the end he decided, ‘You guys are way more normal. They’re a bit …
’ he narrowed his eyes and finished with, ‘intense.’
In my mind, it was never in doubt that we’d be together. We’re a foursome, a flat-share dynamic that we know works. Why mess with it when it’s so good?
‘Celebratory fish-and-chips and a bottle of fizz?’ Liv cries from her room. ‘Isn’t that what you do when you move into your first house?’
‘Not sure it counts when it’s a university rental,’ Ollie yells up the stairs as he re-enters the house, slamming the door behind him.
‘Don’t be a killjoy, Ollie,’ Ben yells back. ‘Liv’s already got the prosecco. It’s in the fridge.’
‘Oh, in that case …’ Ollie calls as he takes the stairs two at a time. ‘Right. I’m done. Thank God. Shall I go pick up the fish-and-chips?’
‘I’ll come and help,’ I tell him, keen to escape the flatpack battle of Ben versus a screwdriver.
‘I can’t believe we’re in our second year,’ Ollie says as we round the corner in the darkness of an autumnal evening. I pull my parka around me firmly in the chill breeze as a police car whizzes past us at speed, siren blaring, lights flashing.
‘I’ll never get used to the noise,’ Ollie comments, more to himself than to me. ‘Makes me miss the quiet life.’
‘Want to go back to your little village in Oxfordshire and sit in silence?’
He smiles. ‘Sometimes.’
Around us leaves fall gently to the ground in shades of ochre and burnt orange from this tree-lined street. ‘I mean … it’s almost the countryside,’ I say.
‘I can’t tell if you’re trying to convince me or you?’ he asks.
I ignore him. ‘I always find it odd that when trees need warming up the most, in Britain’s inclement weather, they become strangely naked, vulnerable.’
‘Hmm,’ Ollie agrees and we stop for a moment, glance around us again in the quiet, although I can still hear that police car as it drones away from us.
‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,’ I say idly as Ollie and I cross the road, spying the fish-and-chip shop next to a quaint-looking boozer.
‘What’s that from?’ Ollie asks, equally idly.
‘Keats.’
‘You studying him?’
‘Yeah. Hate poetry, though.’
‘And yet you’re doing an English degree,’ he voices. ‘You know I did wonder …’ and he stalls.
‘Go on.’
‘There was a small part of me that thought you weren’t going to come back this year,’ he reveals.
‘What?’ I explode. ‘You didn’t think I was coming back to uni?’
He shakes his head, looks at the pub with its hanging baskets and a two-for-one burger-night sign. ‘Fancy a drink first?’
‘Sure,’ I agree. ‘Anything to get out of putting together my bookshelf.’
The pub is warm on this, one of the first proper early autumnal days we’ve had this year.
Ollie and I take off our coats and I buy us a round of drinks while he scouts out a table.
The clientele is a mix of students and locals playing slot machines and glancing up at Sky Sports on the TV.
Refreshingly, the pub is not trying to gentrify itself into some sort of gastro offering.
I walk over to Ollie while clutching his favourite, a Guinness, and mine, a white-wine spritzer.
‘Oh, you didn’t have to pay for mine,’ he says. ‘I could have—’
‘I put them on my credit card,’ I interject, to which Ollie raises an eyebrow.
‘Aury,’ he chides. ‘How much debt have you got on that card now?’
I give him an uncomfortable look. ‘A few thousand.’
‘Oh my God! A few thousand? I did tell you not to get—’
‘I know, I know. But I really like clothes, and there are so many English set texts I need.’
‘Can’t you get them from the library?’
‘No. I can’t make notes in the margins of library books.’
Ollie looks doubtful.
‘Why didn’t you think I was coming back to uni?’ I question him.
He sits back, looks at me thoughtfully and cups his hand around his ice-cold glass. He hasn’t drunk any of it yet, though. His expression shows he’s still trying to comprehend my credit-card revelation. ‘Because,’ Ollie starts slowly, ‘you didn’t do very well at the end of your first year.’
‘Telling you that was a moment of weakness,’ I reply, remembering how I’d confessed that to him.
I’d walked into the flat with my end-of-year results in one hand and tissues in the other, as I cried my way into my room.
Ollie was the only other person in the flat when I received my results and I needed to talk to someone, confessing everything: how much I’ve been struggling, how I love all the reading, but am absolutely awful at the analysing bit of my course.
I felt so ashamed I didn’t even tell Liv how I had barely scraped a pass.
Or Ben – at the time. Although I did afterwards, when it didn’t feel so bad, when I’d already had Ollie’s shoulder to cry on and his sensible outlook as to how to deal with it.
‘You told me to talk to my tutor honestly about how he saw it panning out for me, which I did. I’m still here, aren’t I?’ I say.
‘You still feel confident English Lit is for you? It’s probably not too late to swap for another Humanities subject.’
‘No,’ I reply a bit uncertainly. ‘I’ve just got to stick with it. It’ll be fine, I’m sure. How are you feeling about everything, now you’ve proved yourself a medical know-it-all?’ I ask, keen to take the heat away from me.
‘Ah, you know,’ Ollie replies, deflecting me.
‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’
‘It’s going OK,’ he confesses, trying to hide his success.
‘You’re brilliant,’ I say. ‘And I knew you would be.’
‘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 the din 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’t shop in 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.