Activities Fair—Wednesday, October 18th, 3:00 P.M.–6:00 P.M.—Find your tribe. The same poster Jonathan had given her in the bar.

“Are you going out and meeting lots of new people?” Granny asked. “Joining clubs and starting new hobbies is all part of the university experience as I understand it.”

Looking straight at the poster, tears in check, she replied, “There’s an Activities Fair this afternoon. I’m sure I’ll meet tons of new people there. Got to go, Granny. I’m meeting Susan and Esther for breakfast.”

Sadness didn’t suit Daisy; action did.

Any visit to the canteen was accompanied by a soundtrack of murmured and half-shouted conversations, the clink of Sheffield steel, and the sharp scrapes of crockery. Clumps of students were distributed unevenly down the long tables: foreign students held together by the shared confidence that comes from being brave enough to go to university in another country, the lads who thought that supporting a football team counted as playing on one lounging about in casual sportswear, friends united by subjects or corridors or a mutual distaste for almost everyone else.

“I don’t want to be here.” Susan stared balefully at her tray of limp bacon and partially solidified beans. “I want to be in my bed, tricking my brain into thinking it’s asleep.”

“You have a lecture,” Daisy reminded Susan, ushering her further along the queue.

This only served to make Susan grumpier. Mornings were not her favorite, and breakfast was usually a cereal bar and a flask of black coffee on the way to the medical school. But today, Esther had hammered on Susan’s door as she passed by on her way to an early-morning HIIT workout, and Susan hadn’t been able to fall back asleep.

Esther was waiting for them by the cutlery station, the picture of irritating good health with her shower-damp ponytail and tray of muesli.

“Ugh,” Susan muttered. “You’re exhausting me just by existing.”

“Schadenfreude isn’t the only way to release those endorphins, you know. You should try a workout with me sometime.”

“Absolutely not. All that bouncing and music and energy.”

“You could do yoga with me,” Daisy suggested.

“Work up much of a sweat when you’re stretching, do you?” Esther said a little loftily.

“Sometimes. Things can get pretty intense when you’re in the zone.”

“Let’s move this conversation along to where Kully’s waving us over . . .”

Down at the far end of the table, a hand extended in a casual wave from a crisp white cuff.

Kulvinder Singh was in Susan’s Anatomy group, and their friendship stemmed mostly from the fact that he appreciated a little organ-based dark humor. Handsome and preppy, he sat in stark relief to the girl slumped next to him, whose eyes were bloodshot, skin the pallor of a mausoleum’s masonry.