“Where are you going?” Ed Gemmell’s plaintive voice called after her, but Esther didn’t even bother looking back as she bellowed, “To find my new best friend!” much to the irritation of everyone else in the building.

Especially Ed Gemmell.

The S.U. was busier than all the previous Wednesdays, on which Daisy had used the four-hour window between Emerging Europe and the Celtic West (a thousand-year window, archaeologically speaking) to treat herself to a hot lunch there followed by a bit of note consolidation and essay planning in the library. A schedule that was starting to fall into the comfortable pattern of a routine, in much the same way that her “new” slippers had ceased to be a novelty now that they had molded themselves to the shape of her feet. Daisy liked routine. She liked plans and schedules and boundaries. Nice, solid walls keeping her safe from the kind of chaos on which Esther thrived.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Daisy had been so good at setting up her life at university that the riskiest thing she’d done since arriving in Sheffield had been to use the “disabled” bathroom in Starbucks when she couldn’t find the regular one. (She’d been desperate.)

Even her friends had been made within an hour of stepping off the train, falling into the kind of companionable little group that suited Daisy best.

All because they lived on the same corridor.

For all Jonathan Tremain’s scorn, Daisy didn’t see the problem with that. Sure, Susan refused to open up, and Esther was so preoccupied with what was happening next that sometimes it felt as if now barely existed for her. And, OK, any inadvertent reference to parents or family or death was inevitably followed by an awkward pause and a rapid tiptoe out of the past and into the present.

Friends didn’t have to show an interest in how Daisy came to be orphaned and why she lived with her grandmother.

Did they?

“That’s enough!” Daisy was so stern with herself that the boy in front of her, who’d been reaching for a third packet of ketchup, retracted his hand and gave her a somewhat nervous glance before hurrying away to his friends.

Daisy had played it safe long enough. This afternoon, she would break from the comfort of her routine, and she would go to the Activities Fair. Alone. She could do this.

After she’d had a hot lunch.

Before she’d started, Susan hadn’t known exactly what to expect from studying Medicine. She knew she was smart, but there were bound to be elements of the course she’d struggle with. Maybe histology or embryology or something as seemingly simple as taking a blood pressure reading. But nothing she had watched, googled, or imagined had prepared her for the intricacies of the first-year medics’ timetable.