‘You speak differently with Carral,’ she said.

‘Differently?’

‘As if you change accents.’

‘I adapt quickly. You know how it is, with English as a second language.’

‘Yeah, but with her you speak exactly … like her.’

‘A Brighton accent?’

‘Yeah, if that’s how she talks. And you act strange. When you were looking at her just now. Are you … together?’

‘Together?’ I asked. A sticky heat oozed thickly into my head and down into my abdomen.

‘It’s OK if you are, I’m just curious.’

‘No, no, we just live together,’ I said firmly.

In that moment I noticed Carral, under a big lamp that changed colours at regular intervals. She laughed and squeezed the arms of the chemistry class boys, at first seemingly at random, but later methodically, as if she was in the vegetable aisle, searching for a ripe avocado. And all the while, she looked back at me as she squeezed. Her face was psychedelically gleaming in red and yellow from the lamp.

‘I’m sorry to ask,’ Franziska said, ‘you just seem so close.’ She blushed faintly, and stirred her drink carefully with a straw.

‘In a way we are,’ I answered, ‘in that weird house with those paper-thin walls. Sometimes I’m not sure what’s going on.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know how to explain it.’

I felt a heat between my legs. In front of me, red and yellow liquids were mixing in Franziska’s glass.

‘It’s been a while since I kissed anyone,’ Carral whispered to me when we met outside the door to the women’s toilets. Her hand rested on my neck as she stroked her thumb along my spine. My whole body was throbbing.

‘How long?’ I asked, but she didn’t react, just kept stroking my back, bone by bone.

‘Do you like any of the boys here?’ Carral asked.

Her lips touched my earlobe, eyes turned towards the group of biology students. I shrugged, and took a step back.

‘They’re too young for me,’ I said.

‘They’re not that much younger than you, nineteen maybe,’ Carral giggled and stared at one in particular, a really tall boy with a long fringe and chest hair that stuck out of his T-shirt.

‘That’s plenty younger,’ I said and walked back to the bar.

Then Pym was there. He stood in the middle of the dance floor with two shirt buttons open and his eyes gleaming. A few locks of hair dangled over his cheek.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Wow, you’re here,’ I said.

‘Carral said you were going.’

‘Carral? When did you see Carral?’

Pym threw back his head; his hair fell back over his cheek.

‘Been a while,’ he whispered.

‘I’ve got a lot of reading,’ I answered quickly.

‘Have you read my book yet?’

‘Nearly finished,’ I lied.

‘And what do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you like the idea?’