‘I was thinking of my aunt,’ she told him, ‘imagining her here, watching us, what we were doing in her bed.’

‘Jesus. You perv,’ he teased, and she laughed again.

‘She was so uptight, you know. Highly strung. We always had to tiptoe around her, always getting warned about her fucking nerves. Such a drag.’

‘I’d say her nerves would be shot, watching what you just did for me,’ he chuckled, his hand squeezing her breast.

‘Do you really think I’m perverse?’

‘You’re sexy as hell and you know it.’

She squirmed with pleasure. Maybe there was something perverted about her, some deviant drive within her. Right at that moment, the rest of her classmates would be pouring out of Lecture Theatre L. They had two hours of Thermodynamics on a Thursday and she had skipped it to be here, lying with a married man in the bed where her aunt had died.

Not that she had any regrets. She could always catch up with the work later in the year. And while she was here with Ross, Eva could forget about college, and about the persistent disappointment she had carried around inside her since term began.

Throughout her final year at school, it was driven home to her again and again how her life would change once she went to university. The expectation was raised that it would be challenging, exciting, an adventure into adulthood and independence, a chance to explore the world beyond the limiting confines of school. Why then did she feel so disillusioned? Her other friends all seemed entranced, caught up in their heady new experiences, but Eva seemed immune to the novelty of it all, lost. When she got home in the evenings and saw the hopeful looks on her parents’ faces as they asked about her day, Eva felt something plummet within her. It was such an effort to lie and pretend that everything was great, jabbering away about how new and exciting everything was, all the interesting people she was meeting, what a great adventure she had embarked on, instead of the flat loneliness inside her, the cowed feelings of insecurity, of not belonging.

The only time she felt relaxed, completely herself, was when she was with Ross.

‘It sucks,’ she told him honestly when he asked about college. ‘The classes are either boring or confusing, and the other kids are so immature. I think I’ve made a big mistake.’

‘Ah, give it time,’ he said. ‘It’s early days yet.’

‘I wish you were there,’ she told him, and he laughed.

‘Yeah, right. Can you picture it? Me among all those students!’

‘Why not? They do take mature students, you know.’