Louisa. Before I came to Oxford, I was plain old Louise. I pull a face. ‘You know I’ve never skied?’

He bounces out of bed. ‘Doesn’t matter! That’s fine! Skiing holidays aren’t really about the skiing anyway – there’s the views, the fondues, the vin chaud, all the drinking …’ He wiggles his hips and I laugh. ‘And all the sex, of course.’ He dives back on the bed and nuzzles his head against me again, as if he is a puppy. ‘But if you can bear to get out of bed while we’re there – which, granted, will be difficult with me in it – I’ll teach you to ski too, if you like. Please come! It’ll be so much fun.’

I stroke his hair. ‘OK,’ I say, ‘I’ll come.’ Instantly I start wondering how I’m going to afford it, but I push the thought away as Will starts to kiss me again.

I don’t know the first thing about skiing, beyond watching Ski Sunday now and again, but the chalet isn’t at all what I was expecting. It’s nice enough, but it’s more like a cross between a basic hotel and a university hall of residence than the luxurious mountainside cabin full of fur throws and blond wood I had imagined. When Will told me how much the trip was going to cost I panicked – there was no way I could find that amount of money with my various credit cards almost totally maxed out. I didn’t tell him I couldn’t afford it – I never tell anyone at uni I can’t afford things. But I think he might have guessed. When he caught wind of the fact that I might not be planning to come along after all, he offered to pay for the trip as a Christmas present.

‘I won’t enjoy it if you’re not there,’ he said. ‘In fact I probably wouldn’t even bother going without you – just to pay for the privilege of being ignored by my brother and his girlfriend. So it’s as much a present to me as it is to you. You’d be doing me a favour by coming along.’

I didn’t know if that was true, but it was a very sweet thing to say. Sometimes I think Will really does love me.

When Will said we would be staying in a chalet, I thought it would be just us, Will’s brother, and his girlfriend in a little wooden house with someone to cook us our meals, but it’s not like that at all. There are about sixty guests, easily, and the rooms are simple doubles with tiny en-suite bathrooms, not that different to the ones in the more modern colleges. Downstairs, there’s a lounge with a fireplace and some wooden skis stuck on the wall, and a plain, fairly functional dining room.