‘I’m off,’ she said abruptly, unfolding her legs from the armchair and stretching.

‘Thanks for all your help with the packing.’

‘My pleasure,’ she said without a trace of irony.

‘Have a good summer.’

‘And you.’

She walked over to the door. I thought that she would pause at the threshold and turn around, try to make things up between us, but she left without even the concession of a slam for effect. I waited until I heard her footsteps recede down the stairs, but when her feet hit the flat stone of the hall I buckled. I scrambled to the window and leant over the balustrade. Preparations for the Tudor Ball were in full swing. Outside I could hear the metallic tap of hammer on tent peg coming from Nevile’s Court. The cigarette was still smouldering on the lead sheet.

‘Jessica?’ I shouted.

She turned around and looked up at me, shielding her eyes and squinting in the afternoon sunshine.

‘Yeah?’ she shouted back.

‘. . . Nothing.’

She grinned. ‘Nothing yourself.’

She waved, and skipped once as she went back to walking. One of my neighbours had come into the court from the Backs, a girl in her second year who always wore one of the red Christian Union hoodies with a verse from Matthew printed on the back, and she looked up, startled by the shouting. Her disapproval set the seal on my happiness. I still felt the thrill of being observed with my beautiful friends, like driving around in an expensive car with the top down, attracting a mixture of envy and tutting. I watched Jessica disappear out of sight under the sandstone colonnade with a resurgence of affection, then stubbed the cigarette and crawled back into the cool of my bedroom.

I rushed to finish my packing as my father had agreed to pick me up at three. At ten to three I was sunbathing on the roof. The grubby hood of our Volvo nosed out of the shadows of the archway forty feet below, peeking into the court like a reef fish checking the open waters: Dad making sure he had the right place, fearful of straying off limits into an academic sanctuary. After a few seconds he made up his mind, and advanced with a crunch of gravel. Looking down at the car I read in each of its heavy movements the extension of my father’s own familiar manner, his hesitations and sudden, bullish decisions. He was slightly awed by Cambridge, and openly rebellious against his awe, so that he could not discuss my education without a certain reverence mixed with bursts of anti-intellectualism: ‘James’s teacher is the world expert on Chaucer. They have some of the original illuminated manuscripts in the library. Beautiful, they are. It’s all bollocks, of course, I don’t know who’s going to give him a job for knowing medieval poetry!’ He parked aggressively in compensation for his former trepidation, jamming himself in against the ivy-covered wall and partially blocking the Porsche in the corner, jumping out of the driver’s seat before he could change his mind. He walked a few feet away from the Volvo towards my staircase with his long, confident stride, then stopped and turned around. He ran back, got in and straightened the car to release the 911. I had a love-lurch watching this little performance, and I wanted to call out to him and wave, but something held me back.