But Charlotte was already throwing open the door, his words receding at her back as she ran down the corridor. She had a clear path. No one else was yet coming out of their rooms, everyone too lazy or stoned or drunk to want to get off their beds and stand outside in the autumn chill for the sake of a fire drill.

But she needed the cold slap of winter on her skin, she needed the freezing burn of the easterly wind in her lungs. She needed something that would make her feel – not feel better, not feel happier. Just feel.

‘Charlotte!’

He was following, right behind her.

She ran faster, throwing open the door and running out into the quad, but he was taller and fitter, easily gaining on her. In panic, she grabbed a bike that had been left propped against the wall and threw her leg over it.

‘Charlotte!’

She began furiously pedalling. It had been years since she’d ridden one – not since she was a little girl in fact – and she tore out of the college grounds, through the arch, past the scholars’ garden and turning onto the river bank. The Cam lay dark and inert beside her, seemingly scarcely moving, as she flew along the path, travelling beneath the street lamps from one limpid pool of light to the next. Her eyes were streaming but that was from the wind; she wasn’t crying. It was the wind. It was.

Breathless, she risked a look behind her but there was nothing to see. He wasn’t there, she had left him in her wake. There was nothing to hear either, the desperate clamour of the Clare fire drill now lost on the breeze, but her legs were still pumping. The crisis was over but she wouldn’t slow down; she could still hear his condescending theories, feel his patronizing pity. Who was he to judge her? Did he believe life lessons came in a particular order and at a set time too? She had already suffered. She had already lost. Her life – though dazzlingly colourful and bright – was like a kaleidoscope, shattered into tiny pieces that could be arranged into attractive patterns but would never again be whole.

Over the sound of her own breathing, she heard it – the whir of another set of wheels. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him. He had a bike too. Of course he did, she knew tha—

She didn’t see the pothole and she was flying through the air before she even knew it was happening, landing on the grass bank – thankfully soft from recent rain – and rolling dramatically to a stop. From her dazed vantage, she saw that she was by a boathouse, a boat strut still up and a half-drunk bottle of fizzy orange left by the wall.

‘Charlotte!’ Nathan was there two seconds later, jumping off the bike while the wheels were still spinning and helping her up as she tried to stagger to her feet. ‘Are you okay?’