‘Bristol’s too busy? What are you talking about? You’re from London!’ Satnam said, when they were freshers, newly arrived in the city, and Nevis made her views known. What she wanted to say was, no, I was born in the Welsh Marches, which was true, but not relevant somehow. Satnam couldn’t know that until a few years ago, when the Olympics arrived nearby, Hackney Wick, where Nevis had spent most of her life, was a real backwater, otherworldly and remote, a dead zone of abandoned factories and offices squatted by artists and eco-warriors. There was a particular peacefulness to be had on the water, away from the shops and the press of people. The marshes, from where you could walk along the banks of the Lea almost as far as Epping, lay only ten minutes away. There was no reason for anyone other than the occasional dog walker to come to Hackney Wick, and the anarchists and artists, the boaters and the hippies, were left to their own devices. By contrast Bristol seemed unmanageably loud and busy but a person can grow used to just about anything and by the end of the first year, she had come to love the grand, melancholy buildings, the fine rain and blustery winds, the graffiti, the waterside cafés selling artisan coffee and delectable cakes and the bridges spanning the canals and the navigations and the brown waters of the River Avon.

Now, reaching the security gates onto the campus, she swipes the ID card she keeps in the pocket of her peacoat and wanders along the path that runs alongside the car park towards the bank of lifts to the library on the second floor. The University of Avon hadn’t been her first choice. She’d been hoping to find somewhere in London that she could commute to from the boat. It was Honor who’d persuaded her to look further afield and made it possible by putting aside some of the money that Zoe had left her. They’d done some googling and found the course in mathematics with biosciences at Avon. No other university was offering anything similar and the student feedback was phenomenal.

‘This place is perfect for you,’ Honor said. They were standing in the foyer of the biosciences building. An almond-eyed girl stood beside them, flicking through the course prospectus. Honor asked if she was applying for the same course. The girl confirmed as much, and that would have been the end of the conversation were it not for the fact that Honor went on, remarking, ‘You look like someone I used to know,’ and Nevis knew she was thinking about Zoe because the girl did bear a striking resemblance to Nevis’s birth mother.

‘Is that a good thing?’ the girl asked.