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Chapters (44)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  3. CONTENTS
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Chapter Ten
  15. Chapter Eleven
  16. Chapter Twelve
  17. Chapter Thirteen
  18. Chapter Fourteen
  19. Chapter Fifteen
  20. Chapter Sixteen
  21. Chapter Seventeen
  22. Chapter Eighteen
  23. Chapter Nineteen
  24. Chapter Twenty
  25. Chapter Twenty-One
  26. Chapter Twenty-Two
  27. Chapter Twenty-Three
  28. Chapter Twenty-Four
  29. Chapter Twenty-Five
  30. Chapter Twenty-Six
  31. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  32. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  33. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  34. Chapter Thirty
  35. Chapter Thirty-One
  36. Chapter Thirty-Two
  37. Chapter Thirty-Three
  38. Chapter Thirty-Four
  39. Chapter Thirty-Five
  40. Chapter Thirty-Six
  41. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  42. Epilogue
  43. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  44. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I took that as a compliment, but maybe it wasn’t. The drink had emboldened me enough to play drunker, slip my hand through his arm, and he didn’t drop it, because he was well-brought-up, at least in these things. ‘Can’t believe uni’s over, can you? I can’t believe we won’t be all together after this.’

‘We’ll see each other all the time,’ he said. ‘Clapham is like a mini-Oxford. And I’m moving in with Cal.’

‘Can’t get away from me, mate.’ Callum clapped him on the shoulder.

‘I don’t know where I’ll be,’ I said pointedly. Mike didn’t answer and I felt the anger grow in me. I was their friend too. Why shouldn’t I move in with them? Why shouldn’t he ask me, when we’d been together since first year? ‘And Bill will be gone. Touring the world.’

‘Shagging those Scandi chicks,’ said Callum. ‘Well jel. They’ll all look like Rasby.’ I remembered that comment in the aftermath, but of course it was not unusual, because all the boys thought Martha the most fit in our year, the most desirable, especially as her older boyfriend, Christian, who was French, commanded all her attention. I think they’d have been scared if they’d been able to have her. ‘Not that she’s available.’

‘She is now,’ Jodi said, bursting with the pride of knowing gossip we didn’t. ‘He’s ditched her. Didn’t want to move here after all, and she has that internship at Vogue, so . . .’

Callum whistled. ‘Rasby available. And here I am shackled down.’ Jodi swatted at him and he put his arm around her.

Was that the moment? Did I see a flicker on Mike’s face, a flame of interest at this news about the most beautiful girl in our college? It was easy in hindsight to remember the wrong thing. But the events that followed made me think that maybe, just maybe, the thing that would happen later on that night had already started, right there on the lawn.

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

The girl in the pictures was skinny, anxious, her make-up badly applied, her clothes a poor approximation of what had been trendy in the nineties. The girl was me, though I felt like an entirely different person now.