Mum trying to remember the names of my friends, ones I’d thrown out casually in my rare phone calls this year. ‘And how’s Kate?’

‘Karen.’ I lifted a dough ball, smelled the garlic off it. Put it back down. Dad had already spilled tomato sauce on his anorak. I felt it rise up in me, anger, frustration, sadness – I didn’t know them any more, I barely recognised them – and I monosyllabled my way through the dinner, Dad querying every item on the bill.

‘And what was this? And this?’ So embarrassing. I sank down in my seat, hoping no one else from college was there.

When I’d left them – they were driving back that night so as not to pay for a hotel – I ran all the way to college. Down the high street, where freezing fog was already gathering. I’d already learned to love Oxford like this, silent and blurred, the spires looming out of the mist. I picked up my pace on the cobbles of Radcliffe Square, the low heels I’d put on for dinner catching on the stones. The Radcliffe Camera, so proudly round, and I had a ticket that let me in behind those windows, still lit at 9 p.m., late-night studiers bent over books. I was in this world. I could go in there if I wanted, take down some rare book, stare out at the misty streets. I ran past the spooky empty walls of All Souls – like Willy Wonka’s factory, you never saw anyone going in or coming out – and down Holywell Street towards home. In the wicket gate, punching in the code to Mike’s staircase. My face was red and flushed and my heart beat high in my chest. I was part of this world. I belonged. And I deserved to have this boy, the one who kissed me in the quad and in Queen’s Lane under the gargoyles, then blanked me in the bar, the one who turned up at my door sweaty and drunk from rugby nights out, crashed out beside me smelling of curry. We were together, and yet not. He’d never called me his girlfriend. He’d never touched me beyond those kisses. Maybe because he knew I was a virgin, and frightened. But I was sick of being that. Maybe I’d take up smoking like Karen, wear more black, hang out outside the English faculty being louche and talking about postmodernism. I could do it. I belonged here just as much as they did.

I banged hard on Mike’s door. The corridor always smelled like hot bleach, the products the scouts – what we called our cleaners – used on the bathrooms, and the too-high heating. Doubts tried to prick at me – what if he had another girl in there? – but I shook them off. This was what I deserved.