Fourteen

After the first structureless weekend, Ethan got into a routine of a kind – or, at least, a routine was imposed upon him by his timetable of lectures, seminars and tutorials, and the essays he was immediately set. He had always been a nocturnal creature, and he met most of his deadlines in the early hours of the morning, in a blue haze of cigarette smoke, while around him lay the contents of his room. He still had not bothered to unpack and it was becoming increasingly difficult to find a space to work. Every so often he would pile books higher and throw a few clothes back into his case; he put the notes he made at lectures and in the library into a cardboard box and promised himself that one day, soon, he would create a filing system. Colour-coded folders, he thought. Highlighter pens. When he had more time, more inclination; when he had properly settled in.

There wasn’t really a centre to his life yet, but he didn’t mind, telling himself that that would come later. He was meeting people on his history course, going to parties, drifting amiably in and out of social groups, making tentative friendships, coming back to his room to eat cold baked beans straight from the tin, drink beer from the can or wine from the bottle. He didn’t see much of the other residents on his floor, although they bumped into each other in the corridor, the bathroom and kitchen. The only one from the first evening he ever saw socially was Harry, who was caustic, clever and spectacularly cynical. They had played squash together a couple of times and now Harry had invited him to have a meal with him and some friends at a Mexican restaurant. He let drop that it was his birthday and Ethan had bought him a book about mathematical paradoxes and ethical dilemmas that he and Connor loved. He didn’t have any wrapping-paper, so he pushed it into a paper bag he found in the corner of his room and wrote ‘Happy Birthday’ on the outside in large letters.

He seemed to have got through a surprising number of clothes since he’d been there. His laundry lay in a large heap by the door and it was hard to find anything clean to wear. He rummaged in his bag for a shirt his mother had given him a few months ago, shook it vigorously, and pulled it on. He found socks under the bed. In the absence of a brush, he ran his fingers through his hair. His stubble was turning into something more like an unsatisfactory beard, but he didn’t have time to shave. Harry had said he should be there by eight, and he was already running late.

By the time he arrived fifteen or twenty people were crowded round the table at the back of the restaurant, young men and women who’d already got through several bottles of wine and whose spirits were high and cheeks flushed. Harry waved him over, hugged him in an uncharacteristic outbreak of sentimental friendliness, and tried to introduce him to his friends – several of whom, Ethan gathered, had been at the same school as him.

But he stopped hearing the names and he stopped seeing their faces. They became a blur; their voices a vague and distracting background hum. For she was there – the nameless she, who had walked with such soft steps past Ethan on that first evening and whose luminous face had been in his mind ever since. Half-way to his chair at the corner of his table he halted. She had a smooth, pale, oval face, made even paler by the black shirt she was wearing, and autumnal auburn hair; her grey-green eyes were large. She made Ethan think of moonlight and cool, secret shadows. It seemed to him that there was a mysterious radiance about her, setting her apart from the jostling noise and hot, grinning faces around her.

‘I saw you,’ he tried to say, but was drowned out.

‘Sit down, then,’ someone was yelling, and his chair was scraped back for him, a large glass of rough wine poured out.

He let himself sink down, and now he could barely see her any more. What was her name? Who was she? He half thought that, out of his sight, she might dissolve and disappear, like a ghost. There was a toast to Harry and everyone raised their glasses. Plates of tortillas and tacos were being slammed on to the table. Ethan turned to the person sitting on his left and tried to smile. ‘I’m Ethan,’ he said.

‘Hi. Amelia,’ she said.

‘I don’t know anyone here, only Harry. Tell me who everyone is.’

She laughed and said he’d never remember, but did so anyway, like a litany. The names flowed over him. Harry, of course, then Daisy and Faith, and Boris from LA; Cleo and Chloë and Dan times two; Coralie from France, Mick, Lorna, Penny, Morris, Irish Maeve.

‘Lorna like Lorna Doone,’ said Ethan, stupidly.

‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

Ethan started off tongue-tied, then segued swiftly, with no intermediary stages, into a garrulous tipsiness. He spoke loudly, so that Lorna would notice him. He got to his feet to propose another toast, so that she would look at him. He told jokes to make her laugh, mentioned politics so she would know he was thoughtful, and gave Harry his present half-way through the evening, because he wanted her to see what he had chosen. He ordered more wine, so that he could lean across the table, over the remains of the meal, to pour it into her glass and see her look up and hear her say ‘Thank you’, in a voice that was soft and clear, and fell like fresh water into the brackish confusion of his mind. Later, he wouldn’t be able to remember what anyone had said to him. He had no appetite for the food, but he drank wine and smoked too many cigarettes, once finding himself holding two at the same time.

When someone – Tom or Dan or Boris – said they should all go back to his room and continue the evening there, Ethan agreed eagerly. Of course the evening mustn’t end. He imagined sitting on the floor a few inches from her; he imagined touching her hand as if by accident. The very thought sent an electric thrill through him.

But what was this? Harry wasn’t coming, and neither was Lorna. ‘We’re a bit tired,’ said Harry. We? The casual intimacy of that ‘we’ was like a bucket of ice thrown over Ethan’s hot head, dousing every fantasy, and he was suddenly stone-cold sober and wretched. He watched as Harry helped Lorna into the light-grey coat she’d worn when Ethan had first seen her, then wrapped her scarf round her neck for her. She lifted her chin to let him do it, smiling very slightly. Ethan wanted to howl like an animal as Harry led her from the restaurant. A few moments later, they passed the window holding hands, lacing their fingers together and matching their strides.

Back in Tom’s room, Ethan continued drinking, but the alcohol only gave him a heavy, metallic headache and thickened the sour taste in his mouth. He smoked a joint, two, to make the pain more distant. He lay back against a cushion. People spoke to him and he replied. They laughed and he laughed too. More people arrived. The room was crowded now. There was music and he let himself be pulled to his feet to dance. Someone kissed him and, obediently, he kissed her back.

It was dawn, drizzly and grey, when he let himself into his room, drank three glasses of tap water, then lay down on his unmade bed in his damp, smoky clothes. He put his pillow over his face, closed his bloodshot eyes and, in the tipping room, he dreamt of Lorna.