Just as I hoisted my suitcase on to the bare, rust-springed mattress, there was a pop of laughter from the corridor as someone fumbled with a key. The door lurched free of its frame, and behind it stood my new roommate and a man I assumed was her father.
She was tall and tanned, with long blonde hair in French plaits. Fine-freckled and make-up free, with a neat ski-slope nose and wide-set blue eyes. Denim shorts, despite the chilly Northumbrian breeze, and a tight black tank top. Slung over her shoulder was a Grays’ hockey stick bag. All in all, she looked like aSports Illustratedcover, and made me feel instantly dumpy and odd.
‘Hi!’ Her voice was light and mellifluous. Around her grinning mouth was something that looked a lot like sugar. ‘I’m Charlotte, but everyone calls me Lottie. This is my dad, Dominic.’
Dominic stepped forward eagerly, extending a broad hand. He was shorter than Lottie by an inch and wore a faded rugby shirt over pale blue dad jeans, with the pink-cheeked look of the shamelessly outdoorsy.
‘Hi! Dom! Great to meet you!’
Everything inside me groaned.
My new roommate wascheerful. From afamilyof cheerfuls.
‘This is so cute,’ Lottie chirped, taking in the room with wide, wondrous eyes. ‘Oh my god, just adorable. I’m in love.’ Then, jabbing her thumb behind her, ‘Is that your car parked outside?’
Tucking a lock of hair behind my ear, I turned away. ‘Yeah. But I’m not going to IKEA with you.’
I didn’t know where the needless snark came from. I think she reminded me too much of the perky, popular girls who had spread vicious rumours about me in school.
She blinked in surprise. ‘Oh. I didn’t –’
‘No, I know,’ I interjected. ‘But it seems like that’s the kind of thing you’d want me to do, so I just wanted to manage your expectations. The only Swedish things I care about are meatballs and Greta Garbo.’
Stop being such a pretentious dick, I screamed internally, but it was no good. I was in full defence mode, performing myself so fiercely that she couldn’t make me feel small for it.
‘They have meatballs at IKEA,’ Dominic pointed out. He slung an expensive-looking weekend bag on to the spare bed, then tucked his hands into his jean pockets. ‘Though I have no idea who Greta Garbo is.’
Lottie, who looked embarrassed by his admission, changed the subject. ‘I’m justsoexcited to be here. It’s surreal. I can’t wait for hockey training to start. And oh my god, the Refectory! Have you ever seen a cooler students’ union?’ She laid her hockey stick bag down on the desk with a clatter of wood. When I didn’t reply to her almost offensive enthusiasm, she forced my hand with another question. ‘So where are you from?’
‘Here,’ I answered, arranging a stack of books on my own little desk. ‘Northumberland.’
Say something else, I urged myself, frustration ebbing like a current.Stop being a joyless twat.
‘Nice!’ Lottie smiled. ‘It’s such an amazing part of the world.’ She paused, waiting for me to reciprocate the question. When I didn’t, she glanced uncertainly at Dominic.
‘We’re from Kent,’ he said, still grinning that golden retriever grin, but there was a pointedness to his tone. ‘Maybe you can show Lottie around?’ He tossed an arm over her shoulders; a bear-like act of reassurance that made me want to cry.
I did that. I made him feel like he needed to reassure her.
With a hot flash of shame, I suddenly couldn’t bear to be there a second longer, so I excused myself to go to the library.
‘But we don’t even have any classes yet . . .’ Lottie whispered, when she thought I was out of earshot.
‘Don’t worry, kiddo,’ Dominic replied. ‘You’ll win her around. You always do.’
Disappointment weighed heavy on me as I left the building. Lottie was nothing like Noémie. Noémie was deep brown skin and cashmere sweaters, serious conversations and foreign films, the wistful smell of blue ink and old books, laughter as soft and smooth as butter. She was so much like me that it often felt like talking to myself. There was a unique kind of comfort in that.
And yet there was something eminently human about Lottie; an easy zeal I sorely lacked. Winding through the cobbled streets to the main convent, I continued the conversation with her in my head, imagining how a confrontation might play out. I always did this, always argued fiercely with people in my mind, mentally sparring with words like a boxer might practise punching.
The Sisters of Mercy library was housed in the original convent, climbing in split levels up all three storeys of the building. The upper floors were wrap-around mezzanines, so from the centre of the ground floor you could see all the way to the proud domed ceiling. There were wrought-iron spiral staircases connecting different levels, and a hodgepodge of reading nooks with wingback armchairs and moth-eaten velvet footstools. All along one wall was a row of antique writing desks and little green bankers’ lamps; beyond them, through arched windows, were acres and acres of gorse-pocked crags beneath a faded grey sky.
It was beautiful, but I could barely enjoy it. My jaw was tensed, my temples pulsing, every muscle and sinew taut and ready for a fight that wasn’t coming. The exhausting anger is what pushed Noémie away, in the end.
I should have known it would follow me here.