The Refectory was a monstrous, magnificent place.
Not many students’ unions were housed in cathedral-style halls, with high, vaulted ceilings and arching stained-glass windows. It was dark outside, but the old Victorian street lamps outside refracted broken light through the stained glass, casting strange kaleidoscopic shapes across the polished parquet dance floor.
It made my drinking spots back home look positively primitive. Flaky memorial park bench, this was not.
By the time I arrived with Alice, the holy space was already thronging with half-cut freshers, and I was desperate for a drink to round off the hard edges of the day. I felt emotionally wrung out from saying goodbye to my family, and from fretting over the fact Alice thought I was tragic, and from finally standing in the shadow of the tower I’d thought about almost every day since I was nine years old.
‘Bar?’ I asked Alice, who was dressed more like an Ivy League professor than a cheap student.
‘Bar,’ she confirmed.
From the grimace-set of her jaw, I guessed she felt as out of place as I did. Which was bonkers, because in her tawny tweed blazer, polished brogues and cigarette trousers, she looked like she was born in a place like this.
I spotted Nat and Sara by the bar, white strobe lighting illuminating the orange frizz on Sara’s curls. The four of us got a booth near the stage, and chatted about where we came from and what we were studying. Nat and Sara were both on the theatrical arts programme and acted accordingly, all big hand gestures and performative laughter and Shakespeare quotes that didn’t seem to make sense in the context.
At first I didn’t find them that annoying – they were easy to talk to, at least, especially once I’d sank three drinks – but as I watched Alice visibly growing in irritation, I began to see them through her eyes. They were try-hards, desperate to make a good impression, forcing friendships on the very first day rather than letting them grow organically.
Probably exactly how she saw me too.
‘So what made you choose theatrical arts?’ asked Alice, with a curious twitch of her dark red lips. Her Cupid’s bow was so pronounced that I found my eyes drawn to her slightly mocking half-smile. She had that kind of cruel magnetism to her.
Then, when Nat announced proudly that ‘all the world’s a stage’, Alice mouthed along as though she’d known what her answer would be. She caught my eye as she did so, and I had to bite down on my lower lip to keep from laughing. Even though I knew she was being cruel, it was briefly intoxicating to have a private joke with her.
It wasn’t to last, though, because Alice’s self-professed sharp edges were indiscriminate, and my turn to be on the receiving end rolled around faster than you could say porcupine. I’d been chatting about my hockey scholarship, about how I very nearly missed out due to a knee injury, when she cut me off.
‘I’ve never understood why Carvell offered sports scholarships,’ she said, as though innocently musing aloud. She rolled the ice cubes around in her tumbler. ‘It’s an arts academy. Why does it matter how well people can hit a ball with a wooden stick?’
I was at least half a foot taller than her, but in that moment I’d never felt so small.
The trend of feeling like a philistine compared to Alice continued for the next few hours. I ordered vodka-cranberry; she ordered whisky on the rocks. I passed around a packet of Love Hearts; she looked at me as though I’d assassinated her mother. I leaped up to dance when an Oasis song came on; she cast a disparaging look in the DJ’s direction.
After an hour of loose-limbed dancing, Nat yelled, ‘I’m going to the bathroom!’
‘Me too!’ Sara screamed back, her eyes glassy. She was drunker than I realised, hanging on to Nat for support.
‘I’ll go get us some water,’ I shouted, making a gesture towards the bar. It really was extremely hot; the hairs on the nape of my neck were sodden. Sweat pooled at the base of my spine, soaking through the waistband of my jeans.
As I stood at the crowded bar waiting to be served, I found myself tentatively imagining a future at Carvell with Nat and Sara as my friends. We’d hang out on the grassy lawns in front of the old convent, studying and laughing and sipping from little cans of pear cider. I’d go to watch them in their plays, or help them run lines in the dressing room, while they’d cheer for me at my hockey matches. I allowed myself a private smile.
But the moment of internal peace was not to last.
Nat and Sara came back from the bathroom different people to the ones I’d just been dancing with. They were high on something erratic and jittery, with an owl-eyed intensity I didn’t trust. As they took their places beside me, fingers rapping frantically on the polished oak like concert pianists, I tried to tell myself it was no big deal, but deep down my heart sank.
Then, over the sound of the thudding bass, I heard a nearby commotion.
‘Oh my god!’ Nat shrieked. She was staring somewhere over my left shoulder. ‘Oh my god oh my god oh my god!’ Her voice was a cocaine-addled air-raid siren.
‘What? What happened?’ I winced as she grabbed me too hard by the back of the arm.
‘Your roommate just punched someone.’