Over the next few days, Alice barely said a word to me. She seemed to spend most of her time in the library. I saw her there a couple of times, hunched over a writing desk and scrawling essays in black fountain ink, but if she saw me wave, she didn’t acknowledge it.
I found her so disquieting to be around that I barely spent any time in the dorm, and I knew it had to change. I was exhausted from being constantly on edge in the one place I should be able to relax, and I found falling asleep at night almost impossible. The one upside of this was that because I was awake when midnight rolled around, I didn’t find myself unconsciously clawing at the foot of the North Tower. There was just a twinge of latent temptation, a subtle tug towards the building somewhere deep in my ribcage, but nothing I couldn’t easily overrule.
Still, hockey training was like wading through black treacle because of the lack of sleep, and I knew something had to give. After my last lecture on Friday afternoon, I headed to the Grandstand, parked up in a comfy armchair with a half of shandy, and called my best friend Frankie.
‘Charlaaaaaaay!’ she exclaimed in her deep, throaty cackle.
She was the only one I allowed to call me Charlie. She liked it because ‘Charlie and Frankiesounds like a lesbian sitcom in which two kooky broads have sex and do crimes’.
‘Hey,’ I laughed, her familiar voice washing over me like sunshine. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m good, my friend, I’m good!’ There was a lot of shuffling and background noise. ‘Getting ready to head out on the lash.’
‘Do you have five minutes to talk?’ I asked, suddenly uncertain. I didn’t want to intrude on her fun new life.
She made a littlepfftnoise. ‘Don’t be a silly bitch. Of course I do! You’re my home slice. My numero uno. My ride or die.’ The background noise abruptly stopped as I heard a door slam shut. ‘I’m in my room now. What the jolly heck is occurring? Just as, like, an FYI, I have already consumed half a bottle of Tesco’s cheapest vodka. So keep it simple. I have murdered a significant quantity of brain cells in the last week.’
‘So you’re loving Bristol then?’
‘Dude,yes. It’s mega.’ I heard her light a cigarette with the flick of a lighter and a sharp inhale. ‘When are you coming to visit? Where even is Northumberland anyway?’
‘Really far from Bristol,’ I laughed.
‘So get on a train. You’re not a Victorian pauper.’
‘Well spotted,’ I conceded.
‘So what’s up?’ She sucked on her cigarette as though the elixir of life was hidden at the bottom.
I groaned deeply, then took a sip of my shandy. ‘My roommate already hates me.’
‘Understandable. You’re hotter than like, eighty-five per cent of the population.’
I quirked an eyebrow even though she couldn’t see me. ‘Only eighty-five?’
‘Fine, eighty-seven.’
‘Very generous. But yeah, we just got off on the wrong foot. I think she immediately thought I was some idiot with a hockey stick –’
‘Accurate.’
‘– and made up her mind to hate me from there. Also I think she was, like, bullied by popular kids in school or something. And she thinks because I’m on the eighty-seventh centile of hotness and also play sports that . . . I’m going to be the same.’
‘Okay,’ Frankie said levelly. ‘And do you like her?’
It was a complicated question. Obviously the answer was no, because she was an incredibly intimidating and unpleasant presence, but I couldn’t deny being intrigued by her. Alice reminded me of the woods: vast and beautiful and dark, but overgrown with defence mechanisms; thistles and hogweed, poisonous mushrooms and gnarled roots. Talking to her was like grabbing a fistful of nettles.
‘I don’t think I do,’ I admitted. ‘She punched a guy in the face on my birthday.’
‘In fairness, that makes her sound awesome.’
‘Well, yeah, but what if she punches me?’
Frankie snorted. ‘Then you’ll punch her right back. You’ve never backed away from a fight.’
‘No, but I’ve also never actively pursued a fight.’ I nodded hello to Mei, who’d just walked in with a tall, black-haired guy in a rugby shirt. ‘Love thy neighbour, or whatever. Kindness is always my first port of call.’
‘Exactly. Just go be you, Charles. You’ll win her over in the end.’