A Song I Wrote for Charlotte extract

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here are a lot of things I am scared of, but I think stagnating is one of my greatest fears. Mediocrity is to be avoided at all costs. Any chance at greatness – even if that’s only in my personal life – would probably involve leaving my comfort zone, so that’s what I’ve decided to try and do this year. I told my mother this while she did the washing-up.

‘That’s great, Connie,’ she said. ‘Is drying the wine glasses in your comfort zone or outside it?’ I told her it was definitely in.

‘That’s a shame,’ she said, drying them herself. ‘This is going to be so great for you. So many like-minded people in one place!’

Victoria has been recently seized by the terrifying idea that I am wasting my teenage years, and that she, as my mother, is complicit. She can rest easy – at eighteen, I would say that my teenage years are over. I have no desire to hang on to adolescence.

While others my age will be wrecking their bodies for as long as they can still blame it on dumb youth, I have been preparing for adulthood since I was eleven. I explained this to her. I’m not sure it made her feel better.

Case in point: she has just called up the stairs to ask which bottle of alcohol I would like her to pack so that I can share it with my flat.

‘Gordon’s or Smirnoff?’ If only those were the names of writers.

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‘Look,’ she said last night, pulling up the calendar on the university website. ‘There’s so much happening this week, Connie!

There’s a music festival, and a bunch of mixers – and, look, there’s a foam party.’

‘A foam party?’

‘You wear old clothes,’ she explained, ‘and they fill the room with foam, and you listen to music and splash around in it.’

I privately thought that sounded like a North Korea torture technique. She continued to scroll through the events, chewing her nail. I fought the urge to slap her hand down from her mouth.

I’d seen my grandmother do it to her enough times that once, last year, when the grinding of her teeth had become too much for me to bear, I’d reached over and swatted the back of her hand with my palm. It made a satisfying thwack and she’d dropped her hand in disbelief. She wouldn’t drive me to my piano lesson after that. I haven’t done it since.

‘Pub golf?’ she suggested, still scrolling. ‘You’ve got the wardrobe for it.’ I glared at her.

‘What on earth is pub golf?’ asked my grandmother. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her tea in front of her. I’ve never once seen my grandmother drink tea, but my mother makes her a cup every time she comes over and places it in front of her, and there it sits ceremoniously until my grandmother chooses to leave.

It’ll sit there all night until my mother gets up in the morning and pours it down the sink before work. It’s a strange social dance, the ceremonial cup of tea. I don’t want to think about what my mother’s wasting on teabags.

‘You dress up in country club clothes and you go from pub to pub and follow arbitrary rules in each location.’ They both stared at me. ‘Millie told me.’

Millie is my older cousin from Bristol, and she likes to tell me these things – often, I think, to scare me. Pub golf is one of the tamer activities she’s partaken in. I don’t tell my mother and grandmother everything Millie tells me.

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‘She doesn’t need to take part in freshers’ week,’ said my grandmother, cleaning her glasses. My mother has suggested she get a chain for them, so that she can wear them round her neck and that way she won’t lose them. We both tend to ignore my mother when she suggests things like this. ‘She can move in when classes start,’ said my grandmother, placing her glasses back on her nose.

‘University is about more than just getting an education.’

I ran my thumb down the spine of my book as they argued, tracing the point where it had cracked. There’s a particular sort of pleasure in cracking the spine of a book. A significant thing, like a lost virginity.

‘Self-exploration is important,’ said my mother.

‘And when she has a degree,’ said my grandmother, ‘then she can travel Asia. Right now, the only exploration she should be doing is strictly academic. After all, Victoria,’ she added, ‘I’m the one paying her rent.’

She was perfectly right, and so I stayed an extra week at home and did the whole term’s worth of reading instead. I like to be on top of things, especially my schoolwork. It pays to come to class ready to have your opinions challenged rather than formed. We’re studying Brecht, which honestly pains me, but we’re also studying Ibsen, which softens the blow slightly. And Wordsworth – my dear, beloved Wordsworth. I should have started my day with him.

I began my day with Allen Ginsberg. If today is not a good day, then it is undoubtedly my fault for beginning it with him.

Ginsberg’s poetry is wild, erratic, with too much social awareness and too little regard for the politically correct, none of which I feel is designed to serve me well in making introductions.

He’s rude and graphic, and quite frankly disarming. I suppose I understand why Ginsberg is regarded as a great American poet, but I understand it in the same way as I understand why people take drugs – they obviously have their attractions for a certain kind of person, but they really aren’t for me. I deliberated putting Ginsberg on the list of writers that I would have sex with, purely

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because he could be an exciting kind of spontaneous, but I’ve concluded Ginsberg would be too inconsistent in bed and I don’t trust that he wouldn’t be shouting socialist slogans at the point of orgasm. Also, he’s gay.

Starting the day with Ginsberg was an interesting first attempt at exiting the aforementioned comfort zone. ‘Howl’ offers several colourful phrases to drop into conversation with new flatmates.

I’ll confess that I couldn’t read the phrase ‘cock and endless balls’ with an entirely academic eye – I may have even chuckled. Perhaps my new flatmates would also chuckle at that phrase. It’s vulgar without being mindless. It lands in a comfortable middle ground.

It’s an important day. Not as important as tomorrow, when I’ll sit in my first lecture and take my first notes, but important all the same. It’s not that I’m worried about what my flatmates will think of me, because I can quite safely assume that they won’t like me. Other children have never liked me because children don’t like it when you grow up faster than them. The people in my flat will be children of eighteen and nineteen, young people beginning to celebrate the artificial label of ‘legal adult’, and I will be a grown-up, made separate from all of them as children and grown-ups are always made separate. That’s okay. I don’t necessarily need them to like me. I just need them to close doors quietly and wash up their plates.

Everything I own is sitting around me in boxes and suitcases.

I’m resting my feet on the contents of my bookshelf, using my kitchenware as a seat. I’ve never moved house before. It’s an odd thing to see the things you accumulated in your old life and the things bought in preparation for your new life all thrown in together and secured with packing tape, and to sit in your bare room and think about how old you were when you could finally reach the books on your top shelf. On the bottom of the far wall, next to the wardrobe, there’s a little pencilled note. Freak. A word spat at me in Year Eight. I’d sat down next to the wardrobe and written it on the wall, and then I’d looked at it for a while until

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the burning in my chest had subsided and it just looked like five letters in a row. It had stayed there for years behind a pile of textbooks, forgotten. Now I cross the room quickly, lick my finger, and rub it off as best I can.

Eleven exactly. We said we’d leave now, although I don’t think any of us believed that. Soon my mother will call up the stairs for me, one arm in her cardigan, my grandmother already waiting in the passenger seat of the car with her handbag on her lap and her hands crossed over it. And then on to the rest of it. Everything else.

I suppose I wouldn’t mind if at least one of my flatmates liked me, because then I would have someone to stand with me against messy sinks and loud music. People don’t listen to you as much when it’s just you on your own.

I hope my mother doesn’t offer them vodka.

Just set off. There’s a box under my feet and a keyboard against the car window next to me, which is casting a rather ominous and symbolic shadow over my journal and blocking out the sun.

‘Did you mean to have it quite literally looming over me?’

I asked my mother as we set off. She told me not to be a baby.

I didn’t want to bring it. I’ll never play it. I’ll let the keys get dusty, which is one of my personal hates but better than the alternative, and sort of poetic, in a way. I’m with you in Rockland where you bang on the catatonic piano, wrote Ginsberg of Carl Solomon. It’s not an overly elegant comparison, but it came to mind. That keyboard would drive me mad if I let it. Sitting in my tiny cupboard of a room, letting my work pile up around me.

Banging on my catatonic piano.

This is all very overdramatic, of course.

Stopped to relieve our bladders. While my mother spends her usual eternity in the bathroom, my grandmother has moved into the driver’s seat, which is probably an intelligent course of action.

Victoria returns.

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‘Why are you in my seat?’ she asks.

My grandmother sniffs. ‘Because you’re driving like a teenager.’

Off we go again. Not far now hopefully.

My mother was the one who suggested I keep a journal. No great surprise there – Victoria is a slave to her photo albums and home videos, which I suppose is understandable when you have the memory of a gnat. Sometimes she’ll call me down from my room and fix us an unhealthy dinner, and then we’ll sit in front of the TV with trays in our laps as she cues up all her favourites. Me learning to read is among them, and my fourth birthday when I tipped my Sprite over Julia Charles’s head because she made fun of my glasses. She loves that clip of me on my fourth birthday.

You were so feisty, she’ll say. Look how feisty you were. She ought to have slapped me. Besides, I wasn’t feisty enough not to get contact lenses when they were offered.

She gave me this journal last night after my grandmother left, wrapped up in blue paper with tiny white flowers.

‘I want you to record it all really carefully,’ she said. ‘These are going to be some of the best days of your life, Connie.’

And maybe it was because I was leaving, or because she’d been making me watch home videos with her all week, but I felt uncharacteristically sentimental to the point where I didn’t even argue with her, just hugged her and thanked her for the gift.

They didn’t hang around after they helped me unpack. My mother cried and my grandmother gave me twenty pounds, and then the door swung shut and I sat on my bed with my hands folded in my lap and reminded myself that I hadn’t been a child in years. There were voices in the kitchen. The rest of my flat had been here a week already, going to freshers’ events, drowning in foam and dressing up like golfers. I was gearing myself up to go in and make my introductions when I heard the kitchen door open and close, footsteps echoing back down the hall. A call of, ‘Later.’ Later, then.

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I lay flat on my bed and stared up at the ceiling, my hands folded on my chest like Elaine in Tennyson’s poem floating off down the river. There was a sense of peace in knowing that this was a space that was entirely mine – no one would enter it to sit on the end of the bed and ask seriously if I was sure I didn’t want a birthday party or stand at my bookshelf and quiz me on my essay topics.

This was a room that I could keep entirely to myself. I could even be messy here if I wanted. I have never had the inclination to be messy, but the possibility relaxed me.

Against the far wall of the room, my mother had stood my keyboard, even setting up the little adjustable stool she’d earnestly presented me with. There were three books on the stand, nestled behind each other – I’d seen her put them down but hadn’t wanted to appear interested. Now I got up and walked over to flick through them. Mozart sat on top, my favourite, which once would have pleased me but now seemed like a mean trick.

Chopin was underneath – a bit too much of a Romantic for my taste but my mother had once heard ‘Raindrop Prelude’ and thought it pretty, so I supposed it was the only other name in the music section of the Red Cross bookshop that she’d recognised.

The final book almost made me snort out loud. Songs from the Shows. Surely a joke. The pieces were easy too, grade five or six at most. I tucked it firmly away in my desk drawer along with Chopin, but I left Mozart out. If nothing else, he made for a nice decoration.

It was as I stood staring at Mozart that I heard the faint strains of something horrifying coming from the kitchen. I nearly hit the keys in my annoyance. Guitar music, and with it a soft voice warbling over the chords. I closed my eyes. The last thing I needed this year was a guitarist across the corridor, especially one who thought she could sing. I didn’t want to write essays to the faint twangy strains of Jeff Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah’.

Trying to ignore the plucking and vocalising in the other room, I left the keyboard untouched and sat down on the end of my

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bed again, picking up Wordsworth. Victoria had left him on my bedside table. I opened the cover to find she’d slipped a note inside.

You’re going to do amazing, Connie. So proud of you. Always a phone call away.

It was almost enough to make me feel sentimental and so I quickly shut Wordsworth and picked up my notebook. This is another space just for me, I suppose, although I imagine I’ll still twist the truth and write things as better than they are or worse than they are because that’s what all writers do. Even Wordsworth.

I’ve seen the view from Westminster Bridge.

The girl in the kitchen is still playing guitar. I think I might go see who she is. Always better to be introduced to your enemies as soon as possible, just so you’re prepared.

Went in. She was sitting on the kitchen table with her legs crossed, wearing fluffy socks and about fifteen bracelets, playing to a nervous-looking boy with sweat patches under his arms. Jesus, I thought, but her guitar was nice. She stopped playing when I came in, before I had time to recognise the song.

‘Are you the sixth?’ she asked, which was a pretty nonsensical question so I didn’t answer. ‘Your mum was in here earlier,’ said the girl. ‘She was lovely.’ I still said nothing, looking around for my things. She squinted at me. ‘You’re our sixth flatmate, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. They both stared at me expectantly. ‘Connie.’

‘That’s Toby,’ said the girl, before the boy had a chance to open his mouth. ‘I’m Charlotte. You need any help unpacking? I can swing by your room.’

‘No,’ I said, alarmed. I hoped this wouldn’t be the norm, all of us invading each other’s living spaces. ‘That’s okay.’

She shrugged, looking back down at her guitar. She was very blonde, I noticed, the sort of girl who would have had long golden pigtails in primary school. Now her hair was short, ending just

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below her chin, and secured at one side with a blue hair clip. She was wearing a dress, which I’ve found that past 1 September is something only vain people do, and it was floral at that, and blue like the clip. I couldn’t stand the way the boy, Toby, was staring at her. It was as if she was the first person ever to play guitar and sing at the same time.

I turned my back on the pair of them, pulling open cupboards in search of my new plates and bowls. Some of my flatmates needed a lesson in how to safely stack drinking glasses, but that could be arranged.

‘Cupboard on the end,’ said Charlotte.

‘Thanks.’ I hadn’t wanted her to have to tell me.

‘Your mum’s really pretty.’

‘Thanks.’ That annoyed me as well. I heard it too much. ‘I could hear you playing guitar from my bedroom,’ I said pointedly.

‘Sorry if I disturbed you,’ she said, before launching straight into another indie cover. Toby looked on, glassy-eyed.

The kitchen door opened, giving way to a brown-skinned boy with a pleasant face and a tidy appearance. He headed straight for the kettle.

‘How long have you been playing for, Charlotte?’ he asked.

‘Oh,’ he said, noticing me. ‘You must be—’ ‘Connie,’ cut in Charlotte. ‘The one with the lovely mum.’

I wished she’d stop going on about my mum. ‘Hello,’ I said.

‘That’s Imran,’ said Charlotte. ‘He’s our dad.’

Imran grinned, like he understood this, which I did not.

‘I like your hair,’ said Charlotte, still picking at the guitar. ‘I like the colour. Is it naturally like that, or do you henna it?’

Millie had hennaed it for me last week, to my mother’s delight and my grandmother’s horror. We hadn’t been prepared for the smell, but we found ourselves laughing through it. The effects had been far bolder than I’d been prepared for. Do you love it? she’d asked. Yes, I answered. I love it. Millie is one of very few people in the world whose feelings I’ll protect by lying.

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‘It’s natural,’ I said, and then excused myself before they could ask me any more questions.

Ventured back in after a short break to collect myself. Not sure when I got this ridiculous, but I suppose I should cut myself some slack. This was always going to be a slightly overwhelming day. I also decided to take the Smirnoff with me, because my mother might be a dysfunctional adult-child hybrid, but she’s a dysfunctional adult-child hybrid with more friends than me.

All five of them were sitting round the table when I entered, Charlotte’s guitar propped up against the back wall. Charlotte saw the vodka and – not lying – actually applauded.

‘I knew you’d be fun,’ she said. An incorrect assumption. How had I been unlucky enough to be placed in a flat with this kind of girl? The people in the student housing department had clearly been using the profiles we’d filled out to make paper aeroplanes. I placed the vodka down in the centre of the table and took a seat.

My last two flatmates were both boys – disappointing, seeing as now I would be expected to befriend Charlotte, but better that than more of her type. ‘This is Connie,’ said Charlotte, gesturing towards me like she was presenting an interesting piece of furniture.

‘Eli,’ said one of the boys. He reached across the table held out his hand for me to shake.

‘He’s the brown one who isn’t Imran,’ said the other new boy.

‘Yes, I’d imagine she might have been able to figure that one out herself,’ said Imran, with a roll of his eyes.

‘And Mason’s the white one that isn’t me,’ said Toby.

Everyone laughed at that. Charlotte’s was an infuriatingly girly laugh that made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

Mason winked. He was ridiculously good-looking, like a man in a perfume advert who rides a motorcycle in circles in exchange for a kiss from a girl wearing too much eyeliner, but he had bad hair. It was too long on top and too short on the sides. He also had one of the smallest noses I’d ever seen on a boy. It was pert

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and pretty, like a girl’s nose. Maybe that was what made him so good-looking. I’ve never been very good at identifying what makes men good-looking; I just get a sense of whether or not they’re supposed to be.

‘Mason’s the one that gets laid,’ said Charlotte, prompting an outcry from the other boys. She grinned at me expectantly. I cracked a smile. ‘You got all those names, Connie?’

‘All five,’ I said.

She didn’t seem to get the sarcasm. I watched her lean over the table to unscrew the lid of the vodka. ‘Fantastic. Who’s got mixer?’

A bottle of lemonade was produced and the mugs filled. I slid mine back into the centre of the table.

‘I don’t drink.’

‘Oh,’ she said, sounding a little disappointed. ‘I thought— I mean, you brought it. No worries,’ she added quickly. ‘Imran doesn’t either. He’s far too responsible.’

Imran held up a full mug of lemonade. ‘Cheers to that.’

They all took a drink. I left my mug sitting in front of me, staring down at the table. Next to me, Charlotte gulped and wiped her mouth delicately with the back of her pale hand. She nudged me, which I did not enjoy as her elbow was skinny and sharp and her face as she did it suggested that we were already the kind of friends that nudged each other.

I know girls like Charlotte. They’re drawn in gentle but very precise lines, by the sort of illustrators that draw fairies holding flower stems like umbrellas and kittens asleep in fireplaces. Their teeth are straight and white, their lips soft, their tongues small and pink, and so no one imagines that they could use these things to say anything unkind. When they realise that you are different, their bright eyes grow brighter. They know how to disguise meanness as playfulness and how to make you feel less than with a look.

These kinds of girls have never liked me, because I don’t look pretty on paper like they do, and because I have never worshipped at their shrines.

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‘So,’ she said. ‘What are you studying?’

‘English Literature.’

‘I know some people doing English and Drama. Are you doing English and Drama?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m doing English Literature.’

There was a pause. ‘Good to have another humanities student,’ said Charlotte. She pointed at each of the boys. ‘Maths. Maths.

Economics. Engineering. Makes you sick, doesn’t it?’ She stuck her tongue out at Mason, who produced his as well, and I sat back and watched them take a keen interest in each other’s tongues, giggling.

‘Fuck your prejudice, Charlotte,’ said Mason, putting his tongue away to my immense relief. ‘Just because we do real subjects.’

She flipped him off. ‘I’m doing Music Production,’ she explained.

My stomach twisted. ‘Oh.’ ‘I’m excited to start.’

I reached out for the mug and took a large, shuddering sip, my eyes watering. There were a couple of whoops.

‘That was a short-lived dry spell,’ laughed Eli. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. My throat burned.

‘Are you good at music?’ I asked Charlotte.

‘I’m okay at it,’ she said.

It was an effort not to let the hatred show. I nodded, gripping the mug, and then took another furious gulp. The table cheered again.

‘I want to get to know our new flatmate better,’ declared Mason.

‘Not like that, before you all start.’ They hadn’t done anything but exchange looks – playful, knowing ones that left me unnerved.

Mason rubbed the stubble on his jaw. I could see a hint of shaving burn. ‘Let’s play truth. I’ll go first.’

‘God’s sakes,’ muttered Charlotte in my ear. ‘Get ready to talk extensively about your sexual history.’

‘My sexual history is anything but extensive,’ I said.

It wasn’t a joke, but she giggled like I’d said something genuinely funny. ‘You’re safe from Mason, then.’ She saw my alarmed

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expression. ‘He’s harmless really. I think. Made me nervous at first too, though, a big guy like that, and me being the only girl in the flat.’ He wasn’t that big. He had the suggestion of muscles but he was only a few inches taller than me. She squeezed my hand. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

Here we go, I thought. I took my hand back. She looked surprised.

‘Oi.’ Mason clicked in Charlotte’s face. ‘I’m trying to start a game. Stop hogging Connie.’

‘I won’t.’ Charlotte took my hand a second time, holding it more firmly now. She clutched it to her chest, my skin against the fabric of her dress. I tensed. ‘We’re sisters now. Bonded for life.’ It took me one terrifying second to realise she was joking. Once again, I detached my hand from hers. This time she was evidently hurt.

‘You’re scaring her. Can I ask her a question, please?’

‘Like that won’t scare her more.’

Mason leant back in his chair again and I fought the urge to tell him how much damage he was doing to his back. ‘Are you a virgin?’

There was a collective groan from around the table. Eli reached over to punch Mason’s shoulder.

‘You’re awful,’ said Charlotte, but she turned to me expectantly.

I cleared my throat. ‘No.’ ‘How old were you?’

‘That’s two questions,’ reproved Charlotte. ‘And you didn’t even spin.’ She seized the vodka bottle and spun it round with a flick of her wrist. It stopped at Toby. ‘Ah,’ she grinned. ‘The one person in this flat who doesn’t overshare.’

Toby looked alarmed. He shuffled his chair, bumping his elbow against the table. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked. He had a nice speaking voice, gentle and low, with all his letters pronounced properly. It didn’t quite seem to match his awkward, nervous self.

‘Are you a virgin?’ asked Mason, as everyone else let out frustrated exclamations. ‘Look, it’s not like he’d volunteer the information.’

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‘You’re obsessed,’ said Imran.

‘Shut up, Mr “Lost it in my parents’ bed”.’ Mason swung his feet up onto the table as Toby reached for the bottle. ‘Go on, Toby.’

‘I’m a virgin,’ said Toby. He spoke nonchalantly enough but his ears were bright red. ‘My turn to spin.’

Mason swung his feet up on to the table triumphantly as Toby leant forward. He was more peacock than boy, with his shiny hair and expensive trainers. He caught me looking at him, and before I had time to look away he actually winked, and made a disgusting clicking sound with his mouth. I took a long drink from my mug and came up wincing.

The bottle landed on Charlotte, who groaned dramatically, with sparkling eyes. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Ask me anything.’

‘Are you going to pursue music as a career?’ I asked.

She frowned. ‘Um. Maybe. I’d like to try.’

‘Juicy stuff,’ muttered Imran as Charlotte spun, looking a little disappointed.

My turn again. Mason rubbed his hands together. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I want all the details.’

I blinked rapidly. My face was getting hot – maybe it was the vodka. ‘What details?’

‘When, who, number of times since, and any other specifics you want to throw in there.’ He saw my confused face and sighed.

‘Sex, Connie. Come on.’

‘You don’t have to answer,’ said Charlotte, unconvincingly.

‘Only once,’ I said. ‘Earlier this year.’

‘Where?’ asked Mason.

‘On a piano.’ I was expecting him to question that but he only made a series of strange whooping sounds.

‘Crazy. What was his name?’

‘Allen,’ I said. I paused. ‘Ginsberg.’

‘See.’ Mason stuck his tongue out at Charlotte. ‘Connie doesn’t mind sharing.’

‘You’re boring,’ she said. ‘All these questions about sex. They’re

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so boring. Aren’t you bored, Connie?’ She was grinning at me like we shared a secret. She was undeterred by the fact that I didn’t grin back. ‘On a piano,’ she whispered as the game continued.

‘That must be quite the story.’ She didn’t believe me, which was disappointing. ‘Allen Ginsberg,’ she said. ‘I know that name.’

‘You do?’

She raised a finger. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘It’ll come to me.’

Across the table, Imran was being hounded by Mason about his masturbation habits. ‘Dare,’ he said.

‘We all do it, Imran.’

‘Dare,’ said Imran firmly.

‘We’re playing truth.’

‘Let him do a fucking dare,’ said Eli. He rolled his eyes in my direction – a bit presumptuous of him to think we were at that stage in our relationship, I thought.

‘I dare you to punch Mason,’ suggested Charlotte sleepily.

Mason headed for one of the cupboards. He was a little taller than I’d realised, actually, and his shirt was definitely too tight for him. He pulled out a small container of chilli powder and looked questioningly at the group.

‘Yes?’ ‘Only a tiny bit,’ instructed Charlotte.

‘He’s Asian.’

‘More than a little racist,’ said Imran. ‘You’re on a roll this evening.’ He eyed the chilli powder doubtfully. ‘I’ll have a teaspoon.’

This was beginning to be about enough for me and I was ready to excuse myself when Charlotte tapped my shoulder.

‘I’m not in the mood to watch Imran cough everywhere. Can I see your room?’

I looked at her cheerful, blandly smiling face, small nose upturned. ‘Why?’ The smile slipped. ‘Because I haven’t seen it yet.’

I didn’t want this girl in my space, but on balance it seemed

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the lesser of two evils. I assented, and we rose, leaving the boys to measure chilli powder by conference.

‘I feel bad for Toby,’ said Charlotte as the door closed behind us. ‘They all terrify him, I think. He’s a sweetheart.’ She knew he adored her. She was the kind of girl who probably loved when boys broke their hearts over her. I watched her spin in her fluffy socks, turning back to me with flushed cheeks. ‘I’m a bit tipsy,’ she said.

‘I’m such a lightweight. Are you a lightweight? You must be, if you don’t really drink. I’m glad you’re here,’ she continued, without giving me space to answer the question. ‘Do you miss home?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Will you cry tonight?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t cried since I was eight.’ That was a lie.

‘Did your mum and dad cry on your last night at home? Mine did.’

‘My mum cried,’ I said, ‘but that doesn’t mean anything. She cries at pictures of dogs.’ Charlotte laughed at that. ‘My dad isn’t around.’

‘Oh.’ I could tell she wanted to ask but she wasn’t sure how.

Other people are so strange. ‘This is yours, right?’ she said quickly.

I showed her in, hoping we could keep the tour brief.

‘I like it,’ she said. ‘Minimalist.’

‘I’m not really one for decorations.’

‘You have a lot of books.’

My mum had bought an extra Ikea bookshelf for all my books, which she’d nearly lost a finger trying to assemble. I appreciated the gesture but I was pretty certain the bookshelf would collapse under its own weight at some point. Charlotte bent down to read the titles. Suddenly she clicked her fingers.

‘Allen Ginsberg.’ She pointed to his name on the shelf. Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems. ‘He’s a writer.’

Disappointing. Now we had an inside joke, when the only person I’d meant to share that particular joke with was myself.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A poet.’

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‘Strange now to think of you,’ she said dreamily, ‘gone without corsets and eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village . . .’

I blinked at her.

‘It’s from “Kaddish”,’ she said.

‘I know.’ I hadn’t known that.

‘I studied it in English last year. Just for a couple of lessons, but I liked it. I read it a lot. I still remember a few lines.’ She seemed to be reciting it to herself in her head. ‘It’s very sad. Very powerful.’

‘Cock and endless balls,’ I said.

She spluttered. ‘What?’

‘It’s from “Howl”. Cock and endless balls.’

‘God, how funny. I haven’t read that one. Must be quite a different tone.’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Also very powerful. Also very sad.’

‘Cock and endless balls,’ she repeated to herself, and giggled.

I’d been right to suspect simple minds would like that phrase.

‘And Mason thinks you’ve shagged him.’ She wandered over to my desk, examining the other half of my books, stacked against the back wall. ‘Mason’s not so bad really,’ she said, as if I’d said otherwise. ‘He just wants to be liked, I reckon. He’s a bit of a knob, but that’s how he thinks it works. That’s probably how it does work for him, usually.’

This was surprisingly insightful. She headed for my bedside table next, picking up the book lying top of it. She seemed determined to give herself a full tour of the room.

‘Wordsworth,’ she said. ‘The daffodil guy.’

How frustratingly reductionist. ‘Yes.’ ‘Have you read him before?’

‘Once or twice.’ Endlessly.

Charlotte sat down heavily on my bed, a wide grin on her face.

She reinserted the clip in her hair. Her dress bloomed around her waist. ‘Look at the two of us. Discussing literature in our university halls. We’re adults now.’

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20 CAITLIN DEVLIN

‘Yes,’ I said kindly. ‘We must be.’

‘How come you didn’t move in for freshers’ week?’

‘Not my thing.’

She grimaced. ‘You must be more of an adult than me then. I still feel like a kid. Do you still feel like a kid?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m eighteen.’

She nodded sadly. ‘That’s what I thought. Ah well.’ There was a pause. She looked at me, exasperated, and laughed. ‘It’s like getting blood from a stone.’

‘I don’t know what that means,’ I said, even though I did.

She looked sheepish. ‘Am I coming on too strong?’

‘A little.’

A crease appeared between her eyebrows. I’d only been answering her question but it was clear that I’d annoyed her. She stood up from the bed. ‘I’m sure you’re exhausted,’ she said. ‘I won’t keep you up.’

‘Thank you.’

She didn’t seem to like that response either. ‘I hope your classes go well tomorrow.’

‘Thank you.’ Another pause. I really couldn’t bring myself to wish this girl luck with Music Production.

‘See you, then.’ The door had only been closed two seconds before she opened it again. ‘Your hair is definitely hennaed,’ she said. ‘It’s okay. I dye mine too.’

She left again, and this time it stuck. From the kitchen there was laughter and the sound of someone throwing up in the sink.

Once the rest of the flat was finally quiet and everyone else’s doors had closed, I stayed up reading ‘Kaddish’. It’s a beautiful poem. Maybe I shouldn’t be quite so hard on Allen Ginsberg.

Most people have a soft spot for their first time, after all.

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