So I push away from Dan and head for the dance floor, playing memories in my head to stop me going back, pinning him against the wall and continuing that kiss: the guilty look on his face when I go into the study unannounced, the fib he told about meeting Sam Macmillan, the way he’s been lying to me about where he’s going once a fortnight for months and months. I use those mental images to keep me angry, because as long as I’m angry I’m safe.
I channel my anger-fuelled adrenalin spike by dancing to the twelve-inch version of ‘Love Shack’. Paul Ferrini comes over, Derwent’s resident stud, and joins the group of girls I’m dancing with. He offers me his bottle of vodka and I take a sip. We dance together after that. Nothing inappropriate, nothing too flirty, I reason to myself, as I feel Dan’s laser-like glare from the other side of the room, even though there’s a glint in Paul’s eyes that tells me it could be more than innocent fun if I wanted it to be. There’s a part of me that enjoys this tiny moment of payback.
When I’m finally so thirsty I can’t keep dancing any more, I return to my boyfriend. ‘Just having fun,’ I tell him as I slump against the wall and neck the paper cup of flat Lambrusco he hands me.
Dan harrumphs. He’s upset with me. But he’s not going to say anything. He’s not going to do anything about it. How very Dan of him. ‘Got a problem with that?’ I ask, unable to stand his passive-aggressive grunts a moment longer.
He fixes his stare on Paul, who is now half draped over Mandy Gomez. ‘You didn’t have to have quite so much fun!’
I’ve had enough of his hypocrisy, maybe not in this life but definitely in the other one, and the mixture of wine and spirits is spurring me on. I push myself off the wall. ‘Fine!’ I shout back at him over the music. ‘If I’m not supposed to be having any fun, then maybe I’ll leave. You’ll be happy then, because I won’t be having any fun at all!’ And then I stare straight ahead and start walking down the corridor to the exit.
‘Maggie? Mags!’ I hear him start to run after me but then the footsteps stop and he shouts something I don’t catch. The cool night air hits me as I open the door and march across the courtyard in the direction of the main gate. There’s no sound behind me but the dying breath of today’s summer breeze in the trees. I exhale with them, loud and long. I can no longer hear him loping along behind me.
Finally.
I don’t want him to follow me. I don’t want to have to deal with my real-life problems, most of which centre around him, while I’m having this weird trance or dream or whatever it is. All I want to be able to do is enjoy it while it lasts.
Oaklands College, a satellite of a larger university, has a beautiful campus. I don’t think I really appreciated it when I went there. Oaklands House, where the administration offices are, is a lovely, white Georgian mansion, surrounded by statues and tended gardens, complete with fountain. Beyond that is a large lawn, always covered in toxic-green goose poop, that leads down to a small man-made lake.
Rather than heading straight back to the flat I share with Becca, I decide to take a walk. I head down towards the black water, trying not to think about what might be sticking to the underneath of my DMs. I stand by the reeds and watch the moon, reflecting on the water, breaking apart and rejoining itself, only to be disassembled again by the ripples of the next goose that swims by on the other side of the pond.
The moment of stillness after my week of frenetic activity allows thoughts and feelings I’ve been keeping firmly at bay to come flooding back in.
I miss Sophie.
I wonder if she’s missing me, if she even knows I’m gone? Until I work out what strange trick my brain is playing on me, I don’t know if she’s quietly grieving, Dan’s solid arm around her shoulder, or whether she’s living it up in Oban or Ullapool while I sleep soundly in my bed. I know she doesn’t need me as much as she once did, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need me at all. I don’t want to be dead. I don’t want her to have to go through that.
I close my eyes.
No.
I can’t think like that.
My stay here is just temporary. It has to be.
When I open my eyes again I’m aware of another presence on the lawn. I can hear squelching footsteps behind me, someone tracking their way from the ugly student union building towards the rose garden.
I feel very safe here, maybe because it still doesn’t feel real to me, but I suddenly remember that one year a girl was assaulted on campus when she was walking between the spread-out halls of residence, and I turn.
The figure jumps and then a hand flies to his chest. I don’t think he’d seen me standing there near the reeds.
‘God Almighty, you gave me a fright!’ he says, and I instantly recognise the voice, even after all these years.
‘Jude?’ It’s just as well his name is only one syllable, because I’m not sure I can manage anything more.
The figure walks towards me, his edges becoming less blurry as he gets closer, and when he is ten feet away, I see that it is indeed Jude, the subject of all my recent fantasies, living and breathing right in front of me and smiling that smile that always turned my knees to custard.
‘Meg?’
I inhale. There’s something about hearing him say my name that way that makes me do that. ‘Hi.’
He frowns. ‘What are you doing out here?’
I shrug. I’m not about to tell him I just had a fight with Dan.
He smiles again and I almost start to feel dizzy. ‘Long time no see,’ he says in that lazy, posh-boy drawl he’s still in the process of cultivating, copied from his upmarket circle of friends.
I nod. And then, because I really need to say something else, I croak out, ‘How are you?’
The smile becomes lopsided and I know he’s quietly laughing at me, that he knows he’s got me all off kilter and he likes it. It would have made the other twenty-one-year-old me angry, because I would have thought he was mocking me, but the real me knows that he’s actually pleased to see me. The real me knows that in just under a week he’s going to ask me to run away with him, and he’s going to mean every word. That’s not disdain I see glinting in his eyes but honest-to-goodness pleasure at seeing me again.
He reaches out his hand. ‘Let me walk you home. You know Catriona Webb was attacked out here a couple of months ago?’ He points to a spot only a couple of hundred feet away past the rose garden.
I hesitate. Something inside, some strange kind of instinct, tells me he’s dangerous. Oh, I don’t think he’d ever hurt me, not physically, anyway, but it suddenly occurs to me that this meeting never happened in my old life.
What if I should have been more careful up until now? What if, by not sticking to the same script, I’ve been changing things, causing the repercussions to ripple out like the waves from the swimming goose, until the life I once knew is pulled out of shape and made into something different? While I’d love some things to change, what if I never get home back to Sophie? What if Sophie never even exists?
But even after thinking all of this, I reach out and place my hand in Jude’s. He’s right. With a sexual predator on the loose – maybe someone from outside the college who slipped past the lax security, maybe someone lurking in our midst – I really shouldn’t be wandering around in the dark on my own.
We start walking towards the front gate in silence, but after a couple of minutes he says, ‘So where’s Dave?’
‘Dan,’ I reply, even though I suspect he got the name wrong on purpose.
‘Dan, then,’ he adds, and I hear the smile in his voice.
‘Party