The Other Us: the RONA winning perfect second chance romance to curl up with. Fiona Harper
to back away but he just keeps coming at me.
Becca leans in and shouts in my ear. ‘Ladies! Now!’
I nod, totally trusting her to be my wingman … woman … whatever. Creepy Guy tries to follow, but we slip away too fast and instead of heading for the loos, we sprint up a flight of stairs and lose ourselves in yet another room full of heaving, slick bodies. We dance most of the night away and when our feet are burning so hard we can’t stand to groove any longer, we catch a string of night buses that eventually deposit us on Putney High Street and stagger back to our flat, arm in arm and propping each other up, feet bare on the rough concrete paving stones as the sky turns from grey to pale-pink. Becca keeps starting to belt out ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’ and I have to keep shushing her, so by the time we reach the front door to the house where our flat is, we’re almost giggling as loud as the singing would have been.
I fall into bed without taking my make-up off and smile at the ceiling as my eyelids drift closed. Now that is the way to do twenty-one!
I’ve been avoiding Dan as much as possible. Mainly because I just don’t know how to deal with him. However, there’s only so much ‘pretending to be revising’ a girl can do before she can’t put her boyfriend off any longer, and I end up going to a party with him on campus the following weekend.
Derwent Hall is the old-fashioned kind of student accommodation. None of these ‘flats’ with en-suite showers and homey little kitchens you get at universities these days. Instead, it has corridor upon corridor of single bedrooms painted in a colour Becca calls ‘anti-suicide green’, a tiny shared kitchen with only a Baby Belling and a juddering fridge to its name, and a communal bathroom with shower cubicles and sinks, and one bath in its own stall that takes twenty minutes to fill.
However, Derwent’s one advantage over those smart student flats we looked over with Sophie is that it has a common room. Not huge, but large enough to fit forty or so students in if they don’t mind squishing a bit, which they don’t.
The music is already pumping when we get there, the sparse furniture pushed back against the walls or shoved outside on the grass, and people are dancing, cans of warm lager in their hands. I’m tempted to join them but Dan has hold of my hand, and when I lean in to tell him I’m off to strut my stuff, he takes the opportunity to steal a kiss.
I plan to end it quickly, but I get kind of sidetracked. I’d forgotten Dan could kiss like this. His dad is a pastor and is a little old-fashioned about things, so Dan hasn’t had a lot of experience. The upside of that is that what he does do, he does very well. By the time he’s finished with me, I’m thrumming.
Oh, why couldn’t you stay this way? I ask him silently. You’re so sweet and loyal and full of devotion. But then I remember the betrayal that is to come. I can’t let myself feel anything for him. I just can’t.
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 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