The Burning (42 page)

I managed to shake Joan off after breakfast on the grounds that I needed to get ready for my interview, and wandered through the college taking in everything from the chalked-up rowing results above doorways in second quad to the smell of brass polish outside the college chapel. It was a bright, cold day, the sky clear and blue overhead, and all the colours were especially vivid. I was in love with the place already – painfully so – and went to my interview with a feeling of rising panic; they couldn’t invite me here and show me what was, to me, heaven, and then take it away again … Looking back, I realise that I was given an easy ride in the interview, nothing like the mouth-drying questions that some of the other candidates were asked, like ‘define reason’. The last thing the law tutors wanted to know before they let me escape was simply why I wanted to study at Latimer. I looked out of the lead-latticed window at golden chimneys as sharp against the blue sky as if they were paper cut-outs. I needed an answer that would convince them, something that wasn’t trite or pleading. But what came out was the truth.

‘I didn’t know anywhere like this existed, but it’s all I’ve ever dreamed of.’

I went down the little wooden stairs from the law tutor’s rooms, past the next candidate, a boy in a suit who looked through me when I tried to smile at him, and I knew I hadn’t done well enough to get in. I went through the rest of the interviews mechanically, nodding and smiling until my cheeks ached, answering questions in a soft voice that had the tutors leaning forward, asking me to repeat myself more often than not.

‘No chance. No chance. No chance,’ beat in my brain as I packed up my things on the morning of the third day, dragging myself away from the little room with one last look at the view before I went.

And home was that bit greyer, uglier and harder to endure when I got back.

You know what happened next: against all the odds, probably because I fitted the correct demographic, they offered me a place. When the letter came I locked myself in the bathroom to get some privacy and just stared at the envelope, knowing that I was either going to be completely delirious with happiness or totally crushed after I looked at it. My fate was decided but I didn’t know what it was going to be, and I remember the way my heart fluttered and my sight darkened around the edges as I eased the envelope open and took out the folded sheet of paper inside. It would have been better all round if I hadn’t got a place – if I’d never gone further than the Co-op supermarket where I’d got a part-time job. But I got a place, and a generous entrance scholarship to go with it so I didn’t have to worry about fees, or paying for books, or kitting myself out with a gown and mortar board and all the other little bits of Oxford paraphernalia. I realised very quickly, though, that I did need cash – more than I had at my disposal – to buy everything else, like clothes that didn’t make me stand out. I’d seen what the undergraduates wore when I was there, and no, Oxford wasn’t the most fashionable place on earth, but they still looked different from me.

I didn’t ask Nana for much. I knew she had money – I’d seen her savings book. I told her I needed a loan, but not for what. And she didn’t even ask me why before she said no.

‘You’ll get money from me when I’m dead and not a minute sooner.’

She put the idea into my head, so it was really sort of her own fault, wouldn’t you say?

Calm down, I’m only joking. About it being her fault, that is. But I did justify it to myself on the grounds that she was in a lot of pain, all the time, as well as moon-faced from steroids, shuffling around the flat like a little grey-haired troll, snapping at the world. It didn’t take me long to make up my mind.

I had a few months in hand until I needed the money, so I devoted myself to stockpiling drugs. I stopped passing on everything to Steve – just kept him going with a bit here and there. It was useful to have a reserve, in case I needed a bit of pocket money. And besides, I’d discovered that people started to be nice when they thought I could help them out with a mood-altering substance or two. I had a feeling it might be good to have some available when I got to Oxford too. Nana never noticed a thing, even when I swapped out her Tramadol for aspirin. I’d encourage her to go back to the doctor when she complained about how she was feeling. She worked her way through two or three of them in the local practice. And the drugs kept coming.

Two months before the start of term, and just before bedtime, I made Nana a lovely cup of tea and gave her a dose of painkillers, just like she’d asked me to. Except that I told her that the dosage had changed and she needed three times what she’d had before. Oh, and these. The pharmacist said you should take these with the others to make them more effective. Down the hatch.

I wasn’t totally sure that it would be enough. I stood outside the door of our room and listened to her breathing, shallow and slow, hoping that each quavering exhalation would be the last. But the old bitch kept going. I resented it; I resented that I’d given her an overdose that should have pushed her off her branch within hours, but there she was, wheezing away. In the end, I went in and took a pillow off my bed, putting it over her face and holding it there while I tried to remember all of Madonna’s UK number ones in order. It’s weird, the things that go through your head at a time like that. I don’t even like Madonna.

When the GP came to do the death certificate, he was a bit dubious about Nana. He thought she might need an autopsy. Very suspicious man, Dr Considine. I told him that I was worried she might have got confused about what medicine to take. I showed him a load of empty bottles. Maybe she’d been prescribed too much over the years. What did he think?

He thought he’d sign the certificate, funnily enough.

Mum got the money, in the will Nana left. I got a cameo brooch that I’d never liked. It didn’t matter to me; I’d already lifted Nana’s bank card before she tragically passed, and I’d helped myself to a nice chunk of her savings over the previous couple of weeks. Poor Nana, she’d been a bit out of it on the extra tranquillisers I was giving her – too confused to notice that I’d nicked her stuff. As soon as I left, she’d have come out of the fog and worked out what I’d done, so I had no choice but to get rid of her. I sort of missed her, in a strange way – like I would wake up and listen for her snoring before I remembered. Mum was in pieces. They took her into the local loony bin for a non-optional ‘rest’ and I took the opportunity to pack up and go. I didn’t tell her where, or why, but I did leave a note saying I was all right. She could have found me through the school, if she’d thought of asking, but I suppose she didn’t think of it. Anyway, I haven’t seen her since. I don’t even know if she’s still alive. I’m not going to try to find out, not at this stage. It’s strange. I was always ashamed of her. Now I’m afraid she’d be ashamed of me.

The start of term was beautiful, warm and sunny during the days, cool in the evenings. Thinking about it, it would have been the end of September when I went up, but it had been one of those Septembers that give you a last taste of summer. Every patch of green space was occupied by students lazing on the grass, calling hellos to one another and comparing stories about their travels in the long vac. I wandered through it in a daze, still unable to believe that I was really there, that I was allowed to sit by the river myself, that I had a timetable of tutorials and my first essay to write. I had a day or two before the reading list appeared in my pigeon hole and spent it working out where things were in the college and the city, putting things to rights in my room and not really talking much to anyone else. It wasn’t my way to go up to people and introduce myself. Everyone else seemed to be making friends as if that was their first and only priority. I avoided most of the college events – the drinks parties, the pub crawl organised by the JCR, the meeting and greeting. I liked being on my own. I liked the silence. I liked not speaking, letting time trail through my fingers as the river flowed.

And that was the one thing that worried me. I wasn’t in Garden Building in a neat little self-contained cell as I’d hoped I would be. I was in third quad, one of the older parts of the college, in a set – two bedrooms, a large sitting room and, wonder of wonders, a bathroom all of our own. They were sought-after rooms; anyone who managed to find out where I was living told me how envious they were. But I was furious. The other person hadn’t arrived yet, but what if I didn’t get on with her? What if she was loud? Or liked loud music? Or loud sex, even? What if we had nothing in common? What if she didn’t like me?

As the days slipped past and the other room remained unoccupied, I started to dare to hope that she wouldn’t come. Something must have been wrong, I thought. Maybe she was ill. Maybe she had decided Oxford wasn’t for her. By Friday, I was almost certain that she would never come, that I would spend the year in blissful solitude. I moved one or two things out of my bedroom – a pink cushion with a gingham border that I’d bought after seeing other people’s rooms made different with their own possessions, a poster of Klimt’s
The Kiss
(I was nothing if not predictable in my tastes), trying to add some colour to the institutionally beige furnishings in the sitting room. I sat down in one of the armchairs, trying it out. I didn’t have a television or a stereo, but I didn’t miss them. I could hear conversation floating up from the quad below, and the ticking of my watch, and my breath, and for a moment, I felt total peace.

And then, footsteps on the stairs. Several people, coming quickly and firmly, carrying heavy things that scuffed against the walls. A man’s voice rumbling, answered by a quicksilver exclamation.

‘This one!’

I stood up, not knowing where to go (run? Hide in my room? The bathroom? Too late …) and so it was that the first time I met Rebecca was when she stumbled in through the door, laughing at having tripped, her skin tanned gold and her hair a mass of shining curls. She stopped laughing when she saw me standing with my hands folded in front of me, as if I had been waiting for her.

‘Sorry. Typical me. I’m Rebecca.’

‘Louise.’ I freed one hand for an awkward wave, which I regretted as I did it – nothing could have looked more gauche. But before I could recover, Rebecca’s father came through the door with a large box, followed by her mother who was carrying garment bags over her arm.

‘Isn’t this lovely? Rebecca, you’ve got such a nice room. And who’s this?’ When I knew her better, I understood that Avril was always ready to be sociable; I’d never met anyone like her before and was frankly terrified of Rebecca’s glamorous mother, slender in white jeans and a striped Breton top. She looked as if she’d just stepped off a yacht, which was accurate as it turned out, because they had been sailing in the Greek Islands and that was why Rebecca came up late.

‘This is Louise,’ Rebecca said after the tiniest pause to allow me to answer. I was too tongue-tied to try.

‘Louise. How are you going to put up with Rebecca? You poor darling. Have you just arrived too?’

I looked around the room and could see why she was asking. I had not made it my own. Rebecca was already moving the furniture, unrolling a rug, dumping a plant on one of the two desks in the room, making it alive as I had not. ‘I’ve been here for a little while,’ I said in the end, not wanting to admit that I’d had almost a week of solitude. My voice was rusty and sounded flat to my own ears.

‘God, don’t you just hate college furnishings?’ Rebecca held the pink cushion up at arm’s length. ‘Look at this. Shall we dump it?’

The appeal was to me, the first joint act of living together, and I made the decision on the spot not to react, not to admit by so much as the flicker of an eyelid that I had picked the cushion myself and thought it pretty.

‘Definitely dump it.’

‘Brilliant.’ It sailed through the air and landed beside the bin in the corner. I didn’t look at it again. It had nothing to do with me any more.

‘I do pity you.’ Avril threw an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. ‘She’s tough to live with. She likes everything to be just so.’

‘I bet Louise does too,’ Rebecca said, flashing a smile at me and I managed to smile back, feeling panic flutter beneath my ribcage. There was no way she would like me. No way I wouldn’t be forgotten once she got to know everyone else in college – and she would know everyone; she would sweep them up and carry them along and charm them as she was charming me.

The Haworths got on with unpacking Rebecca’s belongings, pounding up and down the stairs with unfailing energy and good humour. I joined in, carrying a few bags and boxes at Avril’s direction.

‘Did your parents help you to unpack?’ Gerald was having a breather on the landing, sitting in the window seat after delivering another load of Rebecca’s belongings.

‘No. But I didn’t have much stuff.’

‘Did they drive you?’ I could tell he was curious about me, my background. That didn’t mean I had to tell him anything. Let alone the truth.

‘I came by coach.’ I slipped through the door and looked around the frankly unrecognisable room. ‘Wow.’

‘More like it, isn’t it?’ Rebecca stood with her hands on her hips and surveyed the room. She had tied back her hair and in her pale-blue fitted polo shirt and denim mini she looked utterly, unselfconsciously gorgeous, all long limbs and tanned skin. ‘I’ve taken this desk because it’s nearest my room – is that OK?’

‘Fine by me.’

She had already put up a series of black-and-white photographs – details of architecture mainly – and shelved books in the little bookcase beside her desk. A sleek steel-cased laptop and a stack of multicoloured notebooks sat on the desk beside the plant, a miniature rose. It was well organised, almost intimidatingly so, and also somehow pleasing. I wanted it for myself. And I wanted parents who were devoted to me, beautiful wealthy parents who supported everything I did and were proud of me.

Gerald pulled Rebecca into a bear hug and I turned away from them, afraid that they would see how I felt.

Gerald checked his watch. ‘We’ll take you out to dinner before we go. Make sure you eat something decent before you get started on fast food and too much booze.’