Maggie selected an Everything but the Girl album from her collection of records, slid it out from its sleeve and put it on the turntable. Then she sat back on her bed with de Smith’s Constitutional and Administrative Law. So far, she had got to chapter 7, ‘The Privy Council’， and she’d admit to finding it a bit of a struggle if pressed, but she imagined that the course wouldn’t all be as dry as this. Once she got started, she was sure that there would be more interesting things to get her teeth into.
Outside her window she could hear people, other freshers she imagined, laughing and calling to one another in the warm September afternoon. She allowed herself a small smile. This was who she was now: a law student at the University of York. She was on her way to achieving her life’s ambition – everything was going according to plan.
By half past five she was beginning to feel hungry. Dinner was to be served in the refectory from five until seven thirty, so she would wander down around six so as not to look too keen. She wasn’t completely sure of the way, but she had the map that they had given her at registration and it couldn’t be that far. Maybe she would go for a little pre-dinner stroll, just to get her bearings. She decided that this was a good idea and, slipping her room key and her purse into her shoulder bag, was about to step out into the corridor when, without warning, her door burst open.
There stood a girl, she assumed a fresher like herself. She was dressed in a pair of cheesecloth trousers and a tie-dyed T-shirt and had battered espadrilles on her feet. Her hair, the colour of a fox’s brush, was held away from her face by a scarf and was all matted together in knotted rats’ tails. She was tanned to a deep golden brown that looked like it had taken more than two weeks in the sun to achieve.
‘There’s no bog roll,’ she said without introduction. ‘In the loo. Have you got some?’
Maggie was completely thrown, partly by the appearance of the girl, which was like nothing she had ever seen before, but also by the abrupt conversation opener. Then, before she’d had chance to gather her thoughts, the girl pushed her gently to one side. She let out a low whistle as she took in Maggie’s room.
‘Who has a room as tidy as this?’ she asked. ‘Seriously, did you smuggle a slave in here with you?’ Her eyes settled on the new sound system. ‘That’s a nice piece of kit,’ she said appreciatively. ‘Are these your records? What have you got? Can I have a look? Police, Squeeze, Kate Bush . . .’ The stranger flicked her way through the records one by one. ‘All a bit mainstream for me,’ she concluded. ‘But I’ve been travelling for a year. My tastes are more global, you know.’
Finally, Maggie found her tongue. ‘Excuse me,’ she said shirtily. ‘But you can’t just barge in here and start going through my things.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ said the girl, although she sounded anything but. ‘No offence intended. I’m Angie.’
She waited for Maggie to reciprocate but Maggie was damned if she was going to share anything with this impertinent intruder, from her name to her loo roll.
‘Well, I’ve got no toilet paper, so I’d like it if you left now, please?’
Maggie thought about the pack of sixteen rolls that she had neatly stacked in her wardrobe and hoped that a blush didn’t give her away.
‘No worries,’ said Angie. ‘I’ll try next door.’
She breezed out with as little concern as she had breezed in, but as she turned to knock on the next door she looked back at Maggie.
‘I really like the Cocteau Twins, though. Treasure’s a fantastic album.’
And then she was gone.
Maggie closed the door and sat down on her perfectly smoothed bed as she fought against the warm spread of pride that was rippling through her. She really didn’t care that the weird-looking but quite cool girl had praised her musical taste. It couldn’t be of less interest to her.
4
Five minutes later Maggie decided she could wait for food no longer, but she opened her door at exactly the same moment as the geeky-looking boy opposite opened his. She saw him flinch, his first reaction to close his door again and re-emerge when the coast was clearer, but then he seemed to reconsider, and smiled at her as he had done earlier. His smile was less tentative this time, and it transformed her opinion of him from the class stiff to someone who she might like to spend time with.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Again. I’m Leon.’
‘Maggie,’ said Maggie. ‘I was just going to see if I could find something to eat.’