“Don’t eat that, you idiot,” April said a little scornfully. She stood, waving her arm at the counter. “Hey, could we get some help over here? And another plate of the tortellini?”
They all watched in silence as a member of the catering staff came across with a spare plate and a cloth to wipe up the spilled sauce.
“I’m so sorry,” Hugh said again, this time to the caterer, who just nodded and walked off. Hugh looked miserable, and Hannah suddenly felt unbearably sorry for him.
“Do you all know each other?” she said to April and Will, more in an attempt to change the subject than because she was in doubt. April nodded, smiling, but it was Will who answered.
“Hugh and I go way back—we were at prep school together, and there’s nothing that binds friends like a shit prep school, right, Hugh?”
“Right,” Hugh said. The flush was fading from his cheeks, and he had his head down, bent over his food as if he was trying to avoid everyone’s gaze. “Hugh Bland,” he said to Hannah. “Medicine.”
“Hugh and I are very good friends,” April said with a kind of purr. She reached across and pinched Hugh’s cheek, and the scarlet tide rose in his face again, this time reaching to his ears. There was a brittle silence.
“And what about you?” April said, with the air of breaking an awkward moment. She was speaking to the boy sitting next to Hannah, the one who had told everyone the show was over. He was a broad, stocky kid with Mediterranean coloring, wearing a Sheffield Wednesday football shirt.
“This is Ryan Coates,” Will said. “He’s doing Economics, same as me.”
“A’right,” Ryan said, grinning. His accent was straight-up Sheffield, and after so many posh southern voices, it sounded almost aggressively northern. Hannah felt a sudden shock of kinship—even though Dodsworth was about as far south as it was possible to get. But here was someone normal like her—someone not from the monied, private-school background that Will and April seemed to take for granted.
“We’re all on the same floor in Cloade’s,” Will said.
Cloade’s, Hannah knew from the prospectus, was the big modern wing at the back of the New Quad where most of the first-years had ended up. It was square and made of brutalist concrete, but the rooms were en suite and the heating actually worked. Still, Hannah couldn’t help feeling secretly grateful that she and April had been allocated a picturesque old-style room. After all, wasn’t this what she had come to Oxford for? She had wanted to walk in the footsteps of four hundred years of scholars—not on the carpet squares of the last few decades.
“Heard him playing the Stone Roses through the wall.” Ryan pointed his fork at Will. “Went over to introduce meself and it turned out we’re ont same course. And he introduced me to this bloke.” He nodded at Hugh.
“Will and I were at school together,” Hugh said, and then flushed again. “Oh wait, duh, Will already told you that. Sorry. Such a thicko.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Will said with an affectionate dig in his friend’s ribs. “Hugh was the brainiest chap in our year.”
Ryan spoke around a tortellini, his expression rather droll.
“Well, in’t that the coincidence. I was the brainiest chap in my year. Looks like you and me have summat in common.”
“We were all the brainiest in our year,” said the girl next to Ryan, speaking for the first time. Her voice was deep, and rather brusque and impatient. “Isn’t that the point? Isn’t that why we’re here?”
“And who’re you?” Ryan said, looking her up and down. She had long dark hair, a serious, slightly equine face, black rectangular glasses, and she looked Ryan straight back in the eye with none of the diffidence Hannah would have felt at being appraised so baldly.
“Emily Lippman.” The girl put a forkful of pasta in her mouth, chewed deliberately, and then swallowed. “Mathematics. You can call me Emily Lippman.”
“I like you, Emily Lippman,” Ryan said with a broad grin, and Emily raised a single eyebrow.
“To which I’m supposed to say?”
“Whatever you like,” Ryan said. “Nothing if you want.” He was still grinning. Emily rolled her eyes.
“Anyway,” April said lazily, “it’s not true.”
“What’s not true?” Hugh asked.
“About being the cleverest in our year. I wasn’t.”
“How did you get in here, then?” Emily said. The remark should have sounded rude, but somehow, coming from her, it didn’t. Just preternaturally direct.