“April Clarke-Cliveden,” the girl added helpfully when Hannah did not immediately reply, as if that name should mean something.
“But I thought—” Hannah said, and then broke off, turning uncertainly back to the door to check the name tag. Sure enough, there it was: 5—H. JONES. And then, below that, A. CLARKE-CLIVEDEN.
Hannah frowned.
“Are we… roommates?”
It seemed unlikely. One of the points stressed in the Pelham College brochure had been the fact that there was virtually no shared accommodation. No double rooms. Not even any flats until the second year. A lot of shared bathrooms, sure, unless you were in the modern wing, but as far as sleeping went, the prospectus had made it sound like everyone had their own space.
“Kinda,” April said. She gave a yawn like a cat and stretched luxuriantly. “I mean, not a bedroom—there’s no way I’d have accepted that. Just a sitting room.” She waved her hand around the modest space, making Hannah feel like she, April, was the gracious hostess, and Hannah the interloper. The thought gave Hannah a prickle of annoyance, but she pushed it down and looked around the room. Aside from April’s stack of luggage, the furnishings were sparse and institutional—a rather worn sofa, a coffee table, and a sideboard—but it was clean and bright, with a beautiful stone fireplace. “Nice to have somewhere to hang out, right? Your room’s through there.” She nodded at a door to the right of the window. “Mine’s the door opposite. I’m afraid I picked the bigger one. First come, first served, and all that.”
She gave a wink that showed a deep, soft dimple in one cheek.
“Fair enough,” Hannah said. There was no point in arguing the fact. By the looks of it, the girl had already unpacked. Instead she lugged her suitcase across the rug, the wheels rucking it into ridges, towards the door April had indicated.
After April’s remarks, she was expecting something small, poky even, but it was larger than her room at home, with another carved stone fireplace and a mullioned window with leaded glass, casting diamond-patterned light onto the polished oak boards.
“Wow, this is pretty cool,” she said, and then wanted to kick herself for sounding so transparently impressed in the face of April’s sophistication.
Still, she could admit it privately to herself: it was pretty cool. How many students had this room seen over the four hundred years since it was built? Had they gone on to be peers and politicians, Nobel Prize winners and authors? It was dizzying, like looking down the wrong end of a telescope, only instead of looking outward, at the end of the line she could see herself, infinitely small.
“Yeah, it’s okay, isn’t it?” April said. She came and stood in the doorway, one hand against the doorjamb, the other resting on her jutting hip. With the low evening light streaming through the thin material of her white dress, silhouetting her shape and turning her pixie hair into a white halo, she looked like an image off a film poster.
“What’s yours like?” Hannah asked, and April shrugged.
“Pretty similar. Want to come and have a look?”
“Sure.”
Hannah set down her case and followed April across the living room to the opposite door.
Inside, her first impression was that it was not pretty similar at all. Aside from the fact that it was slightly larger, the only things that were the same were the metal bedstead and the fireplace. Every other stick of furniture was different—from the kilim rugs, to the fancy ergonomic desk chair, to the richly upholstered loveseat in the corner.
A tall, burly man in a suit was unpacking clothes into a tall wardrobe. He didn’t look up as they entered.
“Hi,” Hannah said politely. She put on her best meet-the-parents voice. “You must be April’s dad. I’m Hannah.”
April gave a shout of laughter at that.
“Ha! You must be kidding. This is Harry. He works for my parents.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the man said over his shoulder. Then he slid the last drawer shut and turned around. “I think that’s it, April. Anything else I can help with?”
“No, that’s fine. Thank you, Harry.”
“I’ll take the boxes, want me to leave the trunk?”
“No, don’t worry. I won’t have anywhere to store it.”
“Sure,” Harry said. “Have fun. There’s a little goodbye present from your dad on the windowsill. Nice to meet you, Hannah,” he said, then turned, picked up a pile of empty bags and boxes by the door, and left. The door swung shut, and April kicked off her shoes and threw herself onto the newly made bed, sinking deep into the soft feathered duvet.