Page 8 of The Lucky Escape

5

I’d heard rumours about Alexander before I’d ever laid eyes on him. By second year he was known for being a bit of a charmer. Not the type who slept around and got notches on his bedpost, but somehow every girl on campus had a story about him. He’d had a high school girlfriend who’d gone to another uni, and they’d kept it going throughout first year. But when he had returned to York the next October as a single man, the news spread amongst the student union bar like wildfire.

Learning who he was from titbits of gossip and second-hand information was like tuning an old FM radio, the hum of white noise getting sharper and sharper until we were queuing one Tuesday night for prawn crackers and old-skool R’n’B at The Willow, and there he was. He stopped to talk to the people in front of us – I was there with the Core Four, who’d been my immediate pals since Freshers’ Week – and we caught one another’s eye. Alexander spent the next five minutes looking over the shoulder of who he was chatting with to do it again, and again. Staring. I remember the girls nudging me, getting silly on my behalf.

It took a year for anything to happen. I’d been half-heartedly seeing a guy I’d met on holiday, and although it was hardly fireworks with him once we got home – holiday romance has the word ‘holiday’ in it precisely because it doesn’t work when you’re back – I would never have cheated.

I couldn’t believe Alexander was interested in me anyway. I’m pretty enough, I suppose, but I’m more of a best friend pretty than a leading lady knockout, and I’m clever, but not a genius. I’m like a good wallpaper: happily part of the background but when you notice it you might point and say, ‘Oh! That’s nice.’ It’s okay. Being exceptional would mean being visible, being seen. But if you’re seen, you’re talked about, and I’d had enough dissection of my body and personality and intellect at home, with the beady eyes and rolling commentary of Mum. I preferred flying under the radar. And, if Alexander could have his pick of anyone, why would he have wanted me? I was a seven-out-of-ten kind of a girl, and all the full scores lusted after him. He was eleven out of ten himself, with big brown eyes and a square jaw that was defined enough to make his broken, crooked nose look as though it was part of the design, not a flaw. He’d been to private school and had a confidence about him. The world had never told him no, so disappointment was a foreign theory. It was a law of attraction: he only expected the very best for himself, and so the very best is what happened.

We studied together sometimes, which was a convenient way to spend time with him up close without admitting I fancied him. It was a thrill to sit next to him in the library. He’d sometimes come from rugby practice with his hair still wet from the shower, all floppy over his forehead as he rounded over his stack of books. He’d bring me an iced bun from the cafeteria or steal two plastic cups from the waterfountain and split his Red Bull without even asking. I could see other girls eyeing us suspiciously, and got a thrill from being the one in his spotlight. I liked the sense of being chosen, of being special. We both did summer internships in London that year and would meet up in Soho Square or go to the cinema at the weekend, and by final year we were a couple. We were in my room one night – he was sat on my bed watching me finish my make-up as the rest of the Core Four started a drinking game in the kitchen.

‘You don’t have to wait with me,’ I’d said. ‘I’ll be done in a minute.’

‘The party doesn’t start until you get there anyway,’ he’d replied, and my stomach had done a loop-the-loop over the fact that he wanted to be with me, that I was the prize to him. I’d turned around from where I stood at the sink unit in the corner of my room, and he didn’t get up as he said, ‘So is this a thing now or what?’

That’s how he’d said it: ‘Is this a thing now or what?’

We’d been together ever since.

Well – until we weren’t.

‘Annie?’

There was a light tap at the door. Adzo. I was lying in bed, turned away from the door on my side to face the wall. I’d closed the curtains but accidentally left a gap between them, and a slither of fading light shone through just before the sun disappeared from the sky. It’s where I focused my gaze, a meditation point between half-closed eyes, neither fully sleeping nor fully awake. I rolled over, feebly smiling.

‘This is a shitshow, isn’t it,’ I simpered, and she smirked, cautious of encouraging me to make jokes about my pain but obviously pleased I was still willing to. Everything wasridiculous. Who gets jilted? It was absurd, really – and devastating. Mostly though, if it happened to somebody else, I’d barely dare believe itcouldhappen. Maybe it was all a bizarre hallucination, or a breakdown episode. Maybe I’d wake up and thinkurgh, what a horrible dream.

‘I’ll say.’

She lingered, taking in the scene, wandering over to tenderly stroke my hair. I let my eyes drift closed again. I’d been pals with Adzo since my first day working with her. The Core Four were wonderful, but they were also all very settled. Meeting Adzo had reminded me what it was like to feel motivated by the possibility in the everyday. She was good for me. Took me out of my own head.

‘Not being funny, doll,’ she said, in precisely the way somebody says ‘I’m not being funny’ when they are about to be exactly that, ‘but do you mind if we let some air in? It’s a bit ripe in here.’ She gave a little cough to illustrate her point.

I made eye contact and pursed my lips, then gave a small nod of agreement. She slipped off her shoes and navigated her way through the throw pillows strewn across the floor, picking them up and piling them beside the wardrobe. Then she flicked on the dressing table lamp and eventually reached the window, opening it and pushing back the curtains to make the gap wider.

‘I brought you a Lucozade, by the way.’ She stuck her hand into her vintage Chloé handbag and pulled out two orange bottles.

Lucozade was our private joke. At work, if I came in with a Lucozade, Adzo knew without me even needing to say it that I was hungover. It didn’t happen often, but that’s probably what made it worse. I was unpractised at having hangovers. Drinking made me lose control and rule numberone when I was growing up is that I wasneverto lose control because it was unladylike. Adzo was well-practised when it came to hangovers. She was a machine, out at a party seemingly every night, always with a tale to tell the next morning about seeing Jude Law’s son here or one of the oldX-Factorcontestants there. And yet she was better at her job than all of us, able to navigate the top boss with ease and command a team naturally and with a sense of humour.

That’s what had drawn me to her too. She was one of those people who the gods had blessed. Even the hard stuff didn’t seem like a struggle to her; she just smiled and dealt with whatever life threw up – which was, admittedly, quite a lot of hilarious dating stories and men falling at her feet, desperate to buy her things. Once she had the whole La Mer skincare line sent to her desk followed by one hundred red roses, and last Valentine’s Day two blokes had got in a fight in the downstairs lobby when they both turned up to take her out. As they were interviewed by the police for public disturbance, a third guy had pulled up on his motorbike, but Adzo had decided she’d rather go out for a drink with me, anyway. Alexander had been away on business that night and she knew I wouldn’t be rushing home. The less she cared about men, the more they chased her.

‘I thought you could do with the sugars. And I know this sounds peculiar, but,’ she added, coming to sit beside me on the bed again, ‘I just learned about this. Add this to it.’ She showed me a tiny sachet.

‘Salt?’

‘It’s what the tennis pros do when they’re dehydrated, apparently. I figured with all the crying … just trust me. It will help.’

I drank. She studied me.

‘You’re cultivating quite the look, by the way.’

‘Am I a mess?’

‘A beautiful one,’ she replied, kindly. ‘But if you go and take a shower I’ll change your sheets, okay?’

I shook my head. ‘But they smell of him,’ I protested. I knew how pathetic I sounded.

‘They smell of sweat and heartache, Annie,’ she pressed. ‘You deserve nice sheets, darling.’

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