The It Girl(35)

BEFORE


When Hannah returned to Oxford after the Christmas break, it was with a sense of coming home.

“Why is it called Hilary term?” her mother asked in the car on the way to the station, and Hannah answered, without even thinking, “Because the feast of Saint Hilary of Poitiers falls in the middle,” and then wanted to laugh at herself, at who she had become. How did she know this stuff after just one term? It didn’t matter. She knew it, just like she knew how one acquired a blue, and what you wore for your collections.

Collections. Even the word gave her a squirmy feeling in her stomach. Three little syllables, not much to feel nervous about, but she did.

“They’re not prelims,” she had told her puzzled mother. “You take those at the end of the first year. Collections are done at the start of every term, and cover what you learned the term before.”

“So they’re just tests? They don’t mean anything?”

The thing is, her mother was right—but also so, so wrong. Collections didn’t count towards your degree class, or really anything as far as Hannah could make out—and yet everyone was in a flat spin about them, even the second-years, who had sat through the ordeal several times already.

What’s the point of an 8 week term, Will had texted her on Boxing Day, when they just make us do the rest of the work in the holidays? Is it just so the tutors get time to write their books? I can’t believe all my mates are out getting pissed and I’m stuck here revising.

Hannah had to admit he had a point.

It wasn’t just the collections giving her an uneasy feeling, though. Seeing the text from Will had triggered a sharp rush of pleasure, followed by an equally sharp stab of guilt. It was ridiculous—that just his name coming up on her phone should make her grin like an idiot. He was April’s boyfriend. Completely off-limits. But the problem was that while her head knew that, her heart didn’t seem to be able to remember it.

Before the holidays she had half hoped that her crush on Will was wearing off—and surely six weeks’ absence would give her plenty of time to forget his wry grin, the shape of his long, slim hands, and the way he looked at her across the crowded JCR with a smile that made her heart light up. But that one single text had shown that was not true. She still liked him. A lot. Which made her officially the worst best friend in the world.

Instead of replying to Will, she’d typed out a text to April, trying to assuage her guilt.

How are you? Merry Christmas! Hope you had a lovely day.

thanks, April texted back. it was fucking awful tho i did get a balenciaga tote so every cloud

Pause.

how was urs?

Pretty okay, Hannah typed back, though no balenciaga tote so every silver lining.

ha ha! April texted, with a picture of a laughing frog.

Now, as the train drew into Oxford station, Hannah had a rush not of homesickness, but of whatever the opposite was. Homecoming, maybe. The thought of Pelham, and April, and their little room high in the rafters made her smile with a happiness that even the prospect of collections couldn’t dim.

She was getting off the train when she saw Ryan up ahead of her on the platform and half ran, shoving her way ruthlessly through the crowd of students, to try to catch up with him. It wasn’t easy—she was wearing a rucksack and dragging a suitcase, but she caught him at the ticket barrier, where he was rummaging in his wallet.

“Ryan! How was your holiday?”

“Ey up, Hannah Jones!” Ryan said with a broad grin, and he turned and gave her a bear hug. “How’re you, pet?”

“I’m good. How are you?”

“Pretty sweet, yeah. Had a good holiday, but I’m chuffed to be back.”

“I bet you missed Emily?”

“Missed the sex anyway,” Ryan said, with a grin that dared her to react. Hannah rolled her eyes.

“You know full well if you actually were the sexist pig you pretend to be, Emily wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole.”

“She’s like all clever women,” Ryan said, yanking his bag through the turnstile. “Secretly wants a caveman to throw her over his shoulder.”

Hannah shook her head, refusing to rise to the bait.

They shared a taxi back to Pelham, swapping gossip and catching up as it wound its way slowly through the crowded streets.

“Fucking collections,” Ryan groaned when she asked him about his revision. “Yeah, I’ve revised. I’d like to pretend I didn’t, but we can’t all have a rich daddy to donate a library wing if we flunk out.”

“It’s all an act,” Hannah said, a little nettled on April’s behalf. “You know that, right? All that party girl, I don’t care schtick. She actually works pretty hard, and she’s bloody clever.”

“It in’t just her, though, is it? It’s all of them. All them private-school types getting the shock of their lives as they realize we can’t all be top of the class. I mean, look at me and Will, we’re mates, sure. But only one of us is going to come out at the head of the list. And we both want it to be us. Everyone at Pelham does. And for some of them it’ll be the first time they don’t.”

Hannah nodded soberly. It was true—Pelham wasn’t the most rabidly academic of the Oxford colleges, but it certainly leaned that way, rather than towards the sporting, drinking culture of some of the others. On a scale from work hard to play hard, Pelham definitely prized the first more. But nor was it the most meritocratic of the colleges. As Ryan had pointed out, it had a high intake of private-school students, higher than the already high Oxford average. Taken together, the two made for a weirdly febrile atmosphere that combined academic privilege with a panicked realization that no one here was getting a leg up—there were no kindly teachers to help with cramming or hint at which papers to revise. Here there were no extra classes, no mummy or daddy to organize after-school tutors and emergency summer school. You were on your own—sink or swim. And Hannah had no idea which camp she would be in.