The Things We Do to Our Friends(15)

I didn’t mind it, but I also liked it even later when it was quieter, in the few hours when the nightlife died away and before the commuters rattled around outside their office buildings, when it was almost impossible to imagine people in the city, and the buildings and hills took center stage. You could look toward the shadow of Arthur’s Seat. You could think of hot lava spilling like it would have done millions of years ago.

“This is when I drive around, think about things, you know. Unravel the day,” he said.

He had a point. In the car, at that moment, it was peaceful.

“I was going to take you straight home, but it’s not that late. I can drive us around a bit if you like?”

I shrugged. I didn’t feel particularly comfortable in the car, but I wasn’t tired.

Samuel was quiet; the indicator clicked; the gears changed. He spoke, and when he did, I could tell that he’d been mulling it over.

“You’re not like Tabitha, you know,” he remarked.

“What do you mean?”

“She could never lie there, just enjoying the company. With Tabitha, she’d be sitting there prattling away or trying to entertain me or shock me or something. She can never just…be.”

I nodded.

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing!” His voice rose slightly. “Don’t say anything to her.” He sounded nervous.

“I won’t say anything,” I reassured him. I enjoyed being a confidante. “I know what you mean. It’s a show, isn’t it?”

He laughed, a deep belly laugh that petered into a chuckle. He was delighted. “A show! Yes, I’ve never quite thought of it like that, but that’s a good way of putting it, Clare. It’s always a show. Although that makes it sound like it’s all fun and games.”

“Isn’t it?” The mood seemed to have changed. My lower back felt tight, and I was aware of the sweat stains under my armpits. I was sick of this cryptic conversation. I didn’t quite trust him.

“Oh yes, of course it is. The most fun you’ve had in your life,” he said.

And then—a flick of the steering wheel.

Sudden and so jarring. I screamed, certain that we were going to swerve into oncoming traffic, because we went so far over on the wrong side. My neck jerked back painfully, and I pulled my hands up to my face.

“What was that?” I asked as we moved back into our lane as quickly as we’d left.

“What?” he said, driving on like nothing had happened.

“You could have killed us!”

He’d done it to shock me. For attention. I was familiar with the urge to shock but I hadn’t expected something like that from Samuel.

It was a strange thing, but even as I shouted at him, I experienced an enjoyable rush of adrenaline. I was sure that he saw it in that moment, and I didn’t want him to, didn’t want him to have any kind of power over me. I just wanted to get back.

“I told you.” He grinned, but there was something sharklike about it, all teeth and no joy. “All the fun. You’re fine.”

And with that he looped back on himself to take me to my flat. I thanked him for the ride, and he drove off into the night, circling the city, looking for things or people to observe.





12


I felt we were better than the other students from the start, even before I knew how much Tabitha had planned for us.

To be clear, the other people studying our course weren’t uninteresting by general standards. In fact, many people would have probably considered them to be quirky, but I’ve always been picky about my friends. Several years before we started, a certain prince you’ll have heard of had gone to St. Andrews to study History of Art, and the course had soared in popularity everywhere. The result was a steady influx of attractive, rich students. A cohort full of them, with braying laughs and expensive handbags in stiff leather. One Tuesday, everyone wore a beret for some reason (even Tabitha and Imogen). I never found out how they all decided on this, and I sat, beretless, and pretended I didn’t mind.

The other first years tried to be unique, but they weren’t, or at least to me they weren’t. Once you saw past the expensive clothes, they were quite dull, huddled together talking about printer cartridges or essay word counts, regurgitating their parents’ political opinions in neat soundbites to try and pass them off as their own. Worst of all, they were interested in things like student elections. Tabitha compared the bunch of them to the fatty section around a pork chop (a light dig at Imogen’s cooking, I think). You have to cut away with a knife to get to the meat, and there’s always more of it than you expect. I wasn’t quite sure if we were the meat, but we were better than them.

It was exciting, to be on the right side, but at the beginning I was always on edge, never knowing quite what to say, so invariably I was quiet in the corner. Meek Clare. I just didn’t want to mess it all up, for them to see parts of me I hid away. For them to reject me.

The conversation was invariably focused on money if Tabitha was around—how much things cost, how much people made—and then if things slowed down or became unbearably mundane, she would do something out of the blue, like a child playing up for attention. We were in a lecture once, and I was wearing a completely forgettable top, and she looked at me for a moment, pointed at my top and hers, then said, “Swap?”