Loveless

We had to drive into a huge field, queue up in the car, and wait to be summoned, because Durham University’s colleges are all tiny and they don’t have car parks of their own. Lots of students and their parents were getting out of their cars to talk to each other while we all waited. I knew I should get out and start socialising too.

My running theory was that my shyness and introversion were linked to my whole ‘never fancying anyone’ situation – maybe I just didn’t talk to enough people, or maybe people just stressed me out in general, and that was why I’d never wanted to kiss anyone. If I just improved my confidence, tried to be a bit more open and sociable, I’d be able to do and feel those things, like most people.

Starting university was a good time to try something like that.

Felipa Quintana

Hey are you in the queue

I’ve befriended my car next door neighbour

She brought a whole-ass fern with her

It’s like five feet tall

Update: the fern’s name is Roderick

I was about to reply, or maybe even get out of the car and meet Pip’s acquaintance and Roderick, but it was then that Mum turned the engine on.

‘They’re calling us,’ she said, pointing up ahead at where someone in a high-vis vest was waving.

Dad turned round to smile at me. ‘You ready?’

It’d be hard, sure, and it’d be scary and probably embarrassing, but I would become someone who could experience the magic of romance.

I knew I had my whole life ahead of me, and it’d happen one day, but I felt like if I couldn’t change and make it happen at university, it’d never happen at all.

‘Yeah,’ I replied.

Also, I didn’t want to wait. I wanted it now.

‘Oh no,’ I said, standing outside the door of what would be my bedroom for the next nine months, and slightly dying inside.

‘What?’ asked Dad, dropping one of my bags on to the floor and pulling his glasses down from the top of his head.

‘Oh, well,’ said Mum, ‘you knew there was a chance of this happening, darling.’

On the front of my bedroom door was my photo and underneath it was written ‘Georgia Warr’ in Times New Roman. Next to that was another photo – of a girl with long brown hair, a smile that looked positively candid in its naturalness, and perfectly threaded eyebrows. Underneath that was the name ‘Rooney Bach’.

Durham was an old English university that had a ‘college system’. Instead of halls of residence, the university was made up of ‘colleges’ spread around the city. Your college was where you slept, showered and ate, but it was also a place you showed your allegiance to through college events, your college sports teams, and running for the college’s executive student roles.

St John’s College – the one that I had been accepted into – was an old building. And because of that, a few of the students living there had to share rooms.

I just hadn’t thought it would be me.

A wave of panic flooded through me. I couldn’t have a roommate – hardly anyone in the UK had roommates at uni. I needed my own space. How was I supposed to sleep or read fanfic or get dressed or do anything with someone else in the room? How was I supposed to relax when I had to socialise with another person every moment I was awake?

Mum didn’t even seem to notice I was panicking. She just said, ‘Well, let’s get cracking, then,’ and opened the door for me.

And Rooney Bach was already there, wearing leggings and a polo shirt, watering a five-foot fern.

The first thing Rooney Bach said to me was, ‘Oh my God, are you Georgia Warr?’ like I was a celebrity, but she didn’t even wait for affirmation before casting her watering can aside, grabbing a large strip of aqua-blue fabric – which I determined to be a rug – from her bed, and holding it up to me.

‘Rug,’ she said. ‘Thoughts?’

‘Um,’ I said. ‘It’s great.’

‘OK, amazing.’ She whooshed the rug into the air and then laid it down in the centre of our room. ‘There. It just needed that splash of colour.’

I think I was in shock a little bit, because only then did I take a proper look around our room. It was large, but pretty gross, as I’d expected it would be – bedrooms are never nice at old English universities. The carpet was a mouldy grey-blue, the furniture was beige and plastic-looking, and our beds were singles. Rooney’s already had bright, flowery bedsheets on it. Mine looked like it belonged in a hospital.

The only nice part of the room was a large sash window. The paint on the wooden frame was peeling and I knew it’d be draughty, but it was sort of lovely, and you could see all the way down to the river.

‘You’ve done up the place nicely already!’ Dad was saying to Rooney.

‘Oh, d’you think so?’ said Rooney. She immediately started narrating a tour of her side of the room to Mum and Dad, showing off all the key features – her illustrated print of some meadows (she liked going on country walks) and one of Much Ado About Nothing (her favourite Shakespeare play), her fleece duvet topper (also aqua, to match the rug), her house plant (whose name was – I hadn’t misheard – Roderick), an aqua desk lamp (from John Lewis) and, most importantly, a giant poster that simply read ‘Don’t Quit Your Daydream’ in a swirly font.

The whole time, she was smiling. Her hair, up in a ponytail, swished around, as my parents tried to keep up with how fast she was talking.

I sat down on my bed in the grey half of the room. I hadn’t brought any posters with me. All I’d brought were a few printed-out photos of me, Pip and Jason.

Mum looked at me from the other side of the room and gave me a sad smile, like she knew that I wanted to go home.

‘You can message us any time, darling,’ said Mum, as we were saying goodbye outside the college. I felt empty and lost, standing there in the cobbled street in the October cold, my parents about to leave me.

I don’t want you to go, was what I wanted to say to them.

‘And Pip and Jason are just down the road, aren’t they?’ continued Dad. ‘You can go and hang out with them any time.’ Pip and Jason had been placed in a different college – University College, or ‘Castle’ as it was commonly referred to by the students here, since it literally was part of Durham Castle. They’d stopped replying to my messages a couple of hours ago. Probably busy unpacking.

Please don’t leave me here alone, I wanted to say.

‘Yeah,’ is what I said.

I glanced around. This was my home, now. Durham. It was like a town out of a Dickens adaptation. All of the buildings were tall and old. Everything seemed to be made of lumps of stone. I could see myself walking down the cobbles and into the cathedral in my graduation gown already. This was where I was supposed to be.

They both hugged me. I didn’t cry, even though I really, really wanted to.

‘This is the start of a big adventure,’ said Dad.

‘Maybe,’ I mumbled into his jacket.

I couldn’t bear to stay and watch them walk away down the road towards the car – when they turned to go, so did I.

Back in my room, Rooney was Blu Tack-ing a photo to the wall, right in the centre of her posters. In the photo was Rooney, maybe aged thirteen or fourteen, with a girl who had dyed red hair. Like, Ariel from The Little Mermaid hair.

‘Is that your friend from home?’ I asked. This was a good conversation starter, at least.

Rooney whipped her head round to look at me, and for a moment I thought I saw an odd expression cross her face. But then it was gone, replaced by her wide smile.

‘Yeah!’ she said. ‘Beth. She’s – she’s not here, obviously, but … yeah. She’s my friend. Do you know anyone else in Durham? Or are you here all alone?’

‘Oh, erm, well, my two best friends are here, but they’re in Castle.’

‘Oh, that’s so nice! Sad you didn’t get into the same college, though.’

I shrugged. Durham took your choice of college into consideration, but not everyone could get their first choice. I’d tried to get into Castle too, but I’d ended up here. ‘We tried, but, yeah.’

‘You’ll be OK.’ Rooney beamed. ‘We’ll be friends.’

Rooney offered to help me unpack, but I declined, determined to at least do this one thing by myself. While I was unpacking, she sat on her bed and chatted to me, and we learnt that we were both studying English. She then declared that she’d done none of the summer reading. I’d done all of it but didn’t mention that.

Rooney, I was quickly learning, was extremely chatty, but I could tell that she was putting on some sort of happy, bubbly persona. Which was fair enough – I mean, it was our first day of university. Everyone was going to be trying really hard to make friends. But I couldn’t get a sense of what sort of person she really was, which was mildly concerning because we were going to be living with each other for almost a full year.

Were we going to be best friends? Or were we going to awkwardly put up with each other before leaving for the summer and never speaking again?

‘So …’ I scanned the room in search of something to talk about, before landing on her Much Ado poster. ‘You like Shakespeare?’

Rooney’s head snapped up from her phone. ‘Yeah! Do you?’

I nodded. ‘Um, yeah, well, I was in a youth theatre group back home. And I did a lot of the school plays. Shakespeare was always my favourite.’

This actually caused Rooney to sit up, eyes wide and sparkling. ‘Wait. You act?’

‘Um …’

I did act, but, well, it was a bit more complicated than that now.

When I was in my early teens, I’d wanted to be an actor – which was why I’d joined the youth theatre group that Pip already went to and started auditioning for the school plays with her. And I was good at it. I got top marks in drama class at school. I usually got a pretty solid speaking part in the plays and musicals that I did.

But as I got older, acting just started to make me nervous. I got more stage fright the more plays I did, and eventually, when I auditioned for Les Misérables in Year 13, I was shaking so much that I got relegated to a role with only one line, and even then, come showtime, I threw up before every single performance.

So maybe a career in acting wasn’t for me.

Despite this, I was planning to continue with acting at uni. I still enjoyed figuring out roles and interpreting scripts – it was the audiences I had problems with. I just needed to work on my confidence. I’d join the student theatre society and maybe audition for a play. I needed to join one society, at least, if I was going to branch out and open up and meet new people.

And find someone to fall in love with.

‘Yeah, a bit,’ I said.

‘Oh. My. God.’ Rooney clapped one hand to her heart. ‘This is amazing. We can go join the DST together.’

‘The DST …?’

‘Durham Student Theatre. They basically run all of the drama societies in Durham.’ Rooney flipped her ponytail back. ‘The Shakespeare Soc is literally the main society I wanna join. I know most freshers do the Freshers Play but I had a look at what plays they’ve done the past few years and they’re all kind of boring? So I’m at least gonna try and join Shakespeare. God I’m praying they’ll do a tragedy. Macbeth is literally my dream …’

Rooney rambled on without seeming to care whether I was actually listening or not.

We had something in common. Acting. This was good.

Maybe Rooney would be my first new friend.

‘Oh, wow!’ said Jason later that day as he and Pip stepped into my – well, my and Rooney’s room. ‘It’s the size of my garden.’

Pip stretched out her arms and did a twirl on the spot, emphasising the unnecessary amount of empty space in the room. ‘I didn’t realise you’d joined the college of the bourgeoisie.’

‘I don’t understand why they couldn’t just … build a wall in the middle,’ I said, pointing at the gap between mine and Rooney’s sides of the room, which was currently only occupied by Rooney’s aqua rug.

‘How very Trump of you,’ said Jason.

‘Oh my God, shut up.’

Rooney had left a while ago with a group of people she’d befriended on our corridor. They’d invited me, but honestly, I needed some down time – I’d been trying my best to say hi to new people for most of the day, and I really, really wanted to see some familiar faces. So I’d invited Jason and Pip to come hang in my room for a bit before this evening’s freshers’ events at our separate colleges, and thankfully, they’d both finished unpacking and didn’t have anything else to do.

I’d already told them a little bit about Rooney – that she liked theatre and was generally quite nice – but her side of the room was a much better summary of her personality.

Jason surveyed it, then looked over my side. ‘Why does her side look like an Instagram influencer’s bedroom and yours looks like a prison cell? You brought so many bags with you!’

‘It’s not that bad. And a lot of the bags had books in them.’

‘Georgia, my dude,’ said Pip, who had slumped on to my bed. ‘Her side looks like Disneyland. Yours looks like a stock photo.’

‘I didn’t bring any posters,’ I said. ‘Or fairy lights.’

‘You – Georgia, how the hell did you forget fairy lights? They’re an essential element of university room décor.’

‘I don’t know!’

‘You’ll be sad without fairy lights. Everyone’s sad without fairy lights.’

‘I think Rooney’s got more than enough for both of us. She’s already letting me share a rug.’

Pip looked down at the aqua and nodded approvingly.

‘Yes. It’s a good rug.’

‘It’s just a rug.’

‘It’s a shaggy one. That’s sexy.’

‘Pip.’

Pip suddenly leapt out of the bed, staring at Rooney’s fern in the corner of the room. ‘Hang on – wait one fucking second. That plant …’

Jason and I turned to look at Roderick.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yeah. That’s Roderick.’

And it was at that moment that Rooney Bach returned to our room.

She swung the door wide open, kicked her Norton Anthology in front of it to act as a doorstop, and turned to face us with a Starbucks in her hand.

‘Guests!’ she said, beaming at the three of us.

‘Um, yeah,’ I said. ‘These are my friends from home, Pip and Jason.’ I pointed at each of them. ‘And this is my roommate, Rooney.’ I pointed at Rooney.

Rooney’s eyes widened. ‘Oh my God. This is them.’

‘It’s us,’ said Pip, one eyebrow raised.

‘And we’ve met already!’ Rooney gave Pip a once-over, her eyes flicking briefly up and down from her tortoiseshell glasses down to the stripy socks visible beneath her rolled-up jeans, before striding towards her and holding out her hand with such force that Pip looked, for the briefest second, afraid.

She shook the hand. She gave Rooney a once-over in return – from her Adidas Originals all the way up to the hairband just visible at the top of her ponytail. ‘Yes. I see Roderick has settled in.’

Rooney’s eyebrow quivered, like she was surprised and pleased that Pip’s immediate reaction was banter. ‘He has. He’s been enjoying the northern air.’

She turned to Jason and held out her hand again, which he took. ‘We haven’t met, but I like your jacket.’

Jason glanced down at himself. He was wearing the fluffy brown teddy jacket he’d owned for years. I truly believed it was the most comfortable item of clothing to exist on this planet. ‘Oh, right. Yeah, thanks.’

Rooney smiled and clapped her hands together. ‘It’s so nice to meet you both. We’re going to have to become friends, now that me and Georgia are friends.’

Pip gave me a look as if to say, friends? Already?

‘As long as you don’t steal her away from us,’ Jason joked, though Pip whipped her head round to him, seemingly taking the statement very seriously indeed.

Rooney noticed this happen, and a small curl of a smile appeared at the side of her mouth.

‘Of course not,’ she said.

‘I’ve heard you’re interested in theatre,’ Pip said. There was a nervous tone to her voice.

‘Yes! Are you?’

‘Yeah! We all went to the same youth theatre group. And we did school plays together.’

Rooney seemed genuinely excited by this prospect. Her love for theatre was definitely not fake, even if some of her smiles were. ‘So you’ll be auditioning for a DST play?’

‘Obviously.’

‘A lead role?’

‘Obviously.’

Rooney grinned, and after taking a sip from her Starbucks cup she said, ‘Good. We’ll be competing, then.’

‘I … I guess we will,’ said Pip, flustered, surprised and confused all at the same time.

Rooney suddenly made a concerned face and checked her phone. ‘Oh, sorry, I have to head out again. Got to meet this girl I’ve been chatting to on the English Soc Facebook group down at Vennels. I’ll meet you back here at six for the Freshers’ Barbecue?’

And then she was gone, while I was wondering what Vennels was, and why I didn’t know what Vennels was, and how Rooney already knew what Vennels was when she’d only been here for less than one day, just like me.

When I turned back to my friends, Pip was standing very still with a startled expression on her face that made her look a bit like a cartoon scientist, post-explosion.

‘What?’ I asked.

Pip swallowed and shook her head a little. ‘Nothing.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. She seems nice.’

I knew that look. It was a Pip look I knew well. I’d seen it when she had to be gymnastics partners with Alicia Reece – one of her most intense crushes – in Year 11 PE. I’d seen it when we went to a Little Mix meet and greet and Pip got to hug Leigh-Anne Pinnock.

Pip didn’t fancy a lot of girls – she was quite picky, actually. But when Pip did fancy someone, it was very, very obvious. To me, anyway. I could always tell when people had crushes on each other.

Before I could make a comment, Jason interrupted. He was peering at the photo of Rooney and Mermaid-hair Beth. ‘It’s so odd that you ended up with a roommate. What did you write on your personality quiz?’

We’d had to fill in personality quizzes after we got accepted into Durham, so that if we ended up having to share rooms, they’d try to match us with someone we’d get along with.

I strained to remember what I’d written on mine – and then it clicked.

‘Shakespeare,’ I said. ‘The quiz – one of the questions was about your interests. I wrote Shakespeare.’

‘So?’ said Jason.

I pointed at Rooney’s Much Ado About Nothing poster.

‘Oh my God,’ said Pip, her eyes widening. ‘Is she also a Shakespeare stan? Like us?’

‘So she says.’

Jason nodded, seemingly pleased. ‘That’s good! You can bond over that.’

‘Yes,’ said Pip, much too quickly. ‘Befriend her.’

‘I mean, we’re roommates. So hopefully we will be friends.’

‘That’s good,’ Jason repeated. ‘Especially since we won’t get to hang out all the time any more.’

This made me pause. ‘Won’t we?’

‘Well – no? I mean, at least this week. We’re at different colleges.’

I genuinely hadn’t thought about that. I’d had this idea that we’d meet up every day, hang out, explore Durham, begin our university journeys together. But all our freshers’ events were at our own colleges. We were all on different courses – I was doing English, Jason was doing history, and Pip was studying natural sciences. So he was right. I probably wouldn’t see much of Pip and Jason at all this week.

‘I guess,’ I said.

Maybe this could be OK. Maybe this would be the kick I needed to branch out and find new people and have experiences.

Maybe this could all be part of the plan. The romance plan.

‘Right,’ said Pip, slapping her thighs and bouncing to her feet. ‘We should head. I still haven’t finished unpacking all my shirts.’

I let Pip bundle me into a hug before she trotted out of the room, leaving just me and Jason. I didn’t want Jason and Pip to go. I hadn’t wanted my parents to go. I didn’t want to be left here alone.

‘I wish I was at Castle too,’ I said. I sounded like a five-year-old.

‘You’ll be OK,’ said Jason, in his usual calming tone. Nothing fazed Jason. He had whatever the opposite of anxiety was. Absolute, unerring peace of mind.

I swallowed. I really, really did want to cry. Maybe I could have a quick cry before Rooney got back.

‘Can I have a hug?’ I asked.

Jason paused. Something unreadable crossed his face.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah. C’mere.’

I crossed the room and let him envelop me in a warm hug.

‘You’ll be OK,’ he said again, rubbing his hands gently over my back, and I don’t know if I believed him, but it felt nice to hear anyway. And Jason always gave the warmest, cosiest hugs.

‘OK,’ I mumbled into his jacket.

When he stepped back, his eyes darted away.

He might even have blushed a little bit.

‘I’ll see you soon?’ he said, not looking at me.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Message me.’

My friendships with Pip and Jason wouldn’t change. We’d made it through seven years of secondary school, for God’s sake. Whether we hung out all the time or not – we would always be friends. Nothing could ruin what we had.

And getting to focus on a new friendship with Rooney Bach – a fellow Shakespeare enthusiast who was significantly more sociable than me – could only be a good thing.

At the St John’s College Freshers’ Barbecue, Rooney moved around the courtyard like an ambitious businesswoman at an important networking event. She befriended people in a quick, easy way that left me in awe and, to be honest, very jealous.

I had no option but to trail her like a shadow. I didn’t know how to mingle solo.

University was where most people made friendships that actually lasted. My parents still met up with their uni friends every year. My brother’s best man had been one of his uni friends. I knew I had Pip and Jason, so it wasn’t like I was going in friendless in the first place, but I still figured that I might meet some more people I got along with.

And at the barbecue, people were on the hunt for friendships. Everyone was being extra loud, extra friendly and asking way more questions than is normally socially acceptable. I tried my best, but I wasn’t great at it. I’d forget people’s names as soon as they said them. I didn’t ask enough questions. All the posh private-school boys in zip-neck jumpers blended in with each other.

I thought about trying to make progress with my finding love situation, but no particular romantic feelings arose for anyone I met, and I was too anxious to try and force myself to feel them.

Rooney, on the other hand, flirted.

At first, I thought I was just seeing things. But the more I watched, the more I could see her doing it. The way she’d touch guys on the arm and smile up at them – or smile down, because she was tall. The way she’d listen when they spoke and laugh at their jokes. The way she’d give the guy direct, piercing eye contact, the sort of eye contact that made you feel like she knew you.

It was absolutely masterful.