The Roommates

As she pulls away she glances up at the tower once more. And catches a glimpse of a tall shadow at the window. A face stares down at her. And her hands shake again.

Chapter 7

Amber

The fragrance in the car is subtle but expensive. Half like its wearer – Tegan’s definitely on the pricey side but there’s nothing subtle about her silent disapproval. The more Amber sees of her, the more she resembles her sister, Jade. Not only her dark hair and freckles, but also her stance. Straight back, manicured nails on the steering wheel, hard eyes.

No doubt the last thing Tegan wants is Amber occupying her passenger seat, but Amber had no choice. Couldn’t walk another step after the shock she’s just had. It was only the trick of the light, but she had turned and fled, barged people out of her way, panic rising in her throat, stomach crippling in pain.

Why doesn’t she just tell Tegan a version of the truth instead of faking the stuff with her knee? She told Imo when they were drunk – sort of told her – so why not Tegan? Or Phoenix? She seems okay so far, better than expected. Not a deep thinker, into engineering and … Amber leans on the window as she scrolls her memory. What else does Phoenix do? Something sporty if her physique is anything to go by.

Amber bites the inside of her cheek. Maybe she should ask her flatmates questions and listen to the answers, instead of masking her secrets with babble. Instead of play-acting the part of an intellectual liberal so others will feel too intimidated to enquire about her background. A stupid role to pick as she only scraped into this university with a plea of extenuating circumstances. All lies. There were reasons for her poor A level results, but not the ones she gave.

Taking a deep breath, she continues with the disguise she’s been perfecting since she arrived. “Shall we go to the canteen?” she asks enthusiastically. “We can have a proper chat.”

“What, now?” Tegan glances at the clock on her dashboard.

“Early lunch. Please, I’d like to.”

Silence and Amber thinks she sounded too pleading. That’s always been her downfall. Begging gets you nowhere. On her knees, clinging, sobbing, screeching …

“If you’re paying,” Tegan says. She pulls into the kerb and reverses up a side road. They turn around and park in the loading bay behind the kitchens.

“Shouldn’t you …?” Amber starts, but changes her mind. She hates it when people run her life; she won’t tell Tegan where to park.

The canteen queue moves slowly. Students everywhere. Remembering who she thought she saw, her belly tugs, as if she’s being pummelled from the inside, and she keeps glancing over her shoulder. Suddenly she’s back there, in the moment. In the hours. Hurting. As a substitute for doubling over, she rubs her knee. Channels her ache into her leg. No one must see the truth. She straightens up, ignoring the funny look Tegan gives her.

As they wait, most people gaze at the TV monitors around the walls with Lady Gaga videos on repeat. Tegan uses the time to check her sales figures on her phone.

“It’s like Hogwarts.” Amber scans the busy dining hall. Tables the length of railway lines. “Where are we going to sit?”

“With Slytherin,” Tegan sneers.

After they’ve loaded their plates and poured a couple of coffees, Tegan leads the way to the clean end of a table beyond a group of older students gathered round a tablet. Postgrads probably.

Amber makes another attempt at conversation. “Are you going to the Freshers’ Fair? I’d like to join the drama club, if they have one, and maybe take up a new hobby of some kind. University is a chance for new beginnings.”

Tegan rolls her eyes. “Next you’ll be saying we’re on a journey.”

“Sorry.” Amber blushes into her salad and chips.

Tegan sighs. “I suppose I could look for a business enterprise group.”

Amber can’t think how to reply and feels uncomfortable again. Nothing in common with this girl. She shivers. Nothing in common with anyone. Her gullet heaves at the memory of what she did.

She puts down her fork and tells another lie. “I can’t eat this. I’m allergic to tomatoes. It’s the alpha solanine.”

Tegan rolls her eyes again. “Is alpha whatsit not present in upside-down pizza then?” She waits for Amber to look at her. “Remember the party in Flat 7? You tucked in good and proper.”

Amber hunches her shoulders and returns to picking tomato slices out of her salad. Found out again.

“By the way,” she says eventually, in another try at faking it. “I forgot to mention they’ve moved into the last room in our flat.”

“They?” Tegan asks. “Is it a couple?”

Amber shakes her head, puts on her persona. “One individual. I designate all humans as they; gender is a social construct.”

“Okay,” Tegan says slowly. “For those of us who are less enlightened, can you give me a clue which bits of they’s anatomy dangle?”

Amber struggles to keep a straight face. “The less enlightened would call them male.”

“A guy?” Tegan says, laughing.

“I think he, they, is from Thailand,” Amber says between chuckles.

Tegan’s laughter freezes. “Thailand?” Her knuckles whiten as she grips the edge of the table.

“They don’t speak English so I couldn’t find out their name. Don’t suppose you speak any Thai?”

“No.”

The force of the word silences Amber. The good-humoured conversation has evaporated as inexplicably as it materialized. She burns her mouth as she hurries to finish her drink.

“Thanks for the lift.” She stands up and heads out of the hall. Trying to befriend Tegan was a mistake. Imo is a better friend – and Lauren, the girl she bumped into on arrivals day. That’s a friendship Amber hopes to cultivate.

Chapter 8

Tuesday 27 September

Imogen

Moonlight finds the gap in Imo’s curtain, but the room passes for dark. No thudding bass invading through the floor from another flat, no doors slamming, no traffic outside. But it’s the quiet of dread not peace. When she lies awake at home, every car she hears is the police with news, or Sophia coming home without her keys. In this silent space, her brain won’t switch off, spooling through the what-if scenarios of what might have happened and the white-hot anger of why it happened to them.

Still feeling rough from the Sunday night’s drinking, her throat’s killing her. The soreness in her mouth will be a cough by morning. Getting sick can be added to her other failure: so hungover she turned up late to the library and couldn’t find the induction talk. She walked past rolling stacks of journals, bays of textbooks, miles of computer screens. No one to ask. Sweat beading on her brow, she forced herself to take the lift to the upper library floors. Tried not to think about the broken body, how it must have fallen through the air, how it must have landed. No sign of a talk when she peered in, although she didn’t complete a full sweep; too scared of seeing the drop out of a window.

Pulling the duvet up, she turns over. Tomorrow will be no better. The Business Studies introduction clashes with the German welcome talk. Two lectures will be missed in as many days. She’s unravelling, not good enough for uni, can’t manage like the others. Maybe it’s too soon. But would another year make her stop seeing kidnappers behind every parked car? Stalkers under the trees outside her window? Will the familiar face she seeks have become so much less familiar that she’ll no longer search? And will that what-if nightmare of the dark and the cellar have faded?

She looks at the red-canister alarm on her bedside table and imagines the disappointment vying with relief on her mother’s face when she drops out. On the days when her mother still functions, she works as a nurse. The first thing she does when she gets home, after she’s checked for messages from Inspector Hare, is read the obituaries in the evening paper, to see which former patients have died. “That didn’t take long,” she says. She’ll say the same when Imo quits.

An idea about the timetable clash tomorrow comes to her, something her mum – the old version of Mum – might suggest. She fires off a text to Tegan, asking her to collect the handouts from the Business Studies talk. Lies back on her pillow, feeling lighter in her chest. Things will work out. Her first problem solved on her own. She’s a student now, not a school kid.

Ten minutes later she’s still awake. Her throat hurts and coughing threatens no matter how she turns her body.

There’s a knock at the door. She freezes. Tegan come to tell her off for texting her at this hour?

“Imo, it’s me.” Amber’s voice. “I need painkillers.”

Imo unlocks the door and Amber stumbles in, doubled over. She falls on Imo’s bed and clutches the pillow to her stomach. Her short, bleached hair has crinkled, no doubt suffering the dual effects of bed head and natural wave. She wears fluffy grey slippers and a tartan dressing gown. Without the make-up and weird quilt coat she wore yesterday, she looks younger, vulnerable. Imo lets out a gasp; she reminds her of Sophia.

“What is it?” Amber asks.

“I might have a paracetamol in my purse.” Imo recovers and reaches for her bag, feeling light-headed at the comparison she’s made.

“I’m allergic to those. There’s an all-night petrol garage outside campus.” Amber sits up, wrapping the edges of the Groovy Chick duvet over her legs. “They’ll sell ibuprofen. Our taxi will be here in three minutes.”

Imo suppresses a sigh, no desire to go out in the night and irked that Amber has given her no choice. But Amber’s anguished face makes her feel guilty, especially as Amber stayed with her when she was throwing up the night before.

“Let’s wait here for the driver’s text.” Amber curls up. “I can’t stand for long.”

After the taxi arrives, it takes them an age to get outside. Amber stops several times on the stairs to hug her belly. Imo pictures the meter ticking.

The driver, a young guy with thick, black curls, pulls a face when she tells him their destination, no doubt disappointed at the meagre fare. They travel in silence, Imo shivering in her jacket and jeans. She should have put on a sweatshirt. The faint smell of alcohol in the back of the taxi makes her nauseous and she looks out of the window to settle her stomach. The campus is deserted. A few lights on in the other halls, but no one out walking – or staggering – and no other cars. Eerily quiet. Imo imagines someone watching them drive past, someone lurking outside the flats waiting for their chance. She thinks of Sophia running for her life through dark streets.

Even out on the main road, they are alone. When they reach the floodlit forecourt of the filling station she notices Amber’s grey face, screwed up in a wince of pain. She tells her to wait in the taxi while she gets the tablets.

“Three packets, please,” Amber says softly. “I’ll pay you back.”

But when Imo gets to the counter, the woman won’t sell her three boxes of ibuprofen. “Maximum of two per customer. It’s the law.”

Back in the taxi, Amber takes the tablets and swallows four down without water. “People should be allowed to buy as much medication as they need, for whatever reason. If I want to commit suicide, it’s my business.”

Imo stares at her and feels colour draw from her cheeks.

Amber doesn’t seem to notice. She folds her arms, a cold gleam in her eyes, not doubled over any more. “I won’t, though. Not today. Suicides are determined people. You would be surprised. When it comes to it, most of us find we don’t have the guts.”

Imo’s chest palpitates against the seatbelt.

But Amber’s mood switches and the cloud passes. She seems restored within seconds of taking the medication. Leans forward to ask the driver his name. “Do you give a discount for frequent travellers? We’re interested in finding a reliable firm.”

The driver warms to the theme. “You call me, Hamid Cars. I’ll look after you. Better than Uber, better than College, or A Cabs.” He rubs his hand through his thick hair. “The thing with College Cars is they’re a rip-off. Five pounds for this, five pounds for that.”

He pulls up at their hall of residence. “That’s eight pounds fifty, please,” he says.

Still shaking from what Amber said, Imo struggles to get the money out of her purse. Amber goes back to her room, promising to refund her for the tablets. She doesn’t mention the taxi fare.

Back in bed, Imo doesn’t sleep. Suicide has always been one of the what-if explanations her family considered. For the rest of the night, it’s firmly lodged as a certainty.

Chapter 9

Imogen

The academic block is modern, built in red brick in the last twenty years. Most of the buildings are at least five storeys high. Imo gives silent thanks that she knows the languages department lecture theatre is on the ground floor.

Dozens of students saunter towards the buildings, chatting noisily in small groups, not an anxious face among them. In the distance she thinks she sees Amber, arms linked with a girl who looks like a Goth. Imo’s thoughts rush at the sight of her loose black clothing, reminiscent of the graduation gown in the photo that flooded social media. Something positive her family could do in the first few days, but now Imo hates the image.

Sunshine has brushed aside the gloomy start that greeted her when she left the flat. The beech trees beside the path cast big shadows over the beds of marigolds. Autumn now. How soon will the leaves shrivel and spin unanchored through the air, heading downwards? Falling. Bile rises to Imo’s throat at an unwelcome memory of the mortuary, but she forces it down.

Hood up, earphones in, she walks on, pretending to listen to music. Missed one lecture already and missing another now. Tegan hasn’t replied to her text, so probably won’t take notes in Business Studies.

A few girls dot around the middle of the lecture theatre and a line of lads sprawls at the back. There’s a brief pause in their conversation as Imo enters. She goes to the far end of the front row next to the wall. If the lecturer stands where the computer is, she’ll be out of his eyeshot. As she switches off her phone, a text from Tegan flashes up: Yeah no probs. Imo smiles to herself; Business lecture notes sorted.

The trace of the smile lingers when the Goth girl she thought she saw with Amber sits on the other end of her row. The girl doesn’t smile back. Imo puts in her silent earphones again. To think she’s wasted her best face on a crow.

Confident, laughing voices fill up the seats behind her. The crow shuffles towards Imo to let more girls into their row. Imo’s relieved when she takes a place three seats away. But peeved too: why doesn’t she want to sit with her?

Eventually a woman appears at the computer. Slim and wrinkled. Long, lank hair but no hint of grey. Red kilt, orange tights, flat brown ankle boots. She launches into German. Imo loses the thread after: My name is Dr Wyatt.

The lecturer switches to English. “I want you to come up here one at a time and introduce yourselves. Two minutes max and don’t tell us what you got in your A levels. No one cares. Who’s going first?”

One of the lads from the back row strides to the front. His German is fluent. Two minutes, three minutes, four. Imo thinks his grammar is dodgy, but he’s using vocabulary she doesn’t know.

By the end of the lesson, Imo’s decided she loves this boy, David. Because he talked so long and also insists on asking the subsequent speakers questions, there isn’t time for Imo’s row to present.

Dr Wyatt puts a reading list on the screen. “These are the links to the articles you need to study for next time.”

Imo’s copying them down when the crow girl leans across. “They’re on the intranet. You don’t need to do that.” Imo puts down her pen, feeling stupid.

“Right,” Dr Wyatt says. “You’re free to get to all those freshers’ parties that my lecture has inconvenienced. Can I have the register back?”

The students look at each other. Some edge up the central aisle towards the door.

“No one leaves until I get the register.”

They look back at the rows, searching, until crow girl points at Imo. The register is lying next to her pencil case. Only six names on it. It was passed to her and she didn’t notice. Red-faced, hand trembling, she signs her name and gives it to the row behind. Crow girl gives a sympathetic smile but can’t hide the sneer in her eyes.

Chapter 10

Phoenix

He’s wearing lilac. The trousers are denim and the tunic is heavy-duty cotton. Not as tall as her, but solid, box-shaped. Bull-necked. He fills the doorway and doesn’t invite her in.

“I thought I’d better come and say hello as we’re flatmates.” Phoenix wishes she’d asked Amber to do the introductions. “I’m Phoenix.” It comes out as an apology. “What’s your name?” She tries putting a won’t-take-no-for-an-answer tone into her question.

It sort of works. He mutters something, growls it really. Riku?

She smiles and tries out the basic Thai she picked up when her family did a season in Bangkok years ago, but he tilts his head to the side in apparent bafflement. She tries hello in Mandarin and Japanese. Nothing. He must be from somewhere she’s never heard of. Depressing, as she thought she knew the world pretty well. From the doorway she sees a small rucksack and a sketchpad. Something familiar hanging on the wall gives her hope for common ground, and she nearly breaks her cover story, but his unsmiling face stops her in time.

“Well, nice to meet you, Riku,” she says backing away. She intended to invite him to the Freshers’ Fair. But even with her best linguistic gymnastics, she doubts she’d make him understand and he’d probably decline anyway.

On the way to her room, she scoops up the post from the doormat. Pizza delivery leaflets, taxi fliers and electoral registration letters for previous occupants. She cleared one heap of junk mail yesterday. No one else bothered and the pile was already spreading along the hallway. Another domestic duty that’s going to fall to her.

In need of a friendly face, she knocks on Imo’s door. Hears movement inside but has to knock again before Imo appears, red-eyed.

“I can’t get onto the intranet and I’ve got a German assignment to do by tomorrow. Why is it always me?” Imo blinks hard, suppressing tears.

“They can’t have set you work in Freshers’ Week. It’s bound to be optional.”

“There’s nothing optional about Dr Wyatt.” She goes back to the bed and picks up her laptop. “I’m going to get kicked off the course in the first week.”

“Do you want me to try?” Phoenix takes the laptop, but no matter which icon she presses, a no server message appears on the screen. “I don’t think it’s your fault. The uni’s system is down.”

“Great,” Imo says, swallowing a sob. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her cheeks and chin are a plague of acne.

“Have you eaten?” Phoenix offers her mother’s preferred salve to tearful children. “Come with us to the Freshers’ Fair. You can get free snacks there. The intranet might be up by the time you get back.”

Imo makes a big sigh and wipes her eyes on her sweatshirt cuff. “I’ll come along, but I’m not joining anything.”

They get a shock when they call on Amber. Turquoise kimono and red bobbed wig. Her make-up is a tone lighter than usual and her lipstick matches her hair. Perhaps she’s hoping for a Geisha Girl Society.

Imo whips out her phone. “Let me take a photo.”

“The car’s in the main car park,” Tegan says, coming out of her room and checking her handbag for her keys. She sees Amber’s wig. “You look like an Edam cheese.”

Amber scowls and suggests they walk as the fair is in the other direction and it’s a beautiful afternoon.

“Is your ankle better?” Phoenix asks.

“Fine thanks.” She flexes her foot.

Phoenix smiles. Wasn’t it supposed to be her knee that was hurting?

The walk turns out to be a good idea. Crowds of freshers head the same way. The mood suits the sunny weather.

“Where are you from, Tegan?” Amber asks. She looks at her flatmate while they walk, as if she’s making a supreme effort to listen to the answer. The uncharitable part of Phoenix can’t help thinking it’s an act.

“Cardiff.”

Phoenix has been to Cardiff but doesn’t say. She was christened at Mermaid Quay in the tent by a local vicar. The baptism is supposed to bring the whole family health and happiness. She stiffens as she walks. Tell that to Cloud.

“Where’s your home town?” Amber asks, turning her intense expression on Phoenix.

She shrugs. “Born in Shrewsbury.” The planned two-week stopover stretched to six when Cloud went into labour early en route from Carlisle to Gloucester. “My parents work all over.”

“Cloud’s Coffee. I remember your parents’ amazing van,” Imo says. She looks at Tegan. “What do your parents do?”

“My mother shops.”

Amber and Imo laugh, but Phoenix isn’t sure Tegan meant it as a joke. Her face doesn’t move.

“And your dad?” Imo asks.

“We’re here.” Tegan ignores the question and jogs up the steps to take the Great Hall door from a boy who’s holding it open.

Last time Phoenix was here, it was kitted out with display boards and smiling lecturers on an open day, eager to hook potential students. They mostly spoke to her parents. Today there’s no one over thirty years old in the room and it’s laid out with brightly decorated stalls and tables. Freshers throng inside the entrance, not knowing where to start.

Taking charge of their group, Amber leads them to the row of stalls on the far left. “It looks like these are political societies,” she says. “We can walk down and back up the other side. No loitering by the Tories.” She glances at Tegan, who narrows her eyes.

Amber strikes up a conversation with a punk girl from a campaigning charity. They look set to put the world to rights for several minutes so the others move on. Imo seems to be hunching her shoulders, looking around surreptitiously.

Amber meets them at the Conservation Volunteers stand and sees Tegan browsing the literature. “You’re not going to join, are you? I can’t imagine you in wellies.”

“Why not,” Tegan says. “Someone’s got to protect nature from land-grabbing scumbags. And I like the idea of hacking down deadwood and pulling up unwanted growth.”

The other girls exchange a glance, wondering what deadwood Tegan has in mind.

As they pass the languages aisle, Phoenix stops to say: “Hello, how are you?” in Bulgarian to a pretty woman in national costume. It’s the limit to what she learnt after their season in Plovdiv, but it earns her a biscuit that tastes like a pretzel. She follows the others to the performing arts area. Imo declares that she’ll have enough on with her coursework and doesn’t sign up for any groups. Phoenix and Tegan leave their names with the Bhangra society and help themselves to onion bhajis.

They can’t drag Amber away from the Drama Society stall even though other people are waiting to speak to the stallholder.

Something prickles along Phoenix’s spine, the sensation that someone’s watching her. She scans the room. A tall figure in a black hoodie stands with a group of students, waiting to sign up for the Film Society. His brooding body language is oddly familiar. It’s the man from Ivor’s kitchen in Flat 7. He’s probably harmless – a mature student, uncomfortable among the kids – but she feels sweat begin to seep through her T-shirt. He glances over at them again and she realizes it must be Imo that’s caught his attention. He’s a man after all.

Imo and Tegan wander on and she catches them up. When she looks back over her shoulder, she can’t see the man. She breathes with relief.

When she inadvertently makes eye contact with the boy on the chess stall, she feels obliged to go over. “I used to play a bit with my uncle,” she tells him. “Quite enjoyed it.”