Karina picked up her dish, held it against her protectively. Her spoon was poised in mid-air. ‘Don’t you understand me? I don’t want to get used to what I can’t afford.’
‘Yes. Of course I understand you.’
‘Julianne, she can afford all sorts of things.’
‘But Karina, how can you possibly . . .’ Choke it down, I was going to say. My sentence faltered, faltered to the point where I couldn’t be bothered with it any more.
‘Look, did you want something?’ Karina said. ‘Otherwise, will you let me get on with my meal in peace? Before it gets cold?’
I made my way unsteadily along the corridor, back towards C3. My key with its big key fob pressed into my palm, and I was just about to put it in my lock when Lynette came through the swing door at the head of the stairs. She was wearing her soft leather coat; it was a claret colour, almost as deep as blackcurrant. The belt was pulled tight at her waist, not buckled but negligently knotted, and the heels of her black boots made a click-click-click on the parquet.
She saw me. Her eyebrows flew up. ‘Carmel, you’re ill.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You look faint.’
‘I went to see Karina. She’s in the kitchen, eating this gross bowl of macaroni.’
Lynette looked merry. ‘Yuk,’ she said. ‘Let me in, I’ll spend five minutes with you, till she’s got through with it. I’ve seen it, honestly. I offered to get her some Parmesan for next time. She said – ’ with a gruesome accuracy, Lynette imitated her accent – “What sort of muck’s that?” ’
‘Oh, Lynette, honestly.’ I turned the key, smiling. I found it difficult to believe that Karina wouldn’t know what Parmesan was, and I wondered, fleetingly, if Lynette’s anecdotes of day-to-day life in C21 sometimes made her seem more ludicrous and disagreeable than she was. But no, hadn’t I just had the evidence of my own eyes?
Lynette took off her coat. I perched on the edge of the bed, she on my desk chair. From her shoulder bag she took a packet of chocolate biscuits, and began to wind off the Cellophane. ‘It’s the sweaters, you know?’ she said. ‘Hairy and grey, like gutted wolves or . . . really, I try all the time to think
‘No, I never have lunch.’
I ate one biscuit. Any more, and tomorrow would be harder to bear. ‘What did you want Karina for anyway?’ Lynette said.
A crumb of biscuit seemed to fly back up into my throat. I coughed as it scratched my soft palate. I coughed, and began to speak: long pauses between my words. I was bitterly ashamed of my improvidence. Nowadays, of course, students go into debt; indeed, they’re encouraged to. Even in my day, there were overdrafts. But not for people like me; for the daughters of mothers like mine. My mother used to say she had never owed a penny piece, never had and never would. Already I was slipping away from the high standard she had set.
Lynette had never looked more beautiful than at the moment she wrote me a cheque. She slid it to me across the desk, as if willing me to take it without comment and never mention it again. Her thick fringe of black lashes fluttered on a cheekbone frosted by Elizabeth Arden.
‘What about Karina?’ I said. ‘I mean, I know she’s got a full grant but that’s still not very much. I’d hate it if both of us were trying to borrow from you.’
Lynette closed her eyes tight. ‘The grant’s very mean. I couldn’t manage. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. If Karina were to ask, of course I’d help out. She hasn’t, so I can’t interfere. Shall we not talk about it? Look, you know that my father gives me an allowance every month. We’re not wealthy people, but I happen to be an only child, and – ’
‘So am I.’
‘Really? I imagined you belonging to this big jolly clan – ’ I saw us with our songs and japes, our makeshift flutes, our donkey parked outside: our thatched roof and the hole cut for a chimney, and us with big patches on our clothes, the patchwork patches that people have in fairytale books. I smiled and looked aside. She paused; her eyes pursued mine. ‘No, Carmel . . . I suppose I knew you were just yourself.’
‘And the cat’s died,’ I said. ‘You know, my mother, she just said that. Oh, by the way, the cat’s died. But why? It wasn’t old.’
‘You make me feel a worthless person,’ Lynette said. ‘Work so hard. Never go out.’
‘Lynette,’ I said, ‘could you please not tell Karina or Julianne that you’ve given me this cheque?’
‘What cheque?’ Lynette said. As if irritated, she shook her packet of chocolate biscuits in my direction.
I was tempted; I forgot my resolve, and took another. It was a wafer with orange cream inside. I chatted for a minute or two, about the things that interest law students: Acts of God, contributory negligence. I rose, rather formally, to see her out. As I did so I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror; a terrible creature with iron teeth, grinding up everything that came in her path.
eight
I will not say much about the Christmas holidays, except that they didn’t go quite as I expected. There were strikes that winter and power cuts, so we had to cook when we could, and sometimes we dined by candlelight. Niall’s mother had me in the kitchen peeling potatoes by the sackful; but I could only eat the two small potatoes that were the standard issue at Tonbridge Hall. I fell greedily on steaks that carpeted my plate, but when a quarter of the meat had vanished I would quail and, not liking to put down my knife and fork, spend the rest of the meal transferring vegetables from one side of the plate to the other, raising tiny mounds and making patterns and trying to make the quantity look less.
‘Your stomach’s shrunk,’ Niall’s mother said. ‘I don’t know! How ever will you get to be the first woman prime minister if you don’t eat up your steak?’
