It comes from someone called Blackhorse. I haven’t met him before. He tells me – actually I say he, but I don’t know if it’s a man or a woman, but I’m guessing man – but anyway, he tells me there are several reasons why a private residence might be ‘access restricted’. It could be something really dodgy, like the owner being part of the Witness Protection Program, or because the owners work for military intelligence. In that case I’d need to proceed really carefully because there’s all sorts of higher level securities that trigger red flags, and when they’re secret they’re super hard to wipe. Alternatively it could be something a lot less exciting, such as the owner of the property simply requesting that their records aren’t made publicly available. As well as telling me all this, Blackhorse has asked if I want him to look into it further, and he says he won’t even charge me. I think about the offer for a while, while I’m brewing up some coffee in the kitchen, but then I reply to say no thanks. It’s probably the wrong thing to do, to run all these searches about Lily behind her back. And also, with these computer nerd people, you never quite know how stable they are.
It’s a beautiful day outside, and it puts me in a good mood as I go into college for my morning lecture. The first one is the same as ever, going over topics I studied years ago, but I still go through the motions of writing notes, but it’s so boring that in my head I start going over everything that happened last night. As I do so, I keep getting these visions of Lily. Lily laughing at the dinner table. Lily leaning in to kiss me when I arrived. Lily leaning over the dishwasher, her skirt rising up and showing her smooth legs. I’m actually so distracted I don’t notice that a woman, sitting a couple of empty seats away from me, is leaning over to talk to me. Eventually she taps me on the arm.
“Hey! Are you OK?” She smiles, looking a bit concerned. I’ve actually noticed her before but we’ve never spoken. She’s quite a bit older than me, and obviously really keen, as it’s often just me and her at the start of the classes, before everyone else arrives. “You seem really distracted today.”
“What?” I release my vision of Lily, though I’m disappointed as she drifts out of my mind. I shake my head clear and focus on the woman. “No. I’m… Fine.”
She smiles reassuringly at me, and goes back to her notes. Then at the end, when the lecturer has finished, she moves a seat closer before I get up to leave.
“That was a tough one, wasn’t it? I do struggle with all the Latin names.” She rolls her eyes.
“Oh I wasn’t…” I get what she means, but stop myself. I can’t really say I wasn’t paying attention.
“I’m Linda.” The woman says, though I don’t ask. “Linda Reynolds. I’m in a lot of your classes.”
“I know.”
“Right.” She bobs her head to one side then the other, like she’s thinking this over. “Well… I just wanted to say hi. And that you can borrow my notes. If you ever need.” She gives me another smile. “Like if you’ve been up all night partying. And feel like your head’s not on straight.”
“I wasn’t up all night partying.”
“No?” She gives me a look and a grin, but then shrugs. “Well you know. In case you ever are.”
Annoyingly, at that moment I feel a yawn coming on, and I can’t stop it. Then I feel I ought to explain.
“I was sort of working. Last night.”
“Ahhh,” Linda looks suddenly pleased. “So you do put in all-nighters.” She grins again. “We were wondering how you managed to know the answer to every question in the tutorials.”
“It wasn’t that sort of…” I start to say, but then I stop. “Who’s we?”
Linda waves a hand. She’s filled her bag now. “There’s a bunch of us. Mature students mostly. We’re helping each other out with the work.”
I don’t know what to say to this. So I don’t say anything.
“I was wondering, maybe you’d like to join us? I mean, you’re kind of mature yourself. In a young way.”
I’m not sure what to say to this either. I definitely don’t need any help with my work, but I don’t want to say that, because it would make me sound really arrogant.
She smiles again, as the rest of the class files out around us.
“Actually we’re meeting up today, just for a coffee. After Chemical Processes, maybe you want to join us?”
I’m sort of doubtful, I’m already younger than all the other students here. I’m not sure hanging out with the mature students makes much sense. But I don’t want to be rude.
“Erm. OK. Sure.”
“Great! I’ll look out for you in class.” She leaves, and gives me a wave.
I have a break next, so I go to the library. I try to read but I find I can’t concentrate. I’m in a funny mood suddenly. I had all these ideas about college, before I got here. How it would be all research and experiments and fun. But actually it’s mostly just reading about other people doing research. And it’s all reading I’ve already done. I feel like something’s missing, but I don’t know what it is. So I don’t read much, instead I just secretly watch the other students around me, with their headphones and their laptops and their giant Starbucks cups of coffee, and the looks of concentration on their faces, like they’re finding it hard. I wonder what I’m doing wrong.
But I cheer up pretty quickly because then I get a call from Lily. And she sounds
