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pie.’ She turns to Mark, who’s looking decidedly queasy. ‘At least he had the guts to tell me. See you at Easter.’
    I nod, then hurry out of the Portland Building with my head down, humiliated at being so outclassed by somebody from the year below.

    Later, after several more games of pool and three pints of cider, I go to bed with Simon. I want to capture some spark of what I felt with Mark on Christmas Eve. Or what I wish I think I felt. I was too drunk for me to remember much beyond the closeness and the long-imagined sensation of having him inside me. This time, it’s over in seconds and Simon can’t wait to get out of my room. I could sense it, all the time I was with him: he wanted me to be Helen. But that’s fair enough, because I wanted him to be Mark.

Friends
    One life slips into another. These days, West Kirby’s merely the place I visit during vacations. It’s hard to be bothered that Zoe Pritchard has dropped out of uni and is working in the travel agents, or that some guy I barely knew at school crashed his car. I went out with Mark just once over Easter break. Helen was too busy to join us: revising, supposedly. I tried to get Mark to come round again, when Mum was away with some bloke, but he said he was working six days of the week at the golf club, getting up ridiculously early. I ended up doing half an e with Zoe instead. Her parents were away so I didn’t have to think much about bastard Bob. We got trashed on skunk and watched shit on satellite TV. God, I’m glad to be back in Nottingham.
    Mark asked if I was seeing anyone. Too proud to tell the truth, too honest to lie, I said there was somebody on my corridor interested in me, but I wasn’t sure about them. What I didn’t tell Mark was that the interested party was female. Though that might have turned him on.
    Now we’re back, all the talk in hall is of ‘next year’ and who’s going to live with whom. I like hall, but only saddoes stay for a second year. Half the people you talk to have already sorted out a house share in Dunkirk or Lenton with their ‘bessie mates’. Nobody’s asked me. That is, several people have asked me what I’m doing next year and I’ve shrugged or hinted (perhaps not strongly enough) that I’m open to offers. But I haven’t had any offers. Except from Vic. Vic, short for Victoria, comes from a small town in Derbyshire where there’s no gay scene whatsoever. Until uni, she’d had a couple of boyfriends who made her think she was frigid. In her second week here, she let a girl pick her up at a dive in town and had her first orgasm. She’s been having one nighters with women ever since, but now she wants a relationship and I’m her chosen love object. She can’t handle a relationship with the sort of woman she meets in town, she says. I think she’s looking for a mirror image. We’re the same height (5’4”), brown hair with blue eyes. OK, my chest is flatter than hers and her face is flatter than mine, but if we cut our hair the same way, you could take us for sisters. In bad light.
    ‘Have you ever thought about sleeping with another woman?’ Vic asks over late night coffee (decaf).
    ‘Thought about it. I’ve also thought about murder and masochism, doesn’t mean I’m interested in trying them.’
    ‘Why not? Shouldn’t you try everything that doesn’t hurt anyone?’
    ‘In theory, sure. In practice, you have to fancy someone first.’
    Vic takes the hint and doesn’t use the ‘time to experiment’ line again. A week later, she suggests that we share a flat together. I tell her I’m flattered but don’t think it’ll work.
    ‘People will assume we’re a couple. That’d cramp both our styles.’
    ‘Let them assume what they want. We’ll have a great time.’
    I change my argument. ‘There are hardly any two-bed places to be had and they cost the earth, Vic. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to live with you. If we