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I need to tell you about what happened next, I know. But I’m back here, and all I’ve been thinking about on a loop is what it was you thought you saw in me to make you fall out of love with me so fast.

After the first time you decided that you didn’t love me I got a little obsessed with that thought. After we’d finally hooked up, only to have you say, ‘That shouldn’t have happened, I’m sorry,’ it cut me surprisingly deeply.

I couldn’t work out exactly what it was that you’d decided not to love , even though with every other break-up I’d always been kind of ‘screw it, we just weren’t compatible’.

I guess it’s harder to take rejection when you’ve stupidly let yourself fall hard for someone.

You start searching for the how and the why .

Looking for what you can do to stop it happening again.

It has a weird effect, thinking like that.

You suddenly find yourself having these little anxious moments in conversations with other people.

You wonder whether you’ve talked too much about something, or gone off on too much of a tangent, and whether they secretly think you’re a tiresome freak.

You start to imagine that all those cupboard doors you’ve left open in your life have been a black mark against you, as irritating as your mother said they were.

And you wince at the times you’ve forgotten birthdays, or told a terrible pun at a bad time, or drifted off in the middle of important events.

You become convinced that everyone must secretly be keeping score, and that you just never knew.

I think I’d only just managed to get back to my normal ‘who cares?’ self by the time you walked back into my life.

I was half tempted to tell you to fuck off, because I didn’t want to feel like I wasn’t good enough again.

But I’d missed the way you spoke straight to my oddness.

You’d always made it feel like you actually valued all those things about me, and wanted me to be one hundred per cent myself.

I never felt like I had to try to be anyone else around you, actually, and that was one of the things that really worked. Also one of the things that made it a heap of shit when you broke things off again.

The real kick in the teeth was that it wasn’t any of those things that you broke up with me over. It had never even occurred to me to worry that you’d think I was a bad person.

And here I am, writing all of this, and part of me is wondering whether you weren’t right in some ways. And it’s… not helping.

OK. Enough. Let’s just get on with the facts.

The party had done everything I wanted it to, even though I hadn’t seduced Ryan or got James on my side. I’d still been invited in.

Kit messaged (via Luca initially) to ask me to come for drinks with them all on the Saturday night, and it was clear that this was just the chosen few. The Pitt Club elite, with me a potential new member.

The whole dynamic of that invitation fascinated me.

I was made welcome because Kit Frankland had decided I should be there.

Whatever test I’d passed that night had opened doors, though a small part of me was alert to the ease of it.

I’d sometimes catch Kit looking at me with an indulgent kind of approval and feel a thrill of worry that I wasn’t the hunter I thought: that I was somehow his prey.

We met for those drinks at Downing Bar, right where Esther and Kit lived and only a short bike ride for me, James and Ryan.

I’d obviously by this point worked out where everyone’s rooms were.

College porters will give you an unholy amount of information if you act like a student trying to find your friend’s room.

So I knew that James lived high up in an attic on St John’s Third Court, and that Ryan was in a Corpus Christi-owned townhouse on Trumpington Street called, imaginatively, T-Street.

I arrived at Downing Bar late, obviously, fully expecting to have to work hard to charm everyone.

I was particularly worried about getting Esther onside, but to my surprise, her face lit up as soon as she saw me.

She rose to give me a surprisingly enthusiastic hug in greeting and then sat me down next to her.

I wasn’t quite sure how to take this. Esther had seemed so closed off during our brief conversation at the party. Was this all an act? Her mother’s diplomatic role rubbing off on her?

Ryan, contrastingly, gave me a stiff nod and turned his whole body to talk to Kit’s girlfriend, which made me blink.

I’d been expecting him to be friendly again, and couldn’t help losing my thread for a second.

But Kit covered things smoothly by leaning in to ask me about rowing.

Work. And then he chatted nonsense about his supervisor and a feud about essay submission while Esther laughed and interjected explanatory notes for me.

It felt almost rehearsed, at the time, and it was difficult to really relax into.

Kit’s petite brunette girlfriend, Sarah, watched and laughed.

She seemed in two minds about me being there.

I felt like she was the one person who was straightforward wary about a newcomer, but prepared to like me if it turned out I was OK.

So I set about proving that I was. Mostly by dropping in a comment about my experience at an Eras tour concert, and bonding a little over Taylor Swift.

It was gratifying that Esther got on board with this conversation too.

But I was still very aware of Ryan in the background, a nagging sensation of something being wrong. And between comments, I tried to work out what the issue might be. Whether he was angry I’d been invited in. Whether I’d offended him somehow.

Once James finally arrived, at close to 10 p.m., I was relieved that he seemed to be OK with me being there. After he’d talked to the others for a while he gave me a grin, looking at me from under his fringe, and then ducked his head to take a drink.

It was weird, you know, seeing someone so objectively attractive feeling apparently so underconfident. I found myself trying to suss him out, wondering whether the whole shyness thing was just a facade.

‘Hi,’ I said eventually, realising he wasn’t going to start a conversation.

‘Nice to see you again,’ he said after a second. ‘Did you enjoy the rest of the night?’

‘Of course she did,’ Kit said, suddenly appearing across the table with a drink in each hand. ‘How could anyone not enjoy chatting to Cambridge’s most talented leading man, and then getting beaten at competitive long jump by a renowned rugby player?’

He handed the glasses over and then sat with an eager expression.

‘Beaten, my ass,’ I protested. ‘I left you standing.’ And then I halted for a moment, and said, ‘Wait. Who’s the leading man?’

Kit shook his head. ‘James is. And no way did you beat me.’

I turned to James and said, ‘ In. Heels .’ And then said, ‘Are you really?’

‘Umm… Not really.’ James ducked his head again.

‘One hundred per cent,’ Esther corrected him, putting her hand on my arm as though we were close friends.

The change in her was still disconcerting.

‘He was Hamlet at the ADC last term and it got such amazing reviews they’ve got funding to tour it, and Steven Berkoff is apparently super interested in getting him into the RSC.

And on top of that, his Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

performance at the Fringe won an actual award. ’

‘Ohhh. That’s amazing.’ I gave him a sheepish look. ‘Sorry. I should probably know. I don’t think I’ve made it to any shows.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s not big stuff.’ He took a slug of his drink. ‘Anyway, the main thing is you beat Kit at sport.’

Kit had put his arm round Sarah proprietorially. She turned to look up at him, but his focus was all on James now. ‘Stop glorying in my failure, James. Wait. Alleged failure. Victory.’

‘Humiliating defeat,’ I put in, and Esther gave a delighted laugh.

‘Right,’ Kit said, sitting forwards. ‘We clearly need a rematch.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But only if you wear heels, too.’

James downed the rest of his drink and said, ‘I’d better go. I promised myself I’d only be here half an hour.’ He gave me an apologetic grin. ‘I’m madly behind on work. Please don’t take it personally.’

‘I fully will,’ I told him.

James laughed, but there was a trace of embarrassment to it. I had to stand up to let him slide out from behind the table, and he seemed to want to avoid looking at me the entire time, even when I had to hand him his jacket.

‘Are you going to come tomorrow?’ Esther asked, her voice keen with disappointment.

‘I’ll see,’ James said. ‘I’m going to get my arse handed to me if I don’t do some secondary reading for the Tragedy paper. And then I’ll get someone else’s arse handed to me if I don’t sort out American lit, too.’

I couldn’t help laughing at that, and James at least met my eye briefly, with something of a grin, before he made his way out, pulling his vape out as he went. I remembered that he hadn’t been part of the MDMA distribution at Kit’s party. Was the vaping his replacement drug now that Holly was gone?

‘So… I know he said that wasn’t about me,’ I said, once he was too far off to hear, ‘but was that my fault? Did I make him feel super awkward?’

‘Oh, no, don’t worry,’ Esther said with what might have been an attempt to reassure me, or might possibly have been a patronising note, I wasn’t totally sure. ‘He’s… had a hard time. That’s all.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I glanced towards his undeniably dashing form, which was now vanishing through the doors. ‘Has the college been down on him about work? It must be hard fitting it all in.’

‘It’s– not really that,’ Esther said. She looked profoundly uncomfortable, suddenly, and it was interesting to watch. ‘More… personal stuff.’

‘Ah, OK.’ There was a tension in all of them now, I realised. Well, Ryan and Kit and Esther were tense. Sarah just looked distracted.