Something certain maybe, p.1
Something Certain, Maybe, page 1
For Rachel, Sarah and Cate.
Thank you.
‘Life is unpredictable,
It changes with the seasons,
Even your coldest winter
Happens for the best of reasons,
And though it feels eternal,
Like all you’ll ever do is freeze,
I promise spring is coming,
And with it, brand new leaves.’
Erin Hanson
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
About the Author
1
The first thing that goes wrong is the playlist.
It’s a four-hour drive from Brighton to Norwich – my old home to the new – and I’d spent literal hours collating the perfect playlist. I’d googled ‘new-life songs’, ‘fresh-start songs’ and ‘student songs’ and made a whole list specifically for this one journey, the official start of my new life as a student. It was the right length and everything. I’d called it, very simply, ‘Day One’.
I’m just setting it to play in my mum’s car – I’ve even timed this moment for when we cross the city line – when Mum chirps, ‘I made a tape! Do you want to put it on?’
‘A tape?’ I repeat. ‘What kind of tape?’
‘A mixtape!’ she says, like it’s 1993 or something. ‘For our last trip together,’ she adds, very dramatically, pointing at the tape player. (This is how old my mum’s car is. Not even a CD player – a cassette player.) ‘Put it on.’
‘I made a playlist,’ I say, lifting my phone and waving it at her. ‘I’ll just play that.’
We’ve just stopped at a red light, which is why Mum is able to turn to me in this moment with wide, mournful eyes, just like our cat does when he doesn’t want to be shut out of our bedrooms at night. ‘You don’t want to listen to the tape I made for you?’
Historically, I’m not the kind of person easily swayed by this kind of pure emotional manipulation. But this is Mum. Mum, driving me to university in the battered old car she’s had almost my whole life, who cheered and cajoled and bullied me into the studying I needed to do to even be on this road, who raised me single-handedly, who thinks – and tells me, often – that I’m the greatest person to ever exist, and truly believes it, even though it obviously isn’t true.
So, we listen to the tape, twice, all the way to Norwich. She’s put ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’, the Mamma Mia version of the ABBA song, on it three times. That’s the kind of vibe she’s gone for. She keeps getting tearful when she tries to sing along, reaching over to squeeze my knee while she sniffles.
I’m not saying I needed to hear the playlist I’d planned for this trip, because obviously listening to it or not won’t actually affect how the rest of the year goes. But . . . well, maybe I am saying that a little. I just don’t like things not going how they’re meant to go, you know? And I was meant to be listening to American Authors singing about the best day of their lives, which was meant to be preparing me for mine. Instead, I get nostalgic Meryl Streep.
Which is fine. Obviously, it’s fine. I can adjust my expectations for this one tiny thing, or at least adjust my focus. I push the playlist I’d made into the back of my head and instead think about everything that is going to plan. Mum and me in the car. The route we’re taking to Norwich and my new university. The fact that I have a university that is mine. The thought sends a thrill of pure excitement through my whole body, making my fingers tingle. I know where I am, where I’m going. It’s a good feeling.
Everything about starting uni is incredibly overwhelming, so I’m thinking a lot about what I can control, which is something I got taught when I was a kid, after some bad stuff happened and I had to see a therapist for a bit. She told me to list my certainties whenever things felt out of control, and it was great advice. Ever since, it’s a way I’ve kept myself calm when the alternative is panic. So that’s what I’ve been doing all morning, and it’s what I do when Mum drives us through the entrance to the university campus and my heart starts going really fast.
I am Rosie Caron. I am eighteen. Mum is beside me. She loves me. I have lace-up black boots on my feet, and the rest of me is black jeans and a striped vest top under an oversized hoodie. My hair is the same as it always is – dark brown, short and curly – because it’s basically impossible to do anything else with it unless you possess some supernatural hairstyling ability, which I do not. And I am getting out of the car on the campus of my university, where I am starting a pharmacy degree. I will study here for four years, then take a pre-registration year. Then I’ll be a qualified pharmacist, and that will be a certainty I’ll have for my whole life. My whole life! I love that. Not just that I’m at uni, which is obviously exciting and cool in all the obvious ways, but because of that certainty.
I love the safety of that knowledge. Most of my other friends starting uni this year aren’t doing vocational degrees, which is what pharmacy is, but the kind with a degree at the end but not a specific qualification. One of my best friends, Caddy, who’ll be studying psychology from next week, says she likes that, because it means she’s free to choose, but I love the knowing. So much of life is so completely out of your control – why wouldn’t you want to fix the bits you can? I want to know where I’m going, what I’m doing. And now I finally do.
Starting with today, which is not just the first day of this new life, but also, and perhaps most importantly, the first day of Freshers Week. Today it will be about unpacking, meeting my flatmates, and probably going out for our first club night. Then the rest of the week will be about getting to know the university, registering for stuff, having my first few lectures, getting exciting things like my lab coat and goggles, meeting my coursemates. There’ll probably be a lot of socializing and drinking too, because it’s Freshers, and though I know it’s a cliché, there’s probably a lot of truth in it, too. I’ve basically memorized the list of campus club nights – one every night this week, culminating in the Freshers Welcome Ball on Friday, which sounds amazing. The pinnacle of the week. I planned my outfit for the ball in July. That’s how prepared I am.
A little sick, yes. But still. Prepared.
Mum beams at me, hooking her arm through mine and squeezing tight. ‘This is exciting!’ she says, correctly. ‘What’s first?’
‘My key,’ I say immediately. (So prepared.) ‘The student union building.’
We follow the signs that have been put up to guide us there, and Mum waits outside while I go in. I queue up behind a girl with red ombre hair who is muttering – quietly, but distinctly – ‘I am stronger than this emotion,’ over and over, stopping only when she reaches the front of the queue and the guy sat behind the desk says, ‘Hello!’
I wait until she’s turning to leave before I say, in my most cheerful but reassuring voice, ‘I love your jacket.’ I do love her jacket. It’s got Life is Strange patches on it.
The girl starts in surprise, looking at me like I’ve appeared out of nowhere, then smiles uncertainly. ‘Thanks,’ she says, and I smile back.
I’m feeling pretty proud of myself for this act of kindness – surely a good karmic start to my year – when I collect my key, thank the guy behind the desk and follow the signs back out through the hall into another section of the student union, which is full of stalls in every direction. It’s a dizzying array of freebies and general marketing pizzazz; too much to properly take in, which is why I walk right past the stall displaying a huge platter of biscuits shaped like canaries with yellow icing, and that’s when the second thing goes wrong. Right when I’m feeling proud, maybe even a little bit confident, most of my attention focused on navigating myself out of the right exit so I can find Mum and we can go to my new flat to unpack my stuff from the car. I register that there’s a voice coming from my left, so I look up, confused, to see a beaming man standing beside the stall of canary biscuits, gesturing. He says, clearly repeating himself, ‘Take one!’ So I do, because I’m polite like that, but I must be more flustered by the general anxiety of the day than I’d let myself realize, and also the number of different thoughts I’m attempting to juggle in my head, because when I take a bite I forget to chew and, promptly, choke on it.
That’s right. I choke on a canary biscuit. I don’t even mean that I cough a little and go a bit red. I mean I actually choke, and a total stranger has to smack me on the back, and I don’t go a bit red so much as a purplish scarlet – I can feel my face turning this colour – with full on streaming eyes and everything.
It’s mortifying, is what I’m saying. Especially when the smiling man from behind the stall calls out, ‘They’re not that bad !’ and everyone laughs. (I don’t know if it’s actually everyone, but in this moment, it feels like everyone.)
What I should do is laugh along, maybe do something funny like give a little bow, but this only occurs to me after I’ve already run away, and then it’s too late.
Now, I know this isn’t a big deal. Obviously it isn’t. It’s just a little moment of embarrassment. But did it have to happen right when I was feeling confident about myself? It’s only tiny, but it’s enough to throw me in a way I don’t like to be thrown. Spoiling the vibe, just like listening to the wrong playlist spoilt the vibe. And I’d planned to have the perfect vibe.
Maybe that’s why it takes me longer than I’d expected to find Mum again, which makes me feel stupidly, ridiculously, a little bit panicky, as if the whole point of her being here isn’t to literally drop me off and leave me here. I grip the skin at my wrist and squeeze it hard. Get a grip. This is all fine. Look, there’s Mum. It’s fine.
‘What happened?’ Mum asks when she sees me, alarmed.
‘Nothing,’ I say, as if my eyes aren’t all red and wet. ‘I’ve got my key. Let’s go find my flat.’
My university campus is a maze of grey concrete steps and walkways, but there are helpers in bright T-shirts pointing us in the right direction, so we don’t get lost. The flat I’ll be living in is in one of the buildings called the Ziggurats, which are the university’s most iconic accommodation blocks. They look like stacked concrete pyramids. Suffolk Terrace, my allocation reads. There’ll be nine other students in the flat with me, sharing two bathrooms and one kitchen.
‘That’s a lot of sharing,’ Mum had said when we’d talked about it a few months ago. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
She’d meant that I’m an only child, and I’ve never had to really share anything, even her, but I’d shrugged it off. Sharing a bathroom seemed a small price to pay for the Ziggurats being cheaper than other en-suite options, and anyway, I’d have a washbasin in my room, so it wouldn’t be that bad. Besides, that was all part of the fun of being flatmates, wasn’t it? Mucking in together, sharing it all, even the bad bits?
My room is about the same size as my room at home. It has a bed, a desk, a wardrobe and a mirror, plus a gorgeous view over towards the lake, which I love immediately. It takes a while to bring in all my stuff from the car with Mum, or at least it feels like it does, right up until the moment when Mum says, ‘I think that’s it. You’re all unloaded.’ And I realize it was no time at all.
‘Already?’ I say.
We both look around at my room, the assortment of boxes, the sheets already on the bed. Even though I’m literally standing in it, it still feels impossible that this is mine, my small corner of campus, where I’ll be living, studying, sleeping, and everything in between.
‘Already,’ she says. There’s a silence. I don’t know what to say, even to Mum. Any words seem like they’ll be too big, and also not big enough. ‘Well, I think this is it, my love.’ She breathes in a shuddery breath, like she’s trying not to cry. I’d made her promise not to cry today, and I look at her sharply. She presses her lips together and shakes her head. ‘What am I going to do without you?’ she asks, squeezing my arm as she looks around. ‘My little rock.’
It’s what she’s always called me. Rosie the rock.
‘That’s rhetorical, by the way,’ Mum adds quickly, releasing me. ‘I will be just fine, and I don’t want you worrying about me.’
‘I won’t,’ I say. We both know I will. ‘I’m going to be way too busy having the time of my life. I’ll be like, Mum who?’
She laughs, hooking an arm around my shoulder and pulling me in for the kind of tight hug I’ll only ever accept from her. She kisses my hair, then touches the side of my face. She’s beaming at me with such pride, such love, that my eyes prickle. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ she says. ‘But I don’t want you to miss me, OK? I want you to have the time of your life.’
‘I will,’ I say. ‘The time of my life.’
I go with her to the main door of the flat, then wave from the doorway as she walks up the concrete steps of the building, half turns to give me one last wave, then disappears around the corner. My heart lurches and I feel, just for a second, like I’m at nursery again, watching her leave me behind.
Which is crazy, because it’s not like I’ve been any kind of a mummy’s girl for years. Maybe even since then.
But still, I feel it. That awful tug of realization that I’m alone here, in this brand-new place, so huge and scary. I close the door and head back down the corridor, shaking my head. I am fine. I’m fine. I can do this, and I’m fine.
My room seems very quiet with just me in it. Bigger, too. There’s a beep from my phone and I look down to see Caddy’s name on my screen. She messaged me twice earlier – HOW IS IT GOING????? and then OMG message me back, this is killing me. I need to know – but I hadn’t replied because I was unloading the car. Now, she’s saying, simply, ROSIE!!!
Caddy is going to Warwick for uni, but her term doesn’t start until next week, so she’s almost as invested in my Freshers Week experience as I am. I tap out a quick reply. Just moved in. Talk later?
Her reply is almost immediate. YES! Hope you’re OK. I’m at Suze’s. We just made a cake. Going to eat it in your honour. Love you!
My heart gives a pang, standing there alone in my unfamiliar bedroom, the sound of distant laughter coming from somewhere else in the flat. I wish I was with her and Suze, my two best friends, in the comfort of total familiarity, eating cake.
But no. I pinch my wrist. Don’t be stupid. I’m here at uni, which is the coolest, most exciting thing ever. I worked so hard to get here. There are people to meet, adventures to have. One day not too far from now, I’ll look back and laugh at how nervous I was in this moment. (Right?) This is day one of the next chapter of my life.
I take out the bottle of Tuaca that Suze gave me as my going-to-uni present and unscrew the cap to take a sip. Brighton courage, I think, closing my eyes at the taste of the familiar liqueur. I can do this. I can.
There’s a knock at my door and I jump in surprise, Tuaca sloshing out of the top of the bottle and onto my hand. When I turn, I see a girl standing in the doorway, beaming at me. She’s gorgeous: tall and lithe, dark hair swinging all the way down her back. Her nails, which I can see because her hand is splayed in a confident spread eagle over her hip, are bright red.
‘Hi!’ she says. ‘I’m Rika. I’m in number seven.’ She points down the hall, and I look in that direction as if I can suddenly defy the laws of physics and see round corners. ‘Me and Dawn are going to check out the poster sale in the LCR and see what else is going on. Want to come?’ She leans a little into my room, craning her neck. ‘Your room is exactly like mine. And literally all of them.’ She laughs. ‘It’s so weird, isn’t it? We could just swap right now and it’s like, who would know?’
‘So weird,’ I say, even though I haven’t actually seen her room, or anyone else’s, and the words sound inane out of my own mouth in a way they didn’t from hers. I add, ‘I’m Rosie.’ And then, because it seems like the smartest thing to do at this moment, I lift the bottle still in my hand and say, ‘Tuaca?’
‘Oh my God,’ Rika says, coming into the room, grinning. ‘Yeah! What is it? I don’t mind. Yes.’
Thank God for alcohol. Thank God for Tuaca. Thank God for forward-thinking friends like Suze who made sure I didn’t go to uni without it. I’m about to say that I don’t have a cup, but Rika’s already taking the bottle from me and sipping gamely from it. Her eyes widen and she looks down at the label.
‘Shit, that’s sweet. What is it?’
‘Sort of a vanilla liqueur,’ I say. ‘Do you like it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rika says, frowning. I’m almost surprised by how much her opinion already matters to me. I want her to like Tuaca, as if that will also mean she likes me. ‘It’s OK.’ She shrugs, then hands the bottle back to me and sits down on my bed, kicking her feet out in front of her. ‘It’s so cool that the rest of you are all here now,’ she says. ‘It’s just been me and Dawn here for, like, the last three days, which is a lot of one person, you know? We got here on Thursday, because we’re drama students. I’m not sure if we’re going to be friends yet. Like, I think I like her, but I’m not sure she’s my kind of person, you know?’
