What became of us

lover? Annie’s patronizing question rang in her head.
    Yes! Yes! Yes! she wanted to scream.
    ‘I could be with you in time for tea...’
    If Annie had not arrived at that moment, what would she have replied?
    For a second, she envisaged him climbing in over the back gate of the college and stealing up to her room like the man from the Milk Tray adverts.
    No. It was a fantasy. The sort of fantasy that the city of dreaming spires conjured up. The sort of fantasy that could only lead to disappointment.

Chapter 18

    Annie was on a nostalgic walking tour of the city centre. She passed the St Giles Cafe which looked exactly as it always had, with green vinyl banquettes and wood-effect Formica tables. Egg and chips was £3.20, which seemed a reasonable increase in the light of inflation. They were still serving transport cafe fare to students who thought it cool to pack away as much cholesterol as the average HGV driver. She noticed that there were no baguettes or ciabattas here, although she couldn’t be sure that there had been a Gaggia machine in her day.
    She crossed the tree-lined boulevard to St John’s College and ducked her head through the ancient wood door of the lodge. She couldn’t remember whether she had ever slept with anyone at St John’s, but she did have a vague memory of eating dinner there once. Potato croquettes, she thought, as she walked once around the first quad wondering what it said about her that she could remember the choice of vegetables but not the name of the bloke who had invited her, nor what he looked like, nor whether she had fucked him afterwards. Probably not, she decided. Dinner at St John’s had not been worth a fuck. Dinner at Merton, on the other hand...
    The food at Balliol had been plentiful but not subtle, she recalled, as she walked past the back entrance before turning into the Broad. Lasagne and chips, cheese and crisp butties in the JCR which opened after the pubs closed for the massive carbohydrate binge they used to call Midnight Raiding. For a while she went out with a guy who lived on Staircase 6. His neighbour, who back then had been a bit of an anorak, the sort of guy who wore bicycle clips on his trousers whether he was cycling or not, was now a successful publisher. She had recently bumped into him and his surprisingly elegant wife at a party.
    ‘Do you still snore?’ she had asked him, playfully.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he replied.
    ‘My boyfriend and I used to lie there placing bets on when the next snore would be,’ Annie whispered conspiratorially to his wife.
    ‘Sound travels both ways, of course,’ the publisher retaliated sharply, and Annie blushed as she thought of all the things she and her boyfriend got up to in those wonderful experimental days of sex, when you didn’t yet know what you liked, but were prepared to try anything.
    At Trinity, she met her first gay couple, who modelled themselves on characters from Brideshead Revisited and owned an Encyclopaedia of Cocktails. While everyone else made tea in horrid stained mugs with the teabag still in, they had served Brandy Alexanders in clean martini glasses.
    The centre of Oxford was making her feel peculiar. Everything looked the same as it had then. It wasn’t really surprising that buildings which had been around for centuries had not altered, but it wasn’t just the buildings, it was the shop fronts and the banks, even her favourite pub, the King’s Arms. 'The fruit machine was in the same place, and the noticeboard, which was covered with out-of-date posters advertising garden productions. The walls were the same dark green, the handpumps at the bar still dispensed Wadworth’s 6X. The same big bowl of coleslaw stood in the chiller cabinet next to what looked like the same greying-pink slabs of veal and ham pie. In London this sort of pub would have become an Irish bar, or a cafe with minimalist decor, bottled beer and char-grilled vegetables.
    There was something distinctly unsettling about the familiarity of it all. Annie walked along the corridor beside the snug bar and down the steps to the loos. The same pink tiles, the same slightly wet floor. It even smelt the same. She was amazed that her own graffiti was not still etched on the wooden door. She sat on the loo craning her head to read the messages.
    The graffiti was the only thing to indicate that a new generation inhabited this medieval city. Today’s young women had given up lusting after the public school boys and appeared