What became of us

the other way round?’
    ‘Not Chloe. Human biology A level, you see. She thought her body would be more likely to conceive, bear and recover if she had them early.’
    ‘So did you?’
    ‘One of each, before I was even a houseman. Zoe’s applying to St Gert’s next year, Michael has just done GCSE’s.’
    ‘How very organized,’ Annie said.
    The waitress removed their small white plates and placed a larger white plate with a slab of very pink salmon, a pool of yellow sauce and a sprig of lamb’s lettuce in front of them. At the other end of the table there was a bowl of new potatoes.
    They appeared to have come to the end of what they had to say to each other. Annie turned to the person sitting next to her, but she was deep in conversation about nannies and professional distance. At the far end of the hall, Annie saw, Roy had just arrived, with Manon. Roy made his way to the top table, while Manon looked around for a place and eventually caught sight of Ursula waving at her.
    Annie turned back to Ian who had just put a forkful of salmon into his mouth. ‘Have you ever used a trouser press?’ she asked him.
    A flake of fish flew across the table, as he coughed with surprise, then he swallowed the rest and replied with quite a naughty smile:
    ‘What for?’

Chapter 25

    ‘Where have you been?’ Ursula whispered to Manon, as she sat down next to her.
    ‘Lily fell in the river.’ Manon saw the alarm on Ursula’s face and added, ‘She’s fine, but we all got a bit wet and went back to Penny’s parents to clean up...’
    ‘I saved a starter for you,’ said Ursula.
    Everyone else was on to their second course. Manon began to wolf down the fan of avocado decorated with pink sauce and a prawn on the small white plate in front of her.
    It was difficult to unstick the labels that attached themselves to you, particularly in somewhere as claustrophobic as Oxford, she thought, glancing around the room.
    Ursula was the organizer. As an undergraduate she was always collecting money for causes or putting up posters about demos. Now she was marshalling the circulation of the bowls of vegetables on their table, counting the new potatoes and declaring that there were three each.
    On the far side of the hall, Annie, the flirt, had landed herself the only other man in the room while she was waiting for Roy to arrive. Manon could tell from Annie’s body language that he was getting the full Annie, the smiling, self-mocking, slightly risqué performance that she did when men were around. The woman opposite her leaned across the table. ‘You’re Manon, aren’t you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m Gillian.’ She smiled in a friendly way. ‘You were the one who... got a double first.’
    Was there a slight pause, or was she just imagining it, Manon wondered, knowing her own label was the one with the boyfriend who killed himself. It had haunted her time at Oxford, and it haunted her still. Leonora had not been able to wait until she was out of earshot before repeating it this afternoon.

    Just before Mods, the exams at the end of the first year, her first boyfriend had been found dead in his room. His suicide note was addressed to Manon. It was that piece of information, rather than the fact that he had a history of depression, that had made the local paper, and because he was the son of a newspaper magnate, the story had added frisson for the tabloids and spawned a rash of fatuous articles about the pressures on the children of famous parents, posing the usual questions about sex and drugs.
    In the days following Carl’s death, just as she was beginning Mods, Manon’s life had been invaded by reporters. They had stationed themselves outside the back and front gates of the college, and followed her in cars as she cycled to her exams. Her stricken face had appeared in several national newspapers, which had only added to the unreality of the knowledge that Carl was no longer alive. Ironically, the one place she had been able to find any kind of peace was sitting in the huge halls of the Examination Schools answering questions on Tennyson.
    Manon had been an outsider in the college from the day she arrived. She knew that she had been labelled stand-offish because people did not understand that you could be shy at the same time as being beautiful. The appearance of an association with Carl’s death singled her out as truly peculiar. Girls who had grudgingly said hello to her by the pigeonholes now hurried away when they