Julius loved his bedroom, but it wasn’t the sort of room that would gladden a father’s heart. He’d painted the walls inky dark purple. They were smothered in postcards he’d collected over the years, of his heroes and heroines, from Hemingway to Marilyn Monroe. There was a record player in the corner – his biggest investment – and a stack of records four feet long. A mattress on the floor served as both a sofa and a bed. His clothes were hung on a makeshift rail: charity shop suits and a collection of hats. He was quite the dandy. In another corner were a kettle and a gas ring. Despite his best intentions there were more empty Pot Noodle pots in the bin than he could count. There were so many more interesting things to do than try and conjure up something nutritious in the health hazard that was the kitchen downstairs. Julius liked food, and cooking, but he didn’t want tetanus.
‘It’s fine. I don’t have to show him this. I’ll tell him I’m staying in some all-girls’ hostel and I’m looking for accommodation. And we need to make sure you stay out of the way.’
‘Oh.’ Julius was a little stung.
She put her arms around him.
‘I didn’t mean that like it sounded. If my dad thinks there’s a guy involved, he’ll drag me back home by the scruff of my neck. Give it a few weeks. Then I can casually mention you. Maybe you could come to New England for Christmas!’
Julius nodded, not a little daunted by the plan. It was all going a bit too fast for him. He had, after all, only met her the day before, and she had turned her whole life upside down on the basis of one night together. Yet he had to agree: the attraction between them was undeniable. He was enchanted by her; she was besotted with him. It was physical and mental and spiritual. All-consuming and intoxicating. He was secretly delighted by her nerve. He was fairly sure he wouldn’t have the same mettle. He, after all, had nothing to lose by going along with her plan.
By the time Rebecca’s father arrived the following Thursday and checked into the Randolph, Rebecca had persuaded Julius’s manager to give her a part-time job in the shop. On her first day of work there, she sorted through all the miscellaneous boxes of old books in the stockroom and either returned them or put them out on the shelves, a job no one ever wanted to do.
And she had worked her way through the colleges and grilled several of the admissions tutors as to the likelihood of her getting a place to study. She came back with a sheaf of past papers to revise with. She had less than two months to get up to speed for the entrance exam.
Julius was impressed. When this girl wanted something, she went all out to get it.
‘I knew my life was going to change as soon as I met you,’ she told him. ‘This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. I can’t believe I could be packing to go to the most boring college on the planet right now.’
When Julius answered the door to her after her visit to her father, he didn’t recognise her. She was dressed in a pair of grey trousers (‘pants’) and a white blouse, her hair parted in the middle and tied back in a neat ponytail. She burst out laughing when she saw his puzzled face.
She pulled her hair out of its band and started to undo her shirt as she pushed her way past him and headed up the stairs.
‘He thinks I’m a genius,’ she told Julius. ‘We walked around all his old haunts and he’s totally fallen back in love with Oxford. And it will be such a status symbol – none of his friends will have a daughter at college in England. He’s paying my rent, and my fees if I get in. I have to go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter. That’s the deal. It’s a small price to pay.’
The two of them fell back onto the rumpled sheets, laughing in delight, at each other and the thrill of her new adventure. Julius couldn’t resist Rebecca’s enthusiasm or her guile or her body. There was a tiny little voice that warned him to be careful, but as he raked his fingers through her red hair to mess it up again, and ran his mouth over her small, round breasts, it was easy to ignore it. He was older and wiser than she. He could manage her.
Couldn’t he? Julius knew this was something different; attraction on another scale to anything he had experienced before. Was it infatuation, he wondered, or would it become true love? And if so, which kind? Love, he knew from books, was not always a force for good, but he would do his best to make his so.
Yet he had a feeling Rebecca would not be able to control her feelings in the same way he could. She was far more passionate and impetuous. In just a short time, he could see she was a little bit of a fly-by-night, and the last thing you did with fly-by-nights was try to pin them down. He would give her his heart, and her head.
In the meantime, he showed her more of her new world. It was wonderful, rediscovering Oxford through someone else’s eyes. He’d been there over four years now, and he’d stopped seeing the beauty and the wonder in quite the same way. He’d begun to assume everyone lived in a cosy bubble of cobbles and cloisters and grassy greens and bicycles. But he was fiercely proud of it, and showing Rebecca the landmarks made him realise why he had been dragging his feet, how he hadn’t wanted to make a decision about his future in case it involved leaving Oxford, and now he didn’t have to.
He showed her his room in his old college, and she gasped at its antiquity and its rudimentary facilities and the fact it was straight out of Brideshead Revisited.
‘Where is your teddy bear?’ she demanded, laughing.
‘I promise you: I couldn’t be less like Sebastian Flyte. There’s no stately home to take you back to.’