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CHAPTER ONE
October 2013
i.

Marina and I met during our first term at Northam: a tiny elite university in rural England. At that stage I had been living on the campus for about three weeks, and I felt like I was on the brink of insanity. If that sounds flippant, narcissistic or entitled – good. I was eighteen years old. I was angry all the time and I hated university. Everything about it had fallen short of my expectations, from my room (which was small and dusty) to the nearby city (dull) to my teachers (likewise) to my floormates (shrill or condescending, often both). My course was limited in scope, heavy in reading, and there was a snippy, competitive atmosphere among my classmates which prevented us from becoming friends.

That last point I found especially disheartening. I had grown up in a small town with hardly any people in it – I had few friends, no siblings and my parents were antisocial – and I saw university as the point at which my life would really begin. There I would finally meet people who spoke the same language that I did. I would meet a group of people with conflicting opinions. I would have my mind wrenched open, would stretch my perceptions beyond what I had been taught, and I would learn – really learn – how other people saw things.

In reality everything was the same. The existing hierarchies and prejudices remained intact behind a screen of diversity. Conversations were either flat or gratingly pretentious. Everyone spoke about irrelevant topics in a language that I didn’t understand, and dismissed my contributions with a load of obscure statistics.

I’d told myself that I wouldn’t start drinking alone, but with that form of self-medication out of the window, there seemed only one good option left. I grabbed my laptop from my desk. I sat on my bed in my cold, damp room. For hours on end, I scrolled down my newsfeed.

The autumn of 2013 was the moment of the social media boom. True, certain giants had established themselves earlier in the millennium – by the time the iPhone came out in 2007, Facebook and Google were already a daily ritual. But in 2013 the market suddenly exploded, and a flurry of new apps and features arrived to steal your attention. The result of this – especially if you were a university student with little to do during the day – was that you were constantly glued to your devices.

I was no exception obviously. I had the full English: Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc – and my eyes were permanently locked to a screen. Sometimes this would mean that I was doing something productive (reading an article, writing an email) but mostly I was watching the digital lives of others. I was reading their statuses. I was reading their wall posts. I was studying their photographs, even the ones they weren’t tagged in. I was analysing their social lives in microscopic detail, tracing through their friend networks to see who their good-looking friends were going out with, what their interests were, what their cousin’s ex-partners looked like now.

When I did this time would soften and dissolve, so that I eventually forgot that it was passing. My surroundings would disappear. Then my sense of physical boundaries: having skin; a body. All that I would eventually become conscious of was the white rectangular heat of the laptop light on my face and the cold sensation of plastic or glass under my fingers. I would spiral from Facebook to Instagram to Twitter, back to Facebook, across to Instagram, looping and circling around again, refreshing the page impatiently, impatiently refreshing it again, rearranging the tabs, clicking on clicking off, tapping on tapping off, tapping back on and spinning back around again until some instinct caused me to wrench my eyes away and – stop. I was concerned by how much time I spent doing this, but I was also aware that there was a kind of satisfying fluidity to it. The Internet felt like a space which I could navigate freely.

Needless to say, I hardly posted anything on my own profile. That wasn’t the point. The point was that I could watch what other people were doing. I could watch my new peers. In this way it acted as a kind of sedative, a dose of virtual sugar, a way to fill my head with fug and so distract myself from reality. I could roll the mouse down my newsfeed for hours, and the photographs, the witty comments and the tags would keep coming. It was a numbing distraction, like watching a film or reading a novel.

But there was also a weird element of inclusion to it. Looking at those lives onscreen – I didn’t feel excluded in a way that I did from the people around me, or from the narratives I read or watched on TV. There was something interactive about watching social media conversations. I felt – perhaps because I could control exactly what I saw next – that I could become part of their lives. I felt that there, on the Internet, I was in the midst of a picturesque youth.

I mention all this because in the context of such a culture, obviously I knew about Marina before I met her face-to-face. I discovered her on my course Facebook group. The group was something that one of the university admins had invited us all to join in the weeks before the start of term, ostensibly so that ‘general files’ such as the reading list could be found in a convenient place. This was the official line. The tacit agreement was that these groups were for the purpose of Facebook stalking. They were a preview into the lives of potential friends.

What was therefore surprising was not that I knew who Marina was before meeting her, but that I didn’t know more about her. Her profile gave little away: I was surprised to see no cover photo, and no listed interests. All that I could ascertain from the small icon of the profile picture was that she had a curtain of blonde hair and a petite frame. She was leaning against a car with her head twisted sideways, her back turned towards the camera.

It was for this reason, I think, that Marina stuck in my mind. She had the sort of filtered virtual aura which suggested she was glamorous, and it was heightened by the fact that her profile was so private. She seemed to be above the boastful social media culture, to care little about it and – in being that way inclined – exuded a sophistication which I envied. To put it bluntly, she was the kind of friend I wanted to have.

It would be wrong to give the idea that I was desperate for company. I wasn’t always alone. There were often people I could spend time with at Northam, and I was fine at cementing rapport individually if I tried. But groups of people made me uncomfortable. Somehow I felt lonelier among them than I did on my own.

Probably this was due to my upbringing. I was an only child, and had been homeschooled for a few years before my A levels. In that time I had established a sense of independence that made me feel – naively – that I was in control of my existence. My tutor was a complete pushover, and my parents preferred to defer teenage-patrol duties to her than try to control me themselves. The result was that I ran riot and no one noticed. It was blissful.

Returning to school at sixteen was naturally a shock. I couldn’t believe that I’d have to adhere to a social order that I hadn’t devised myself. I couldn’t believe that I’d have to turn up on time, or pretend like I cared about other people’s small-talk problems. But in the short-term, I also wanted to fit in – so I put on a mask of cool politeness and feigned interest in whatever they said. People said I was polite. Really I found them boring.

I hoped that there would come a time where I wouldn’t be feigning interest. I looked forward to a future where I would be able to have conversations with people – one-on-one – that were conversations I actually wanted to have.

There was something in that glimpse of Marina that made me think that she would understand this position. I felt that she was set apart from others – that she didn’t live according to their customs. She, like me, could perhaps manipulate her face to seem interested in conversations that she didn’t really care about. She, like me, perhaps made hilariously sarcastic asides that other people didn’t pick up on. I was interested in seeing whether she lived up to this expectation and – if so – what her real thoughts and ideas were. So that’s why I looked out for her in those first few weeks of term. That’s why I made a note of her Facebook page, added it to my bookmarks, checked it every day.

In the initial seminars and lectures, I also kept an eye out for Marina. I would shuffle into the theatre, waiting for others to pass, eagerly noting whenever someone blonde or slight or vaguely short walked by. But it was never her. On a second glance I’d notice that they were in fact too tall, or their legs too stumpy; otherwise I’d glimpse a notebook and see a different name scrawled on the front. Soon I began to assume that ‘Marina’ had decided not to come to Northam after all. She must have received another offer from somewhere else at the last minute – or she’d been added to the group by mistake.

The days sloped by. I went to lectures and then retreated to my room. I looked at what other people were doing online and felt depressed about my state of isolation. Nothing, it seemed, was going to make me happy, to subdue that swell of anxiety – the suspicion that I was wasting my potential.

ii.

It was a Wednesday when it happened, that much I remember. I was feeling groggy that day, having spent the previous evening at a fresher’s event, and then in my room with some random guy whose name I have thankfully forgotten. At around two in the afternoon – unable to bear the stale smell of salt-sweat any longer – I decided to go to a lecture. I showered, dressed, left my building, crossed the campus, and then sat down in the corner of the theatre. The lecture itself was uninteresting. I sat through it passively; looking at the clock; glancing at my phone under the desk; scribbling notes for show.

When it had finished I walked down towards the exit. I was about to leave when I heard the voice of the professor: ‘That’s not quite how it works, Marina.’

Slowly I turned my head.

A girl of about five foot six was stood at the lectern. Her back was turned, but I could see that she had long blonde hair, slightly curled at the ends. Her head was cocked to the side. Now it shook vehemently.

‘I’m sorry, I know how it sounds,’ the professor continued, ‘but my hands are tied.’

‘Hands tied how?’

‘This isn’t suitable for discussion now.’

‘Hands tied how?’ she said again.

He lifted his head and looked cautiously around. His glasses tilted up from the end of his nose.

‘If you’ve already transferred to a different subject,’ he said, ‘then you can’t transfer back. That’s all there is to it, I can’t help you.’

I looked at the professor closely for a moment. He was a man of about sixty, with a protruding stomach and a sweaty flat face like a coin. Usually he wore an ironic expression – raised brow, curled lip, a smug glint in his eye. Yet his features seemed to have lost their composure. His mouth moved with sudden jerks, his eyebrows twitched; below them his eyes looked hollow and unfocused. He seemed unnerved by the girl in front of him – the girl whose face I couldn’t see, whose words I couldn’t quite hear.

I edged forwards, pretending to pack files into my bag.

‘You can help me. Of course you can. You’re the course convenor.’

‘No. It’s not that simple.’

‘Why?’

‘I shouldn’t have to explain.’

‘You’re a lecturer. It’s your job to explain. And anyway,’ she shrugged slightly, ‘I deserve an explanation. You of all people know that.’

The professor laughed in a forced, shallow manner: lightly at the back of his throat. The sound echoed around the room. I watched him push a hand through patchy hair, embarrassed and smiling. Then he glanced around again and caught my eye. At that moment his expression shifted: his features stabilized, became authoritative, patient, ironic.

‘Well I’ve said all that I can tell you,’ the professor’s voice was now resonant and calm. ‘Which is, that if you have any concerns then they should be sent to me in an email, copying in the head of department.’

Marina began to object, but before she could trap him in further conversation he cut her off, muttering darkly about pressing engagements. He gathered his papers together and lifted his overcoat onto his back. Then he smiled tersely at her, at me, and shuffled out the door.

Marina bent down to pick up her satchel from the floor and swung it over her shoulder. Then she sighed theatrically and turned around – and I saw her face for the first time.

It was slimmer than I’d expected, with high cheekbones and a slightly pointed chin. Those sharp shapes, mixed with her snub little nose, gave her an almost goblin-like appearance, and yet they were balanced out by a smattering of freckles and a full, bow-like mouth. Now, even though she was frowning – her brow furrowed, her mouth knitted into a downwards curve – the expression was childish somehow. There was an air of innocence, of mischief about her.

As she walked past me, she looked right into my face and her frown deepened.

Her eyes were green, I noticed, with small flecks of gold in them.

Alone in the lecture hall I reflected on the confrontation I’d just seen. Marina’s blunt manner amazed me. At school, those who engaged in backchat with the teachers were mostly layabouts without much wit, whose interjections consistently fell short of the mark. I’d often felt a prudish satisfaction watching their snark dissolve into humiliated silence: the corners of their mouths drooping, their eyes turning to the table.

With Marina it wasn’t like that. She seemed not only to be tolerated but respected by the professor. His reaction had not been reproachful or even impatient, but nervous. It was as though he suspected that she had the power to publicly humiliate him in some way. He had solicited her approval even while he was rebuking her.