The Girl Before You. Nicola Rayner

had asked after they’d gone.

      ‘What girls?’ George asked, but then he’d seen Dan and bellowed a greeting at him. And that was that.

      He and Dan were inseparable. They’d come up to St Anthony’s from Eton together with Teddy and a couple of others – a gang with a point to prove, perhaps, having not made it into Oxbridge. Alice had always been quite envious of the way George had started with a ready-made group. But of all his friends, Dan had been George’s closest. They made a funny pair – Dan was tall, slim and silent, George stout and loquacious. Dan’s looks would draw the girls to them but George’s charm would make them stay.

      Alice had always liked George the most. A little shy herself, she’d found it hard to know what to say to Dan and he never gave much back. Whenever George popped to the bar and left them alone, Alice would find herself tongue-tied, unsure how to interact with Dan on her own. The thing was, she thinks now, it seemed that a part of him enjoyed how uneasy she was, as if it were a game.

      When George came back from the bar, he’d say, ‘How are you chaps getting along?’

      And once, Dan had said, ‘Oh, we’re getting along famously.’ It was a little piece of nastiness that only Alice could appreciate.

      Another time, they’d gone out dancing and Alice, after a tipple too many, started mucking around with a pole, swinging around it sexily and giggling at George as she did.

      George had grinned and blown her a kiss, but he’d been distracted by the time she returned to the table.

      ‘Great dancing,’ Dan had said in a tone that implied he meant quite the opposite. ‘Really sexy.’

      Once or twice, when George was in one of his tender moods, in bed perhaps or after a few glasses of wine, Alice might ask: ‘Does Dan like me?’

      And George would look completely puzzled and say: ‘Of course, you silly thing. Why would you ask a question like that?’

      But it didn’t matter what he said, because Alice always knew, deep down, that Dan didn’t – that he’d never thought Alice was good enough for George. Maybe it was that she’d gone to a state school, or that her family didn’t have as much money as George’s; maybe it was that she didn’t have George’s natural wit, or the confidence of the people who’d grown up in the same social circles as the Etonians. Maybe, she thought on some days, it was because Dan had been in love with George.

      She blinks at the laptop screen. No, that was ridiculous. Dan had liked girls. Of course, he had.

      But there had been such a strong connection between them, as if they shared some kind of secret. Maybe even a secret related to Ruth Walker – to why she might have hated George enough to shout at him, to leave a room when he entered. Alice sighs. She’s not going to be able to concentrate on anything else unless she does some digging. She picks up her laptop and heads to George’s study.

       Kat

       October 1999

      Dressed in black, Kat smudges her lipstick on her third cigarette. The rush of nicotine makes her feel light-headed, insubstantial. She had been so full of hope for university – had had a rather precise idea about the kind of life she was going to lead. That was why she had picked this wild town on the edge of Britain over a civilised place like London. She had packed a couple of bottles of champagne, nicked from her father’s wine cellar, and cigarettes and the Collected Works of Dorothy Parker – but she had been greeted at the gates by the freshers’ rep, a pale, gangly boy with wispy hair that stuck out in different directions. Not fanciable at all.

      She could tell he wasn’t used to girls like Kat – not used to girls full stop – and it hadn’t taken much to make him blush into his tea, make his excuses and scuttle off back to his dusty textbooks. Kat had never been one for making an effort with people she couldn’t see the point of. It was something she had inherited from her father. Not a nice trait, she realised, but then her father wasn’t a very nice man.

      But if she liked someone, it was another matter entirely, as if a light bulb had been switched on. It had been like that the other night in what passed for this town’s only nightclub. She’d met him a few drinks in, so she couldn’t remember exactly how things had started. There she had been, waiting by the bar, and he seemed to have appeared beside her. Messy hair, dark eyes, low voice. Soothing to be around, a measured way of speaking and holding himself. And she had felt a kind of certainty, a kind of excitement.

      And admittedly, she’d had five, or maybe six, vodka cranberries at that stage, so the certainty could have just been an epiphany created by booze and a handsome face. But then she had woken up the next day early and surprisingly clear-headed, sure that something important had begun, and a couple of days later the feeling had barely shifted.

      No one she’d asked knew who he was. It didn’t help that she couldn’t remember his name. He was a second year – she recalled that much – and he played the guitar in a band and could quote Dorothy Parker.

      And now, at this party, there he is again and Kat, who is never nervous, is experiencing a fluttering feeling in her limbs. Strange how liking someone can distil into a single detail: the smell of his cologne, the feeling of his arm under your hand, the sound of his laugh. With this guy it’s his voice – low and calming – she can catch the cadence of it from where she is standing. He’s talking to a small bloke next to him, with a keen, ratty face. Kat looks at him steadily, waiting for him to glance at her in return so she can smile, or look away, and let it all begin.

      But he doesn’t look at her, because he’s looking at someone else.

      Kat has seen the girl before at other freshers’ events. She is wearing a long white dress – a bold choice for a redhead and a touch virginal for Kat’s tastes. There’s something knowingly Pre-Raphaelite about the combination. It calls to mind paintings of tragic heroines, tresses weighed heavy with water and flowers. Still, she has a lively, likeable face, but then, thinks Kat, putting out her cigarette and straightening her dress, before making her way to the messy-haired guy, so does she.

      ‘Hello again,’ she says.

      ‘Kat, isn’t it?’ he smiles. ‘This is Jerry.’ He jerks a thumb at the boy he’s standing next to.

      ‘Richard’s in love,’ says Jerry.

      Richard. That was it. Kat tries to smile again and looks over at the redhead.

      ‘Shut up, Jerry.’ Richard stops looking at the girl and turns to Kat.

      ‘You can’t take your eyes off her.’ Jerry’s mouth twitches. ‘You know what they say about redheads?’

      Kat doesn’t believe for a second that this boy knows anything about redheads – or girls, for that matter. The three of them watch as the girl lights her cigarette in a knowing way and makes her way to the drinks table.

      ‘Go and talk to her,’ Kat says quickly to Richard.

      She doesn’t want him to – of course, she doesn’t want him to – but she will never be one of those women. A memory of her mother hovering around her father pops into her head – who holds onto a man’s sleeve, who begs him to stay.

      Richard bites his lip. ‘Maybe later,’ he says quietly. ‘How are you?’

      ‘When you like someone, you should just try,’ says Kat, ignoring the question, aware of the irony. ‘Just say hello.’

      He smiles. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ He touches her arm to excuse himself. ‘Wish me luck.’

      Kat watches Richard as he picks his way across the room. At one point, stuck behind a tight cluster of maths students who won’t make way for him, he glances back at Kat with what looks like a question in his eyes. She smiles brightly and gives him a thumbs-up. As he reaches the drinks table, the redhead is standing with her back to him, which