The Girl Before You. Nicola Rayner

and starts to climb, her DMs clopping against the wooden stairs, a dripping train in her wake. They climb one flight then another. Kat starts to sweat.

      ‘Nearly there,’ Ruth gasps as they climb the fifth flight. ‘I start to feel the cigarettes right about now.’

      They reach a cramped landing, which can barely fit both of them on it at the same time. The door to the room is small, too. Kat feels like Alice in Wonderland as she stoops. The room is, indeed, tiny with the bed high above on a raised platform, with a wooden ladder cut into it. Ruth has hung red drapes on all the walls and lit the room with fairy lights so that it feels like an enchanted cavern. There are piles of books in every corner and ashtrays balancing on the piles.

      ‘Come into my lair,’ grins Ruth. ‘Now, I’ve got Tia Maria or … no, actually, just Tia Maria. Will that do?’ She starts sloshing the dark liquid into mugs before Kat has a chance to reply, then flops on a beanbag on the floor, gesturing opposite her for Kat. ‘So,’ she says. ‘Who do you fancy?’

      ‘Just come out and ask,’ laughs Kat. ‘Don’t hold back.’ But she likes Ruth’s frankness. She takes a sip of Tia Maria and feels the heat of it spread across her chest.

      ‘I fancy George,’ declares Ruth.

      Kat nods, lights a cigarette. ‘He’s got quite the reputation.’

      ‘Doesn’t he just!’ says Ruth gleefully. ‘How about you?’

      Kat thinks of Richard, she thinks of the way he looked at Ruth, and she finds she doesn’t want to draw Ruth’s attention to him.

      ‘I’m not sure yet.’ She flicks the ash off the end of her cigarette. ‘I got burned by a guy on my gap year,’ she says instead. She glances down at her chipped nail polish. ‘There was this married man. He shagged me, of course, but he wouldn’t leave his wife.’ She laughs. ‘I’m told they never do.’

      She’s found that anecdote usually shuts up other freshers. It’s a sort of test. But Ruth looks captivated.

      ‘Have you slept with many people?’

      ‘A few.’ Kat takes another sip of Tia Maria. ‘How about you?’

      Ruth takes a deep breath. ‘Not one.’ She leans forwards. ‘Do you think it matters? Do you think they mind?’

      Kat picks at a bit of grime on her mug. Ruth doesn’t seem to have any sort of filter. ‘God, no,’ she smiles, though in truth the confession was not quite what she was expecting from someone so theatrical. ‘They love it. Being able to show off.’

      Ruth adds: ‘I was waiting …’

      ‘You’re Christian?’ Kat gives her a withering look and then tries to hide it.

      ‘No, oh God, no.’ Ruth hesitates. ‘I was waiting for my Big Love.’

      ‘Oh,’ says Kat. It’s not what she was expecting. ‘Your Big Love?’ she repeats. ‘I like that. Me too – I mean, it’s too late to save myself, but I’m waiting for a Big Love, too.’ Maybe she’s found that in Richard. She smiles. ‘You look like Ophelia.’

      ‘I’m not as mad,’ Ruth grins. ‘Not yet. But if I stay in this bloody freezing dress for much longer, I will be.’

      She gets to her feet and starts to pull the dress over her head. Kat, who grew up as an only child in a non-naked house, isn’t used to this sort of stripping. In front of guys, sure, but not like this: staggering around the room with your DMs on. She gets up to help.

      ‘Are you stuck?’

      The dress is made of heavy cheesecloth and it takes an effort to get it off. When it finally gives, Ruth pops out from it like a cork. She flings the offending item down on the floor. Without the armour of clothes, she looks thin and very pale in her black bra and pants.

      ‘Sorry about that.’ She starts to hunt for her dressing gown, which she finds in a crumpled heap in the corner by her sink. ‘Where are you from?’

      ‘London,’ says Kat. ‘How about you?’

      ‘Haverfordwest.’ Ruth’s mouth shapes itself around the consonants.

      ‘I know that place.’

      Ruth laughs. ‘Everyone says that.’

      ‘I went there when I was eight and it rained.’

      ‘Yes,’ says Ruth, lighting a cigarette. ‘Everyone says that, too.’

      ‘What were you like as a kid?’ asks Kat. ‘I bet you looked like Anne of Green Gables.’

      ‘Ha! I did,’ says Ruth. ‘With the same temper.’

      ‘I don’t believe that,’ says Kat politely.

      ‘I guess you haven’t known me very long,’ says Ruth, trying to blow smoke rings. ‘I broke my sister’s arm once when we were little.’

      ‘What for?’

      ‘I thought she was cheating. At Grandmother’s Footsteps.’

      ‘Well, it sounds as though she deserved it,’ Kat laughs.

      ‘No,’ says Ruth, suddenly serious. She grinds her cigarette out, gets up to deal with her dress in the sink. ‘It was the most terrible thing I’ve done. She screamed and screamed. It was awful; I couldn’t make her stop. My mother said: “What have you done to your sister?” She shook me so hard, and all the time Naomi’s face was scrunched up and muddy from where I’d pushed her over. And I was still angry with her for screaming so loud. For bringing my mum over. I didn’t know whether to comfort her or push her over again.’ She pauses to hang the dress up on a coat hanger. ‘So I ran away and hid for hours in our treehouse.’

      ‘Ah.’ Kat isn’t sure how to respond to this story. ‘You were just a little girl.’

      ‘Sure,’ says Ruth dismissively. ‘But, you know, the worst thing is: I actually meant to hurt her. And then it was so dreadful when I did.’ She sighs. ‘She was such a good little girl, as if she felt she had to make up for all my naughtiness.’ She is quiet for a moment. ‘I don’t feel about anyone in the universe like I do my sister. Have you got siblings?’

      ‘No.’ Kat thinks of her mum’s quiet flat with just the cats for company. ‘But I have a couple of younger cousins.’

      ‘So you know what it’s like then?’ says Ruth, not unkindly.

      Kat nods, but she isn’t sure that she does. Not really. ‘Why did you choose St Anthony’s?’ she asks.

      ‘I like places on the edge of the world,’ says Ruth, gesturing theatrically. ‘All the universities I applied to – St Andrews, Edinburgh, Exeter – were near the sea. I grew up on the coast. Being by water always makes things better.’ She takes a breath. ‘How about you?’

      Kat takes a gulp of Tia Maria. ‘Mainly to get away from my mother.’

      Ruth looks at her for a moment and then roars with laughter, leaning over to clink her mug to Kat’s. ‘Amen to that. I mean, I love my mum, but …’

      ‘I know,’ says Kat darkly.

      ‘My mum gets sad,’ says Ruth, getting up to put on some music. ‘We grew up in a hotel and there were days when she wouldn’t want to serve the customers. Not that I blame her for that. Or days when she wouldn’t leave her bedroom, where she would sit at the window for hours and look at the sea.’

      ‘Yes, my mum’s depressive too,’ says Kat. She hates thinking about her mother, especially these days: the way the antidepressants had bloated her, taken off her edges.

      ‘My mum’s father – my grandfather – walked into the sea one day and never came back,’ Ruth says matter-of-factly as Kate Bush begins to sing. ‘My sister and I nearly got lost at sea once, too,’ she adds, swaying slowly to the music. ‘But