The Art of Losing. Rebecca Connell

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      The next night Lydia stands in the porter’s lodge at Lincoln College, shivering in her thin coat. It’s raining again, and she has been sheltering in the lodge for almost quarter of an hour. When she arrived, she sent Adam a text message: ‘By the entrance to your college. I don’t know where your room is – come down and meet me if you like.’ She knows she should have called him, but when it came to it, she couldn’t face the possibility of hearing his voice turn distant and unfriendly, regretting the invitation. Cursing herself, she hugs her arms around her chest, shifting from foot to foot. This is ridiculous, but she can’t face turning round and going back out into the cold, hailing a taxi and spending another night alone with Sandra’s television blaring downstairs.

      Suddenly she hears a commotion across the quad. Peering into the dark, she can just make out a figure running towards her, feet pounding wetly on stone. Part of her already knows, but it’s only when he passes under a solitary floodlight that she sees it is Adam. He runs into the lodge and envelops her in a sudden hug, crushing her against him. He’s brought the smell of the rain with him – damp grass and the faint, musty scent of earth. In the fuzzy half-light of the lodge, Lydia looks into his eyes and feels dizzy.

      ‘Sorry,’ he gasps, panting from his exertions. ‘I had some music on and didn’t hear my phone, I only just got your text. Have you been waiting ages?’

      ‘Not at all,’ she lies, smiling radiantly. ‘Am I late?’

      ‘Not at all,’ he says in turn. ‘Come with me.’

      They run back across the quad together in the dark, hand in hand, her unreliable high heels slipping and sliding along the rain-washed stone. By the time they reach the other side her hair is soaked and plastered to her scalp. Laughing, she wrings it out as she hurries up the staircase after Adam. They climb several flights of stairs, each one winding closer and tighter than the last. He has an attic room too, she thinks, and feels stupidly pleased at the note of similarity. When they near the door she hears the music thumping behind it, and the shouts and screeches of laughter tumbling over each other from what sounds like a dozen or more voices. She freezes; she isn’t used to this. She had vaguely imagined a select group of Oxford students, sitting sedately around a bottle of wine and talking about literature, but this sounds more like a lunatic asylum. Adam sees her apprehension and grins, steering her towards the door.

      ‘Don’t worry, no one’s that pissed yet,’ he says. His words have the opposite effect of their calming intention on Lydia, who finds it hard to envisage the carnage that could come later. Numbly she allows herself to be shepherded through the door and into the bedroom. People are draped over the bed and chairs, lounging on the floor and perched on the windowsill. A couple are smoking a joint out of the window, deep in animated conversation. Others are bellowing along to the thrash metal track that is blaring from the stereo, so absorbed in it that they don’t even turn round. A couple of girls shout Adam’s name drunkenly, beaming red-lipsticked smiles and raising their arms to the air in delight. She recognises one of them as Carla, the Latin-looking girl in the club. As they approach Carla points at her and smiles again, her dark eyes half closing in recognition.