has the reverential atmosphere of a cathedral â itâs a place so serene and cerebral your IQ goes up by a few points simply by entering the building.
Inside, I unpack the
Buongiorno Italia!
books I happen to have on me, feeling intensely ridiculous. OK, so ⦠wow, for a romantic language, this is harder work than I imagined. After ten minutes of intransitive verbs Iâm feeling pretty intransitive myself. Letâs try social Italian:
Booking a room ⦠Making introductions
⦠and my mindâs already wandering â¦
Ben knocked on my door bright and early on the first day of lectures, though not bright and early enough to pre-empt Caroline, whoâs the one to call the lark a feathered layabout. I was anxiously turning my face a Scottish heather/English sunburn hue with a huge blusher brush, pouting into the tiny mirror nailed over my sink. Caroline stretched her flamingo legs out on my bed, cradling a vast quantity of tea in a Cup-a-Soup mug. It was a relief to discover that the girls in my halls of residence werenât the demented, experienced, highly sexed party animals of my nightmares, but other nervous, homesick, excited teenagers, all dropped off with aid parcels of home comforts.
âWhoâs calling for you again?â Caroline asked.
âSomeone on my course. He gave me my ID card.â
âHe? Is he nice?â
âHe seems very nice,â I said, without thinking.
â
Nice
nice?â
I debated whether to oblige her. Weâd only been friends for a week and although she seemed sound, I didnât want to abruptly discover otherwise when she started yodelling â
My friend fancies yooooooo!
â across the union.
âHeâs quite nice, yeah,â I said, with more take-it-or-leave-it insouciance.
âHow nice?â
âAcceptable.â
âI suppose I canât expect you to do thorough reconnaissance,â Caroline says, looking at the photo of me with Rhys on my desk.
It was taken in the pub, both squeezed into the frame while I held the camera above us. Our heads were leant against each other â his tangly black hair merging with my straight brown hair so it was hard to tell where he ended and I began.
Rhys and Rachel
.
Rachel and Rhys
. We alliterated, it was obviously meant to be. Iâd daydreamed the two intertwined âRsâ weâd have on our trendy wedding stationery invites, and wouldâve put a firearm to my temple if he found out.
I glanced over at it too and felt a small tremor. Things were new and passionate, and unstable, like new and passionate things usually are, and we were forty miles apart. Iâd been so elated when heâd said he wanted us to keep seeing each other.
Weâd met a few months previously at my local. I used to go with my friends from sixth-form and weâd all sit with pints of snakebite and black and make moony eyes at the cool lads in a local band. They even had cars and jobs, their few extra years in age representing a chasm of worldly experience and maturity. This hero worship had gone on from afar for a long time. They were never short of female company and clearly content to keep a gaggle of schoolgirl groupies at armâs length. Then one night I inadvertently found myself in a two-player game of call-and-reply on the jukebox. Every time I put a song on, Rhysâs selection straight after would pick up on the title. If I chose âBlue Mondayâ heâd get up and play âTrue Blueâ and so on. (Rhys was in his ironic cheese phase. Shame it was long over by the time we really were planning our wedding.)
Eventually, after a lot of giggling, whispering and twenty-pence pieces, Rhys strode casually over to my table.
âA woman of your taste deserves to be bought a drink.â
In a moment of sangfroid Iâve never since equalled, I found the words: âA man of your taste deserves to pay.â
My friends gasped, Rhys laughed, I had