In leaving the cut and thrust of chair sales and becoming an undergraduate, Lucy entered another sort of No Man’s Land that was not altogether unattractive. She had made no lasting friendships in the office and her new youthful companions at King’s were broadly interested in drinking and running through the preliminary stages of an emotional crisis that would probably flower in the second year. This was familiar, uninviting territory. And so, in her first year studying English, aged twenty-five, Lucy found herself between a life she had left behind and a future that was yet to find a shape.
Lucy did retain, however, a small link with her past. It presented itself one morning when she was walking down High Holborn. Among the bobbing heads she caught sight of blonde hair and a stare of enquiry that turned rapidly into recognition. It was Cathy Glenton, a girl Lucy had known at Cambridge. She was one of the few people with whom Lucy had found any affinity. Their mutual attraction appeared to lie in sheer difference. Cathy was effortlessly brilliant and endowed with generalised talent, more like a machine that smoothly went to work on any activity she cared to assume. Between hot-air ballooning and acting in the drama club she discharged high marks in all her papers. She ate what she liked without putting on weight. She had it all, including a sublime boyfriend called Vincent. Even misfortune seemed toothless before Cathy’s exuberance. Shortly into her first year she had had an accident in a drunken bicycle race, striking a pot-hole on a narrow bridge over Hobson’s Brook, flying off her bike and landing on the railings, cutting her hands and face. She had been left with an almost insignificant scar, more of a twisting in the skin, situated upon her left cheek. For anyone else such an outcome would have teetered on the edge of psychological importance. But not for Cathy She couldn’t have cared less. When Lucy met her in High Holborn she noted the subtle presence of pink foundation, something Cathy had never used, and wondered why it should be needed now. After the preliminaries and the truncated histories, Lucy said, ‘Still ballooning?’
‘Nope.’
‘Acting?’
‘Nope.’
‘How’s Vincent?’
‘Gone with the wind.’
‘Oh.’
‘Just work. Nothing but bloody work. And Turkish baths for pleasure.’
‘Turkish baths?’
‘Every week,’ she laughed.
Cathy had gone into advertising, thinking up clever ways to persuade people that they wanted what they didn’t really need. ‘I’m a sorcerer,’ she said. They exchanged numbers and thereafter each of them lurched for the phone every once in a while. They met, had a laugh and parted without planning another meeting, which somehow felt right. For different reasons they were both alone, crossing different fields.