One Secret Summer (6 page)

‘Bad luck losing your way like that on your first day.’ Someone spoke to her as they made their way out of the seminar room
an hour later.

Julia turned. It was the tall, thin young man with a prominent Adam’s apple whom she’d noticed sitting at the front of the
class. She looked at him warily. ‘Should’ve looked it up on the map last night,’ she said tightly. ‘My own bloody fault.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it,’ he said airily, quickly. ‘Everyone misses something in the first couple of weeks. I’m Dominic,
by the way.’ He held out a hand. ‘But do call me Dom.’

Julia hesitated. The five other students in the class had rushed ahead, chatting excitedly. They all seemed to know one another,
although she couldn’t understand how that was possible. They’d been at Oxford less than a weekend. No one had even bothered
glancing her way, except for that awful pompous bloke she’d met the night before, and then it was only to say something sarcastic,
so why did this Dominic – Dom – seem to want to
have anything to do with her? But her manners got the better of her and she reluctantly held out her hand. ‘I’m Julia.’

‘I know. Munro called out the names this morning and you were the only one not there.’

‘Oh, go on … rub in it, why don’t you?’ Julia asked sharply and then regretted it as soon as she’d spoken. She was being defensive,
as usual. There was just the faintest possibility he was only trying to be kind.

Dom’s eyebrows rose in mild protest. ‘I wasn’t. I was just intrigued as to who you might be, that’s all. I know most of the
others on the course. We were all undergrads together,’ he said, pointing to the group of students ahead of them. ‘Except
Keeler, of course. He’s a bit older but his younger brother was in my class at school.’

‘Who’s Keeler?’

‘Aaron. The blonde guy. Sitting next to you. The one you kept throwing hateful glances at.’

Julia flushed crimson. ‘He … he was rude. About me being late,’ she said weakly. ‘He’s just so … so bloody arrogant.’

‘Ah, yes. Well, comes with the territory. Good looks, famous mother, place at Oxford practically guaranteed … I’d probably
be just as pompous. He takes a bit of getting used to but he’s all right really, underneath it all. I blame his mother, personally.’
Julia looked up at him again. There was something odd about his cheery voice. Was he envious, perhaps? She couldn’t yet tell.
And who was Keeler’s mother?

‘Who’s his mother?’ she asked.

‘Diana Pryce. Can’t you tell?’

Julia looked at him incredulously. Diana Pryce? Diana Pryce was that man’s
mother
? She remembered the day she’d first seen Diana Pryce on television. She was a lawyer, a QC, if Julia’s memory served her
right. She’d campaigned for the release of two hunger-striking Irish political prisoners for years without a glimmer of hope,
and then all of a sudden, in a flurry of publicity, their convictions had been overturned. She’d watched the proceedings every
night for a week, sitting beside her father.
‘Damn fine woman that,’ Mike had said admiringly. ‘She never gave up. That’s something to be proud of, Julia. Never give up.’
Julia remembered staring at the fuzzy image of an immaculately dressed woman in high heels holding tightly on to the arm of
one of the prisoners, whose emaciated face bore the dazed look of someone whose life had been turned upside down. She shook
her head disbelievingly. Diana Pryce was Aaron Keeler’s mother? ‘I’d never have guessed,’ she said faintly.

‘Oh, stick around Oxford for a couple of weeks and you’ll hear it all the time … that’s all anyone ever says about him,’ Dom
said. ‘Must be a bit of burden, if you ask me. Always being compared to her. There’s three of them – three brothers. They
all went to Eton. Heavenly Creatures – that’s what we used to call them. You know the type – good-looking, sporty, clever.
The sort you love to hate.’ He looked down at her. ‘Anyway, sod the Keelers. We’ve got library induction in about an hour.
Shall we go and have a coffee somewhere? Have you been to the Bodleian yet?’ Julia shook her head. ‘Come on, then. There’s
a coffee shop across the road and then we can go over together. Don’t worry, there’s no ulterior motive here. I’m as queer
as they come.’

Julia’s mouth dropped open in protest. ‘It never crossed my mind.’

‘Good.’ He grinned at her. ‘So … shall we?’

‘All right then,’ Julia said, still a trifle uneasily. Although she’d warmed to Dom in the five minutes they’d been chatting,
she was still baffled as to why he’d chosen to speak to
her
. After all, no one else had. Aside from the arrogant Keeler, no one else had so much as looked her way since she’d arrived,
so why had Dom? She risked a quick upward glance. There was nothing in his expression that gave her a clue. He held the door
open for her, and somewhat uneasily, she led the way. They followed the noisy group ahead of them down the stairs and out
of the faculty building, Julia still puzzling over the fact that Dom appeared to want to be her friend. Why? It didn’t make
sense. Mind you, she reminded herself quickly, not much about her new life at
Oxford made sense. She’d never in her life felt quite so out of place.

Although she’d been one of the very few from her comprehensive in Newcastle to go to university in the first place, there’d
been plenty of people like her at Nottingham – the first in their respective families to leave home and take up a course of
study that meant they would probably never return. In her year alone there’d been three or four people whose backgrounds practically
mirrored her own. Oxford was different. Whatever Dom’s reasons for befriending her might be, it was impossible to believe
he felt as out of place as she did. No one could possibly be more unsuitable. Everything about her screamed ‘working class’,
‘northern’, ‘poor’ – or worse. Amongst the leggy blondes and dark-haired, curvy beauties she’d seen around her, she was an
oddity with her short, boyish haircut and standard regulation outfit of jeans and a sweater. She’d never been the type to
worry about her looks – in her eyes at least, she’d never had looks to worry about, so why bother? Alison, her closest friend
at Nottingham, had begged to differ, but she was an engineering student so what the heck did she know? Julia had had two boyfriends
whilst at Nottingham – Mike, who was an exchange student from New Haven, Connecticut, and George, a fellow law student from
Doncaster – but neither had quite set the world on fire as Alison seemed to think they ought. The truth of the matter was
that she’d never found anyone whose conversations were more interesting than either the novels she read in bed at night or
the textbooks she read in class, and that, give or take the odd moment of tenderness or warmth, was pretty much it. Alison
thought she was hopeless. Julia thought it too. And now here she was, in possession of a first-class degree from Nottingham,
at the start of a one-year Masters at Balliol, sitting in a seminar room with some of the brightest, most ambitious and easily
most capable students in England … and none of them seemed to want to do anything other than ignore her. It was almost too
painful to think about.

She turned her collar up, shoved her hands in her pockets and
hurried to keep up with Dom. Although she was five foot six and had always thought of herself as tall, she was clearly no
match for Dom’s long legs. They turned into Turl Street, heading for the Bodleian, and, to Julia’s relief, soon left the others
behind.

Within a fortnight of Julia’s arrival at Balliol, two crucial bits of information had been made clear. The first, which caused
her more than a few sleepless nights, was that however hard she’d worked at Nottingham to stay at the top of her class, at
Oxford it simply wasn’t enough. A first from Nottingham – from
anywhere
, she hastened to correct herself – meant little. In fact, it meant almost nothing. At Oxford, amongst some of the brightest
and most ambitious people she’d ever met, she struggled to keep abreast. Aside from the horrendous reading lists, there were
more lectures in a week than there’d been at Nottingham in a term; the list of essays they were given was endless, the list
of precedents she had to look up was bottomless … and to top it all off, not only was the arrogant Aaron Keeler in her jurisprudence
seminar class, he was also in her legal theory and civil justice classes – small, intimate groups of six or seven students
where it was impossible to hide. He seemed to delight in her obvious discomfort; she’d no idea why. When she’d been called
upon for the fifth time to respond to a question she didn’t even understand, let alone feel confident enough to answer, and
had seen his smirking face, she decided that not only was she out of place in terms of her looks, her accent and her background;
now it had been very firmly proven that she didn’t belong academically either. It was a crushing blow.

The second piece of information came to her in a flash, and
although it was somewhat easier to stomach, it was no less of a surprise. She was sitting next to Dom in one of their many
lectures, surreptitiously looking around her, when she caught sight of the expression on his face. It was such a painfully
obvious mixture of longing and discomfort that she frowned, wondering who or what he could be looking at. She followed his
eyes … and in a second, it was clear. He was staring at the back of Aaron Keeler’s head. Her jaw dropped in surprise; he turned
his head in that moment and caught her looking open-mouthed at him. He started to say something, then changed his mind, averting
his eyes. Julia’s mouth opened and closed again … she said nothing, but suddenly it all made sense. No wonder Dom had picked
her out – she was the only person Aaron Keeler never spoke to, aside from him … Was it something Aaron had known since schooldays?
She’d long wondered what on earth it was that drew her and Dom together – well, now she knew. It wasn’t quite what she’d expected,
but she’d felt such a keen stab of sympathy looking at him that she couldn’t possibly be disappointed. Dom was in love with
someone who wouldn’t even look his way. Julia wasn’t in love – in fact, she wasn’t sure she’d
ever
been in love – but she did know what it felt like to be an outsider, always looking in. So that was what had drawn him to
her … now that she knew, she felt even more kindly disposed towards Dom. Poor him. Imagine being in love
with Aaron Keeler
. She couldn’t think of anything worse.

She was trudging back from one such seminar at the end of her fifth week – three more to go, she thought to herself miserably.
And then she’d go back up to Newcastle and spend Christmas either with her only remaining relatives after her grandmother’s
death in her first year at Nottingham – a distant cousin of her father’s and his equally distant wife – or she’d ring Alison,
who was now down in London struggling to find her feet in an all-male engineering firm, and spend it with her and her engineer
boyfriend, an equally dismal prospect. She could always spend
Christmas on her own, just as she’d done the year before – although it had been such a sad, lonely time that she’d sworn never
to do it again. She was lost in thought, trying not to think about how miserable she’d been, and didn’t recognise the students
who’d stepped in front of her as she made her way up Broad Street, clutching her stack of books and concentrating fiercely
on the pavement in front of her.

‘She’ll never last.’ A girl’s voice rang out clearly. ‘Her sort never do.’

‘Did you see her expression this morning? When Munro asked her about Hegel. She didn’t even know who Hegel was!’

Julia stopped, brought up short by the mention of Hegel. Were they talking about
her
? She lifted her head to look at them properly. She recognised Aaron Keeler’s blonde head immediately. He was bending down
towards another blonde, the improbably named Araminta Hedley-Tetherington. Next to Araminta – known to everyone except Julia
as ‘Minty’ – was Keeler’s obnoxious sidekick, Peregrine.

‘Well, I shouldn’t imagine she’ll be around for much longer,’ Julia heard Peregrine say. ‘Her type don’t stick around. She’ll
fail the Christmas exams and that’ll be it.’

She watched Aaron stop and light a cigarette. ‘Who
cares
what happens to Julia Burrows?’ he asked, his voice making it absolutely clear that he didn’t. ‘Why on earth are we wasting
five minutes talking about her?’

‘I’m just s
aying
,’ Peregrine began, his tone aggrieved. ‘I’m just speculating that she won’t make it past Christmas. She’s awful.’

‘She’s not worth bothering about. Now, who’s up for tomorrow night? There’s a fancy dress party somewhere in Headington. Some
girl from the Poly.’

‘The Poly? God, Aaron … you do have the
weirdest
friends,’ Minty giggled.

The ripple of loathing that ran straight up and down Julia’s spine forced her to a complete stop. She stood in the middle
of the pavement, her breath coming in short, angry gasps. She’d never in her life encountered such unbridled animosity – and
from people she didn’t even know! It was clear from their voices that they hated her … but
why
? What had she ever done to any of them? She put a hand up to her cheek. It was warm and wet and it wasn’t the rain. She wiped
her face furiously with the back of her hand, trying to ignore the hard, angry knot of hurt burning its way into her heart.
No matter what she did or how hard she tried, she would never fit in. Everything about her was wrong. It didn’t matter how
hard she worked; they all thought of her as beneath them. She brushed the tears away angrily. Her parents hadn’t prepared
her for
this
. This was worse than anything she’d ever imagined. She was a second-class citizen and always would be. That was the reality
of the path she’d chosen. Diana Pryce could have it all; Julia Burrows couldn’t. End of story.
That
was how things worked. But they were wrong about one thing. Gone by Christmas? No fucking way. She wasn’t going anywhere.
It was time to make them sit up and notice her – even if it killed her, she would do it. She didn’t care how long and how
hard she had to study.
That
was what her father had wanted from her. To fight. And if it was a fight they wanted, well, they’d got it. She would fight
them to the bitter, bloody end.