Page 18 of The Spark

That first term at uni felt like letting out a breath I’d been holding for years. I had finally escaped: Jamie’s parents’ disapproval, my mother’s baggage and weird manfriends. The permanent sense I had at home of being in a car driven by someone who could lose control at any moment and steer us both into a ditch.

I loved meeting so many different people, learning new stuff, that all the usual rules had been vaporised. If we wanted to breakfast on leftover Thai takeaway, or sleep till midday, or get in at three a.m., not one person in the world was going to stop us. Our lives were up to us now.

Most mornings, Lara would come into our room first thing and flop onto the mattress, sunglasses on, giant carton of apple juice in hand. Jamie would tut and ask if it was beyond her to use a glass, and she would tell him she drank the last of ten tequila shots less than four hours ago, so yes, it was beyond her. Then when Jamie got up to make coffee, she’d tell me about her night. (Always booze and boys, lots of both.) Invariably, she’d fall asleep as she was talking, but I’d stay there next to her until she woke again, just to be sure she was okay.

Whenever we were all at home, we’d listen to London Grammar on loop, sipping cheap whisky, playing cards and taking it in turns to be profound. Jamie liked to cook, too, from the books his mum had given him. He was never short of money to buy whatever he needed, items that seemed exotic to me and Lara, like artichokes and crabmeat and ricotta and miso, which only gave Lara another thing to tease him about.

There was always a scrappy kind of energy between the two of them. Lara would rib Jamie for being posh, for his naivety and privilege. He would challenge her on her stubbornness and socialist ideals, her (as he saw it) needless cynicism. She had a habit of sitting in the dark, smoking or drinking, and making him jump when he walked into the room. (I never did. I had animal instinct when it came to her, always able to sense when she was nearby.) She would bring people we didn’t know back to the house, then turn up the music until the early hours. I never cared, but Jamie always felt obliged to apologise to our (tolerant working professional) neighbours the next morning.

Lara would answer the door to charity people, then chat to them for hours as Jamie fumed from the upstairs window about why they were targeting students. Sometimes, I thought she did it just to wind him up. Our bathroom had a dodgy lock, and we’d all agreed to knock first, but Lara always forgot, and on more than one occasion had caught Jamie half naked. Once, she claimed she’d caught him ‘giving himself a treat’, something he furiously denied as he got pinker and pinker. And while I found it genuinely hilarious, I never did get out of her – or him – whether she’d been joking.

I guess I sat somewhere in the middle of the two of them, personality-wise. They say you’re shaped by the people around you, and I’d spent more time with Jamie and Lara than anyone else in my life. Probably even more than my own parents.

Jamie’s mum still messaged him several times a day. I got the feeling this was about asserting her presence from afar, but could I really resent her for that? She missed her son, and loved him, her youngest child. Hardly a crime.

To be honest, I envied how much she doted on him.

Lara and I spent Christmas together that year, as we always did. Jamie was at his grandma’s, and I’d been invited to join his family on Boxing Day. For the first time, he was cooking lunch on Christmas Day for all of them.

I didn’t exactly blame him for the day itself being off-limits: the Frasers’ Christmases were always weirdly sacred close-family-only affairs. Despite the fact that Harry – the prodigal son – wasn’t even going to be there.

My mum usually had a gig on Christmas Day, so each year, I would head to Lara’s parents’ house, for endless food and bottomless drinks and a torrent of festive television and Christmas tunes. Lara’s mum, Corinne, would save like a demon for the occasion, pooling her money with the rest of the family to make everything stretch further.

I’d seen photos of the perfect silver-and-white-themed decorations at Jamie’s parents’ house. But to me, it always looked cold, like Christmas inside an ice palace. Nothing was ever like that at Corinne’s – each year, the house throbbed with laughter and warmth, everything a garish multi-coloured tangle of lights and tinsel and baubles.

And I loved it.

The few months at uni had begun to heal whatever adolescent rifts had sprung up between Lara and her parents, so that year, Christmas felt harmonious again. After lunch, Lara and I went upstairs to her bedroom to watch Skyfall. She was studying illustration, and had ambitions to work in film or television, designing sets, and she loved that film for how evocatively it depicted Shanghai, subterranean London, Macau, the Scottish wilderness. ‘This,’ she said dreamily, as she lay back and peeled her fourth clementine, ‘is what I want to do with my life.’

Downstairs, someone turned the music up, and for a few moments, we were watching James Bond coming back from the dead while Wizzard played in the background. Then there was whooping, a crash, and hysterical laughter – definite indications that a conga was taking place. I thought of what I’d be doing at home, alone, and felt a rush of gratitude. Christmas just wasn’t Christmas without Lara.

‘I got you something,’ I said, turning towards her on the bed.

She was still wearing her paper hat. Her eyes were glazed with laughter and Baileys and her passion for cinema.

I passed her the parcel. She sat up and tore the paper off, then stared at me, blinking in disbelief.

I’d tracked down a jumper she’d lost – baby pink cashmere. It had been a gift from her aunt, shortly before she died. But Lara had left it at a boy’s house a couple of months ago, couldn’t remember his name. She’d thought it was gone for ever. But I’d scoured eBay for weeks, eventually hitting upon the exact same jumper. (Whistles, cost a fortune.)

‘Neve.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Where—’

‘On eBay. And hey, you never know – it might even be the same one.’

‘Where was the seller?’

‘Glasgow.’

We both knew she’d been nowhere near Glasgow, but she was happy to pretend. ‘God, yeah. Maybe it is.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe you did this.’

‘Well. I know how much you loved it. And I wanted you to know...’ I began, but then trailed off. Why was it so hard to put into words what she meant to me?

Because it was beyond words, I think. How lost I knew I would be without her.

She just pulled me into a hug. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I know.’ Then she moved back and smiled. ‘Hey, I got you something too.’

She left the room for a couple of minutes, before returning with a gift bag. ‘Sorry, but life’s too short to arse about with wrapping paper.’

I lifted out the book inside. On Decorating by Mark Hampton.

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