Page 27 of Midnight in Paris

Before she could think any more, there was a knock on her bedroom door and Tom stepped in, bearing a bunch of white roses.

She started – embarrassed at the mess of discarded outfits, underwear, her silly photos on the pinboard, the towels on the bed. ‘Oh!’ she said.

‘Sorry.’ His eyes were steady, fixed on her. ‘You look great.’

‘Thank you,friend,’ she told him, taking the proffered flowers and smelling them, because that’s what people always did on TV when they received flowers, and this was her first bunch.

He slipped his hands into his pockets and watched as she poured some water from a half-consumed bottle into an empty mug and shoved the bouquet into it. ‘Just until we get back,’ she told him. ‘I’ll get them in a proper vase tomorrow.’

It was a lie, and they both realised that. But it seemed wrong to stick the flowers in the little bear mug she’d bought as a lucky mascot from Clinton Cards at the start of her course. Not least because it was stained dark with tea on the inside.

She left her room, gratefully closing the door on the chaos, and made her way along the corridor and down the communal stairs. They emerged into the early evening, the day still bright and summery, the sun warm on her skin. There was a taxi waiting, the driver reading a book and whistling like a caricature of a cabbie.

‘Christ’s, please!’ Tom said in a faux haughty voice as they slipped into the back.

The guy gave him a look that suggested his patience was already wearing thin this evening, put the car into gear and drove the short distance to the front of Christ’s College. As they stepped out, Tom offering her his hand, her accepting it, she could already hear the strains of a string quartet. Other couples and small groups were making their way through the stone archway, and the air was buzzing with excited voices.

‘Here we go,’ he said, nodding at one or two people as they made their way in.

She laughed when she saw the model of the Arc de Triomphe that had been constructed in the ball’s honour. ‘You don’t do things by halves do you, you Cambridge lot?’ she said.

‘But didn’t your ball have decorations?’

‘We had balloons, Tom. Fairy lights. Not a reconstruction of a famous landmark.’

He snorted. ‘In that case, wait until you see the Eiffel Tower.’ He grabbed a glass of Buck’s Fizz from a table and gave it to her. ‘Chin-chin.’

She laughed as she sipped, feeling already quite surreal.

They rounded the corner only to see marquees, a stage, an enormous Ferris wheel. ‘Wow,’ she said.

‘Yeah, fancy a ride?’

Her stomach, empty of anything other than fizz, curdled at the thought. ‘Nah, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘But you go ahead.’

He nodded and dropped her hand, calling out to a couple of lads in the queue who let him in, and soon he was being strapped into a chair next to a girl she didn’t recognise. He waved like a small child to his mother as the mechanism started to turn, and she lifted a hand in acknowledgement.

‘Hi,’ said a breathy voice at her side. ‘I’m Caitlyn.’

‘Sophie.’

The girl was wearing a black dress in a silky material which flared out at the knee. She had on a pair of flat, strapped shoes which looked both cute and eminently sensible. Sophie was already regretting her sandals, the three-inch heels of which were sinking into the soft turf of the lawn.

‘Which college are you at?’

‘Oh, I’m just at… the other uni. You know?’

‘The poly?’

‘Actually, it’s a uni now.’

‘Right.’ There was something sneery in Caitlyn’s voice, or was she reading too much into it?

Sophie smiled thinly and returned her eyes to the Ferris wheel, willing it to hurry up and finish. Without Tom, she was simply in a place full of hundreds of strangers – there would be nobody she recognised, nobody she could really talk to when he wasn’t at her side.

‘So how do you know Tom?’ Caitlyn persisted.

‘Oh. Well, we used to date.’

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