Page 1 of Wilder at Heart
Prologue: 10 Years Earlier
NORA
What do you get when you cross stuffy portraits from the Stuart period with a shit-load of ultra-violet lights?
The Freshers WeekGlow in the Dark Paint Partyat Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of course.
In other words, utter debauchery.
The Old Library, where the party’s being held, dates back even further than these paintings, to the Elizabethan era, but no one in the room gives a flying fuck. No one feels the judgement radiating from these Stuart men and women looking down their oil-painted noses. And while the architecture and art are centuries old, no one at tonight’s party has racked up more than a couple of decades on this earth.
The scene before me is the epitome of entitlement: the crème de la crème of the next generation of British society. Industry. Government. Already half-naked and getting down to some serious shenanigans like it’s their birthright.
It’s not my birthright.
But believe me when I sayI am there for it.
Because unlike a lot of the people in this room, and against all odds, I’ve worked my arse off to be here.
My brand-new friend Elle is as entitled as everyone else here, but she wears it well. I’ve only known her a couple of days, but I can tell she’s spent her school years gravitating towards Cambridge as if it were inevitable. She’s already explained, in a genuinely non-obnoxious way, that she’s ended up at Emmanuel because her aunt and uncle met here, and her three boy cousins came here, and the youngest is still here and helped her out by having her to stay when she was looking around colleges.
It doesn’t help that she’s unnaturally, staggeringly gorgeous and articulate. I really want to hate her. But she’s an utter delight. A ray of sunshine. So when she decides to take me under her wing, I allow myself to be her orphaned duckling. Her pet project.
Because while the machinations of a place like Cambridge are in many ways new and mysterious, they’re also as old as time. This place istribal. That much is obvious immediately. And if I have someone as lovely and knowledgeable and obviously at home here (and by at home I mean she fits right in, immediately, as if she belongs here), my chances of drowning in a place that’s still a lot more blue-blooded than it should be are lessened.
Anyway. Enough of my left-wing musings, because despite myself, I’m already being drawn in. Hooked. By this intoxicating mix of people whose confidence is self-fulfilling. They’re high on their own publicity, and I’m close to fangirling.
It helps that Elle and I have gone matchy-matchy in white t-shirts, knotted high on our stomachs to make crop tops, white hot pants and strappy heels. And it helps that we shared a bottle of white wine in her room before we came downstairs. We look good together, and we feel good. We’ve made a deal that we’re each going to kiss someone tonight. It’s not ideal that my pulling partner is indecently beautiful, but I already know we won’t get hit on by the same guys. And I’m fine with that.
We necked a couple of shots each at the bar when we arrived, and we’re back on the white wine as we dance with a few other girls from our corridor. There are glow-in-the-dark pens everywhere, and we’ve graffitied our t-shirts, shorts and most of our limbs in ultra-violet rainbows. As the music gets worse, our dance moves grow more flamboyant. We gyrate toStarshipsand I laugh hysterically as Elle executes theGangnam Styledance routine in an utterly flawless manner. How she still manages to look sexy doing it, I have no bloody idea.
The guys are circling around us like moths to a flame, and it’s not hard to see who they’re after. But Elle doesn’t bite. She ignores them and pulls me in towards her, throwing her arms around me as Guetta’sTitaniumcomes on. We scream in unison and we go for it, its insane beat pulsing through us as we lose ourselves in the music.
Until the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever seen materialises in front of us. He’s a vision and I amthirsty. He’s not gorgeous in the way that any of the sporty guys back home are. No, this guy’s a walking Patek Philippe ad. He has that flawless skin, even tan and glossy, floppy dark hair that sayswe summer at Daddy’s villa on Como and we winter in St Barths.
Someone has drawn a scrotum on his forehead that’s glowing neon pink, and it doesn’t even detract from his stunning good looks. Not one jot. Nor does his totally (and predictably) Eurotrash look of fitted white jeans, an equally (and gratifyingly) fitted white t-shirt, and loafers (no socks. Obvs). His clothes are covered in graffiti, and yet he still manages to look like he’s just stepped off his yacht.
Obviously, on a normal day I’d laugh this guy out of town, becausecome on.He hasentitled twatwritten all over him. But when I’m high as a kite on wine and shots and the buzz of finally being at Cambridge, and when David Guetta’s particular form of magic is running through my veins, I can’t take my eyes off him.
While I mentally undress him (which is in itself ridiculous because (a) I’ve never undressed a guy before IRL and (b) he’s way out of my league), my brain notes that he’s grinning straight at Elle.
Of course he is. Shit shit shit.
Elle screams when she sees him and throws her arms around him, and he lifts her up and spins her round. Lucky, lucky Elle. They probably summer together. They probably went to some entitled-kids’ summer camp in Lausanne and rode wild ponies and had their first kiss under the Swiss stars. They probably?—
‘Nora!’ Elle extricates herself from The God and drags him towards me. She leans forward and shouts in my ear to make herself heard aboveTitanium.‘This is my cousin, Theo! The one I told you about, who let me stay with him! He’s a Third Year here!’
Oh my God. Cousin? Does that mean… the upper classes don’t still think it’s okay to shag their cousins, do they?
Elle steps back and pushes Theo The Divine forward, and before I know it, he’s giving me the full wattage of his grin, which issublime, and leaning in to me, and kissing me on the cheek, and I miraculously recall that everyone here is posh enough to kiss people on both cheeks, so I manage not to mess up and I offer him my second cheek.
And he smells so good that I could take his smell to my deathbed with me.
Honestly.
‘HiNora.’
He stays close, his voice raised above the music. He says my name like it’s a rude word, but like a sexual rude word. How does he do that? He kind of drawls it suggestively. Oh my God.
