I Could Love You by William Nicholson Page B

and anonymous, and London makes her feel lonely. It came as a shock to find in her first few days that she was homesick, just at the time she was supposed to be having the most exciting week of her life. She forced herself to go to the freshers’ events, but every night that week, alone in her narrow and unfamiliar bed, she cried herself to sleep.
    This is not something to share with anyone. Alice is ashamed of her own social failure. She’s ashamed that she’s never had a real boyfriend. The hurt of it goes so deep and has been in her for so long that it’s got out of proportion with reality. So as well as confiding in no one, she does not confide in herself. When she catches herself brooding on her failure she reprimands herself sharply, often aloud, saying, ‘That’s enough of that! Snap out of it!’ She has learned to cope by expecting nothing to change, by shutting the doors on that part of her imaginings, and walking away. But all the time it’s there, waiting, the unvisited house with its empty rooms where she had once dreamed of finding love.
    She pulls out her laptop and plugs it in to charge.
    Her phone beeps. A text from Chloe.
    Operation Jack under way .
    Alice sits down on her bed and closes her eyes. Why is Chloe doing this? Her first instinct is to text her back and tell her to leave her alone, get out of her life. But she does not text Chloe back.
    Do I really want this to happen?
    She tries to understand her own chaos of intense feelings. There’s longing there, a heartbreaking cry that says, ‘Oh, if only it could work out.’ There’s gratitude, even to Chloe Redknapp, for taking action, for compelling her to leave her lonely room. And there’s fear, because surely nothing will come of it but failure and humiliation.
    Of course she knows Jack Broad. She hasn’t kept up with him, but they’ve met from time to time. She saw him only last summer in Bill’s Café, they talked for a few minutes. He was clutching a book by W. G. Sebald, which he recommended to her, but she hasn’t read it. He was friendly and rather thoughtful. His hair was long, she remembered, not in a cool way, more in a way that showed he didn’t really know what to do with it. She liked him for that.
    She opens up her laptop and logs onto Facebook. She goes to Jack’s page. There are several pictures of him at Cambridge: on a bicycle by the river; with two friends, both male, at a party; in his room, surrounded by books, holding an imaginary gun to his head. No evidence of a girlfriend.
    He has a sweet face, still boyish. He seems to be always wearing the same clothes, jeans, check shirt, black jacket. Sometimes a stripy scarf wound round his neck. His Facebook status reads: Jack is working too hard and his brain hurts .
    She can feel it starting, growing unbidden within her, the secret hope that looks so plausible but is really no more than a fantasy. Why do I do this to myself? When will I learn? But this time it’s different, because there’s a third party. Chloe’s intervention gives the absurd little dream some dressing of reality.
    I’m not just making this up. Chloe is doing it too.
    How ridiculous to invest so much authority in a person she barely knows, and neither likes nor respects. Alice wants to say that Chloe is an empty-headed fool. That she’d be ashamed to be like her, chasing boys and jumping from bed to bed. And it’s true, she doesn’t want Chloe’s life. But for all this, she bows down before Chloe and acknowledges her superiority: because she’s pretty, because boys want her, because all other pursuits and achievements in life seem worthless without this one elusive essential, love.
    Why should I care so much? Why do I mind so much about not being pretty? Why can’t I see that having a boyfriend is only one among many ways of leading a rich and fulfilled life?
    Her mother says to her, ‘Why do you say you’re not pretty? You’re beautiful.’ But when Alice looks in a mirror and sees that