Eva got back into bed and wondered what her children were doing on their first night at university. She imagined them sitting in a room together, weeping and homesick, as they had done when they first went to nursery school.
2
Brianne was in the communal kitchen and lounge of the accommodation block. So far she had met a boy dressed like a girl, and a woman dressed like a man. They were both talking about clubs and musicians she’d never heard of.
Brianne had a short attention span and soon stopped listening, but she nodded her head and said ‘Cool’ when it seemed appropriate. She was a tall girl with broad shoulders, long legs and big feet. Her face was mostly hidden behind a long straggly black fringe which she pushed out of her eyes only when she actually wanted to see something.
A waiflike girl in a leopard-print maxi dress and tan Ugg boots came in with a bulging bag from Holland & Barrett which she stuffed into the fridge. Half her head had been shaved and a broken heart tattooed on to her scalp. The other half was a badly dyed lopsided green curtain.
Brianne said, ‘Amazing hair. Did you do it yourself?’
‘I got my brother to help me,’ the girl said. ‘He’s a poofter.’
The girl’s sentences had a rising inflection as though she were permanently questioning the validity of her own statements.
Brianne asked, ‘Are you Australian?’
The girl shouted, ‘God! No!’
Brianne said, ‘I’m Brianne.’
The girl said, ‘I’m Poppy. Brianne? I haven’t heard that before.’
‘My dad’s called Brian,’ said Brianne tonelessly. ‘Is it hard to walk in a maxi?’
‘No’, said Poppy. ‘Try it on if you like. It might stretch to fit you.’