Chapter 7: Before

BEFORE

“Take it off, take it off!” April chanted, flashing a meaningful look around the rest of the group to get them to join in.

Hannah looked down at herself, and then at the cards in her hand.

It had been April’s idea to play strip poker, and at first Hannah had felt fairly confident. She was actually a pretty good poker player, and in any case, she was wearing several layers, if you counted accessories. But whether it was bad luck or the amount of champagne she had drunk, she had been losing for several hands now, and she was down to removing either her jeans or her top. She tried to remember whether she had shaved her legs in the shower that morning, and couldn’t. It would have to be her top. The thought gave her a weird feeling—halfway between a sickening thrill of nerves and a flutter of excitement. Was she really going to do this? Was she going to strip down to her bra in front of five people she’d only met that day?

“Take it off!” Ryan joined in, and then Emily. Hannah shot a look around the circle at the laughing, drunken faces. Only Hugh looked as uncomfortable as she felt. In fact, he had tried to get out of playing—making an excuse about the time and the fact that he was tired. April had been having none of it, however. Shut up, Hugh. Nobody cares. You’re playing, and that’s that, she had said. And Hugh, to Hannah’s surprise, had sat back down, tension and anger emanating from every muscle.

Now he was hunched miserably between Will and Ryan, his arms wrapped self-consciously around his naked, bony ribs—and the only reason he was down to his jeans and not his underpants was because April had graciously allowed him to count each sock as a separate garment. Hannah again cursed the fact that she’d been wearing sandals.

“Hey…” Will said. He leaned forward, his black hair falling into his eyes in a way that made something deep inside Hannah twist with desire. He was bare-chested, his torso lean and sculpted in a way so unlike Hugh’s that they might have been different species. She became aware that she was staring, and forced her gaze up, to his face. He was smiling, but not in a mocking way. “Hey, don’t let them bully you.”

“Oh, bloody hell,” Hannah said, but now she was laughing too, partly at herself, partly out of disbelief that she was really going to do this. But she was going to do it. Deep down she knew it. She could storm out, but only back to her own room, right next door to where they were all drinking—she would be able to hear their mocking laughter and the music from April’s iPod through the wall. And she couldn’t begin her three years at Pelham by establishing herself as a sore loser with no sense of fun.

But it wasn’t just that. A part of her wanted this. She wanted to be as cool and daring and sexy as April, who sprawled across the circle from her with a wicked glint. She wanted to be brash, sardonic Emily sitting opposite, totally unfazed by the fact that she had lost her jumper, skirt, belt, and shoes, was down to a thigh-skimming shirt and not much else.

She wanted to be one of these people, she was one of these people, so she was just going to have to act like it.

“Take it off!” April called again, and with a sick feeling like she was jumping off a cliff, Hannah stood up, pulled off her top, and did an ironic twirl as the others whooped and applauded. Her cheeks were scarlet, her stomach was fluttering, and she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or scowl, so she did both, crossing her arms defiantly over her chest as she took her place in the circle. She kept her gaze determinedly away from Will.

Ryan gave a long, piercing wolf whistle and flung his arm around Emily, who was sitting next to him.

“Here you go,” he said, holding out the joint they’d been passing around. “You’ve earned it.”

“She doesn’t want that soggy disgusting thing,” April said. Her eyes were wide and bright with laughter, and her face was as flushed as Hannah’s—although not with embarrassment. She herself was down to a pleated satin skirt and her bra—but clearly not one that had been bought in a five-pack from M&S. It was a push-up in turquoise silk, embroidered with tiny scarlet and pink butterflies that made her tanned skin glow. “Have a drink, darling.”

She held out the bottle. It was champagne, produced from a seemingly inexhaustible supply in a minifridge that certainly wasn’t standard college equipment. The label was jeweled and art deco, and although Hannah knew nothing about champagne, she strongly suspected it must have been expensive. But it had been passed around the group for too long, and now it was warm and acid in her mouth, the flavor not improved by swigging directly from the bottle, as there were not enough glasses. Hannah shuddered, but she took a long gulp, feeling the fuzzy warmth of the alcohol filtering into her blood, and then she grinned and passed the bottle back to April.

“Come on, Hugh,” April drawled, “you’re up.”

Hugh nodded and began to deal.

With the next hand April lost her skirt, taking it off with a shimmying strip-tease panache that revealed long, tanned legs and a very small turquoise thong, Will lost his jeans, but the following round Hannah realized with a sinking feeling that she was about to lose again.

The hand played out with agonizing slowness, but at the end of it, her prediction proved correct and her two fours lost comprehensively. As she scrambled out of her jeans she ran a surreptitious hand over her calves and was relieved to find them fairly smooth. In the dim light no one would be able to see any stubble. Still, when she sat back down, she folded her legs beneath herself just in case. She felt sick with nerves and excitement. She could not afford to lose again. Stripping to underwear was one thing, it wasn’t that different from going swimming in the end, but getting actually properly naked… could she really do this? From the nervous frisson in the air she could tell she wasn’t the only person having doubts. Hugh had his knees to his chest as if trying to hide his skinny frame and was looking frankly mortified. Emily was chewing her lip. And Will…

As if pulled by a magnet, her eyes flicked once again to Will. But this time he was already looking at her. Their eyes met with a jolt that sent a little electric prickle running over Hannah’s skin, then she tore her gaze away, her cheeks flushed so hot that she was sure someone would notice.

April dealt out the next hand, going around the circle with tantalizing slowness, her eyes wide and dark with excitement. Some people took the cards one at a time. Hannah preferred not to. They were playing straight poker—just a simple five-card deal with no flop, and in that scenario it was hard not to give away what you were hoping for when you were waiting for the cards as they were dealt. Hugh was picking up his cards one by one, and from his body language it was obvious that he didn’t have a good hand. Emily was harder to read. She picked up the cards singly, tucking them into her hand with a little double tap on each one. Ryan looked… smug. There was no other word for it. And as for Will—but here she was stumped. Will, like her, had left his cards on the floor.

April laid out the fifth card in each hand, and as the last one went down, Hannah scooped up the whole lot and surveyed them.

Almost immediately her stomach dropped, though she tried to keep her face bland and blank.

A pair of threes. Which was about as weak as it got.

“I’m out,” Hugh said. He threw in his hand and took off his jeans—the forfeit for folding was one piece of clothing and he clearly didn’t want to risk anyone raising the stakes while he still had a garment to lose. When he sat back down his cheeks were scarlet and Hannah shot him a sympathetic look.

April was dealer so was out of the running.

“I bet one garment,” Emily said. She was still wearing her top and bra, and she tapped her cards on the floor, looking more than a little smug.

“One garment,” Will said, and gave a grin that made Hannah’s stomach flutter. He only had one garment to lose, so there was no possibility of him raising the stakes.

“Hannah?”

“One,” Hannah said, but her mouth was thick and dry, and she had to take a gulp of champagne before repeating, more clearly. “One garment.” There was no point in folding. If she did, she would have to take off her bra. And the rules were that the person with the weakest hand had to strip. Maybe, maybe Will was bluffing.

“Ryan?”

“Tw—” Ryan said wickedly, looking at Emily’s shirt and his own jeans, and then he laughed. “Just kidding. One garment.”

“Okay,” April said, “let’s see ’em, folks. Emily?”

“Three of a kind,” Emily said. She laid them out with a kind of laconic triumph—three fives. It was a good hand. Better than Hannah’s. “Beat that,” she said to Ryan.

“Well, I hate to disappoint, but… flush,” Ryan said. He gave Emily a flashing grin and laid out five diamonds.

“You fucker,” Emily said equably, but she didn’t look too worried. In strip poker it didn’t really matter who won. What mattered was who lost. Only the loser would have to strip, and three fives was still a pretty good hand, particularly given she still had her top to lose.

It was down to Hannah and Will.

Hannah looked across the circle at him. He was leaning back against the legs of the armchair, long bare legs stretched out across the circle, his arms folded across his naked chest. He was smiling, and she knew that he must have a good hand, and that he could see the desperation in her eyes. She felt her heart thumping in her chest, so hard that when she looked down at her hand she could actually see the lace trim of her bra trembling. Could she do it? Was she really going to get naked in front of this room of complete strangers?

“Hannah?” April said, with that purring little note in her voice.

Hannah swallowed. She put down one three… then another…

And then Will let his cards drop, facedown.

“I’m out,” he said with a wry smile. “I guess I’ll be removing these.” He looked down at his boxers, his expression comically dismayed. You could have heard a pin drop.

“Hokay.” It was Emily who stood up, breaking the tension. “Well, that’s quite enough of that as far as I’m concerned. I have no desire to see anyone’s meat and two veg.”

She stood up, stretching unselfconsciously so that her shirt rode up, exposing an unexpected flash of Bart Simpson underpants, and then reached for her leather miniskirt.

“What?” April said, sounding aggrieved. “You must be joking! It’s barely even midnight.”

“It’s two a.m.,” Emily said, waving her phone. “And I want to be conscious for the Master’s induction speech tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Ryan stood up too and pulled his football shirt on over his head. “I’m with her. Wanna walk me back to Cloade’s?” he asked Emily, who shrugged but followed him to the door.

“Ugh, you’re such party poopers,” April grumbled. But she seemed to accept defeat and began gathering up the cards as Hugh started hunting around for his socks and phone.

“I guess I’ll call it a day too,” Hannah said, rather diffidently. She stood up and reached for her top, holding it against herself like a protective shield. “Night, everyone.” April didn’t respond, she just shrugged, rather sulkily.

It was Will who looked up. “Night, Hannah.”

“Yes, good night, Hannah,” Hugh said rather awkwardly. “And thank you, April, I had a great time.”

April snorted at that.

“Like fuck you did. You looked like I was pulling out your nipple hairs one by one.”

Hugh flushed, as if he didn’t quite know what to say.

“Are you coming, Will?” he asked, after a short pause.

“In a sec,” Will said. He was buckling his jeans. “You head over. I won’t be long.”

“Night, April,” Hannah said. There was a slightly pleading note in her voice which she instantly despised but did not know how to change. She picked up the cards nearest her and held them out.

April took them. “Night,” she said, rather crossly, shoving them into the pack, and Hannah turned and walked into her room.

As her bedroom door closed behind her, Hannah allowed herself a shuddering sigh of relief, thankful that she hadn’t had to be the one to take a stand and incur April’s wrath, and equally grateful that Emily had stepped in before someone lost their last layer.

Now, as she stood there, her head spinning a little from the champagne she had drunk, she had the strangest feeling—almost as if she were surveying herself from a distance, marveling at the fact that she—Hannah Jones—had found herself surrounded by these exotic, clever, glamorous creatures. For a moment she had a piercing flashback to Dodsworth—to the kids who hung around the off-license in the town square, trying to buy cider with fake IDs and smoking Marlboro Lights behind the bus station. Maybe there were kids at their school who drank champagne and played strip poker, but if they existed, they weren’t part of the crowd Hannah hung around with. She had never been one of the girls who went to parties, applied mascara in the school bathroom, or had their boyfriends pick them up at the end of the day in a car. The closest Hannah had come to breaking the rules was deliberately failing to return a school library book she needed for her exams.

And now here she was. At one of the most sought-after colleges in Oxford. Surrounded by people she would barely have had the courage to say hello to, were it not for her luck in finding April.

As she stood there, peeling off her underwear and shoving her arms into the kimono she used as a makeshift dressing gown, she felt a sudden wash of… not gratitude, exactly. But a kind of wonder at the miracle of what had just happened. She was here. At Oxford. Sharing a room with a girl so infinitely cool and glamorous that she might have stepped out of the pages of a magazine.

She, Hannah, could reinvent herself here. Okay, she wasn’t as spiky or witty as Emily, or as cheeky and sarcastic as Ryan. But she could be someone else. Someone new. Maybe… and here she swallowed, a shiver of longing running across her bare skin beneath the kimono. Maybe she could even be a girl that someone like Will would look twice at.

Will.

Will, who had sat across the circle from her, watching her, with that slow, lazy smile.

Will, who had stayed back at the end of the night, when he could have returned to Cloade’s with his friend Hugh.

Will, who—and then Hannah paused, with a sudden, clear picture of the cards she had picked up at the end of the evening. She had turned them faceup at she passed them to April, and now she realized something—the cards weren’t her hand. There had been five of them—a single ten, and four queens. Four of a kind.

Not just a good hand, but the winning one.

Not her hand. But Will’s.

Hannah took a step towards the door, and stopped, her hand on the knob, trying to figure it out.

Will had saved her. He had taken the hit himself, rather than force her to take off her clothes. But why? Was he just being nice? Was it pity for her obvious desperation? Or was it—she remembered his eyes meeting hers, the little prickle that had passed between them—was it something more?

Whichever it was, it might not be too late to find out.

Will had hung back. And perhaps he had done so for a reason.

Hannah licked her lips, pushed her long hair behind her ears. The mirror on the back of the door showed a girl with a wide, full mouth, huge dark eyes dilated with terror, cheeks flushed with excitement.

Please don’t be gone, she whispered under her breath. Please don’t be gone.

Her stomach was knotting with a mixture of nerves and desire, but she’d had enough champagne to know that she could do this, and that glance across the circle had meant something, she knew it. She had felt something travel between them in that moment, the acknowledgment of an attraction so strong it had to be mutual—didn’t it?

She tightened the belt of her gown, then turned the handle and counted to three.

Please don’t be gone.

The door opened.

He wasn’t gone.

He was standing on the far side of the room, still shirtless, but he didn’t turn as Hannah’s door opened.

He and April were locked in each other’s arms.

Neither of them seemed to notice Hannah standing frozen in the doorway. Instead, she watched as April led Will backwards across the little room, her lips against his, one hand in his hair, the other at his belt. At her bedroom door she paused, groped behind her for the handle, twisting it blindly, and then the latch gave, and the pair of them stumbled through the open doorway and into the darkness of April’s room.

Then the door closed behind them, and Hannah was left alone.