Chapter 10: Campus Tour

“So, what is the deal with you and this Lily?” Vanessa asked at the breakfast table the following morning.

“Nothing,” I said between mouthfuls of cereal.

“Oh? Really?” She grinned. “Are you sure about that?”

I nodded.

“Is she?”

I shrugged. “We’re old friends. That’s all.”

“That’s not what it looked like when you were dancing.”

“I danced with you too.”

She raised her eyebrow and smirked. “What are your plans today?”

I sighed. “I’m showing Lily around campus this morning—just so that she knows where she needs to go for registration and stuff on Monday.” I paused. “Then I’m seeing Paige this afternoon. Are you and Imogen going out this afternoon by the way?”

“Not planning to. Why?”

I shook my head. “Just wondered.”

She shook her head. “You are so transparent.”

I shrugged.

“Maybe I can persuade Gen to come shopping with me.”

“Oh, it’s you,” Alannah said when she saw me after opening the door to the apartment.

“Nice to see you too.”

“Lily! He’s here.”

She came out of the door to the kitchen at the end of the corridor and ran towards me, although not as quickly as she had the previous evening. Her long sunny-blonde hair was in a ponytail again and bounced behind her as she bounded towards me. She was dressed casually in the kind of outfit I’d seen her in regularly back in sixth-form—tight sports leggings and a cropped hoody. It was the kind of outfit that showed off her athletic physique to maximum effect.

Rather than flinging herself at me and knocking me off my feet, this time she stopped just in front of me, smiled and then gave me a very firm hug.

Naturally, I hugged her back.

“Ready to go?” I asked when she let me go.

“Yep.” She turned to Alannah. “Still coming?”

Alannah nodded and stepped onto the landing with us and closed the apartment door behind her.

“Lana’s doing law too,” Lily said as she walked towards the stairs, “so I figured I’d ask if she wanted to tag along.”

I nodded then looked towards Alannah and said, “You’re doing law?”

With a scowl, she replied, “What? Don’t you think I’m capable of doing law?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea what you are and aren’t capable of.”

She huffed and followed me down the stairs as I followed Lily. When we got to the ground floor, we left the apartment building and turned left, heading east along the path towards the main entrance to the campus.

“I am surprised you decided to read law though, Lils,” I said.

She shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I surprised myself. I always thought I’d do a business degree like Daddy or accounting like Mummy. But ... I don’t know. I guess I just like the idea of law.”

“Well, I’m glad you chose it,” I said. I looked at Alannah. “Both of you. We need as many good people in The Law as we can to balance out all the crooks that do it.”

Alannah looked away and shook her head.

After about a hundred yards or so, the path forked off to the right. I pointed down the path and said, “That’s the quickest way to the Grand Plaza where The Union and the main library are.”

“Well, dur,” said Alannah. “That’s the way we went last night.”

“I know, but since this is supposed to be a tour, I just thought I’d point it out again. Registration is actually on Campus Green, next to The Union, so we’ll swing by that way later. We’ll stay on this path for now though because it’s the quickest way to the Law Department. It does mean we have to cross the road at the main entrance, but it’s not usually that busy.”

“Why is it called the Owain Hughes Library?” Lily asked.

I shrugged. “All the academic buildings are named after university alumni although I think most of the people actually predate the university in its current form.”

“That makes no sense,” Alannah said.

“It does. Sort of. If I remember right, and there’s no guarantee of that, Owain Hughes was one of the founders of the current University. There’s been a college of some sort on these grounds for well over two hundred years, but I think it was like a satellite college of another university or something at first. Westy as an independent college isn’t all that old, relatively speaking. In fact, I think it’s the hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary next year—I’m sure I read that somewhere.”

“Oh, okay. How do you know all this, anyway?”

I shrugged again. “One of the modules in the first semester is a formal writing course. They need to know you can write an essay properly—the way they want you to write it, I mean—before they start setting you actual essays that mean something. Something about the art of essay writing not being taught properly at A-Level or something. Anyway, one of the essays we were set as part of that module was on the history of the university.”

“Do you think we’ll get the same essay?” Lily asked, with a grin.

“No idea. And even if you do, no, I’m not letting you copy mine.”

She frowned.

“No, seriously, it’s really important you learn how to structure the essays the way they want, and it’s absolutely not the way we did it at school. Copying something I did won’t do you any favours at all. There’s a set structure they are looking for and you need to properly cite your sources—that’s really important when you start doing case law.”

By this time, we’d reached the main entrance and took care to cross the road, which was a lot busier than it normally would be because there were still people arriving back on campus after the summer break.

The Law department was in the far north-eastern corner of the campus. It was a steel and glass five-story building with two brick-built lecture theatres sticking out from two adjacent sides—opposite the main entrance and to the left. They were the two largest lecture theatres on campus.

The building was open, so I took the girls inside and showed them how to get to the lecture theatres and where the seminar rooms were on the first floor.

“The staff and the post-grad students have offices on the next three floors and there’s a dedicated Law Library on the top floor too,” I said. “There’s a law section in the main library too, but this one has a wider selection of books and journals. That said, everything you will need is in the Online Library anyway. I didn’t use this one very much last year, but I did find the main library a good place to work if you need some peace and quiet.”

“Where’s the nearest canteen to here?” Lily asked. “What? It’s a long way back to the canteen you showed us last night—completely the other side of campus.”

“The Union,” I said. “There’s a coffee machine and a snack food machine here for between lectures, but if you’re talking about lunch, then your best bet is The Union.”

“And which way is that?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

“Can we swing by the sports complex first?”

“The sports complex?”

“Yeah, I want to see what the rules are for using the running track and see if there are any clubs to join.”

“We can if you want, but it’s right over the other side of campus, in the southwest quarter. The quickest way there is past the library and The Union anyway.” I glanced at my watch—my father’s watch that is, which I still wore every day. “Look, it’s nearly lunchtime. How about I show you where the law section of the main library is and then I’ll buy you both lunch in The Union. Then I’ll take you to the sports complex. You need a student ID to get in and you won’t get that until registration on Monday, but I have mine and that should be enough to get the three of us through the door.”

“Sounds good,” said Lily.

“I can buy my own lunch, thanks,” Alannah said.

I shrugged. “Whatever.”

I was getting a little tired of her attitude. So what if I hadn’t paid her any attention at school? I’d had my own dramas to deal with at the time. I didn’t see how it was such a big deal.