Chapter 15: I Can’t Do This

“Hey, Paul, come on in. Hannah’s in the kitchen.” Lottie had opened the door to me and after ushering me in she followed me towards the already open kitchen door. Even before I got there, I could smell a wonderful meal being cooked.

“You should come around for lunch more often,” Lottie said as we entered the kitchen, “I’ve never known Hans to put this much effort into preparing a meal. She’d already been to Tesco and back by the time the rest of us had even gotten out of bed.”

“Shut it you,” Hannah said. Then she smiled at me and said, “Hey, Paul. Grab a seat. It’ll be maybe another ten minutes. Would you like a drink? We have coke, lemonade, orange juice and wine. No beer, I’m afraid. None of us drinks beer.”

“Coke’s fine, thanks.”

“I’ll get it,” said Lottie. “Paul, sit there, in the middle.”

The kitchen was a large room half of which was taken up by the kitchen units, cooker, fridge and dishwasher while the other half was a dining area with a table large enough for six or maybe eight at a push.

Right now, there were six places set for lunch—three on each side of the table—and Lottie had directed me towards the centre setting on the far side of the table from the kitchen.

Number forty-two was a five-bedroom house and Hannah lived with Lottie and Libby, both of whom I knew well-ish, and two other girls that I knew in the biblical sense but not really to talk to. Kim and Rachael had both been on Amanda’s list last year.

So that was how I found myself sitting down for lunch with five very attractive young women, all of whom I’d had sex with at least twice.

Hannah sat to my right, Lottie to my left. Libby sat directly opposite me with the other two on either side of her. When everyone first sat down, I felt a little like a chicken that had been invited to a fox’s dinner party—the prey in the middle of a pack of predators—but that quickly faded. All five of the girls were perfectly pleasant and the whole meal was very relaxed. Even Lottie and Libby were like different people compared to when they were with Amanda. It was amazing to think how much influence that young woman had over her friends.

“Hmm, this is just ... Wow!” Libby said. “You should come for lunch more often if this is the result.”

“I already said that!” Lottie said. “This really is good Hannah. I didn’t know you were such a good cook.”

“Yeah,” said Kim. “I vote to make you head chef from now on.”

“Don’t be silly,” Hannah said, clearly embarrassed by the praise. “It’s just a simple stir-fry. Nothing fancy.”

I looked at her and smiled. “Sometimes, simple is the best way. They’re right, this really is delicious.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “Really.”

She smiled sweetly. “Thanks.”

She had a lovely smile.

I stayed for nearly two hours and we all just sat around the table chatting after we’d finished eating. As with Hannah, I’d never really had long conversations with any of them. Whenever I’d talked to Lottie and Libby, they’d been with Amanda and, as I said, they were like different people now she wasn’t around. And my only previous interactions with Kim and Rachael had been the naked kind which tended not to include much talking.

It was a very pleasant lunch overall. We had ice cream for dessert and coffee after that. I eventually had to force myself to leave because I’d agreed to drive Mark into town to collect his car, which he’d taken to have new tyres fitted earlier that morning.

Hannah saw me to the door when I left and we agreed to meet up in the bar in The Union that night.

She kissed my cheek and flashed me a smile before I left.

She had a lovely smile. Did I mention that?

“It’s awfully convenient, isn’t it?” Imogen said as we walked towards the northern entrance to the campus that evening.

“What is?”

“Paige dumping you last night right after we’d talked about Hannah yesterday afternoon.”

“She didn’t dump me.”

“So you dumped her?” Vanessa said. She was grinning.

“No. Nobody dumped anybody. We just... Talked. Or Paige did. I listened.”

“Makes a change for you,” Imogen said.

I raised an eyebrow. “The not talking part or the listening part?”

“Both. Although, when you do talk, you don’t talk about anything important. But anyway, it’s awfully convenient, isn’t it?”

I shrugged. It was better than trying to answer. “It would have happened either way.”

“Either way?” Imogen said.

“If I hadn’t been spending time with Hannah and then you saying what you said yesterday. Paige didn’t know any of that, so she would have bought up our relationship—” I made air quotes with my fingers. “—last night even if those things hadn’t happened.”

“Would she?” Vanessa asked.

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“Because girls can tell,” Imogen said.

“Tell what?”

“Just tell. We know what’s going on, even if you don’t.”

“Like a sixth sense,” said Vanessa.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, right. Do you believe any of this bullshit, Mark?”

He held his hands up and said, “Hey, leave me out of this, mate. Nowt to do with me.”

Imogen turned to look at him and smiled. “Good answer.”

I don’t know if I’ve described The Union building before but it’s ... Well, it’s a bit odd.

When you stand facing it in the Grand Plaza it looks like a tall single-storey building. Not quite tall enough to have two floors but taller than you’d expect a single-storey building to be. It was constructed from glass and steel and concrete in a style I think is called Brutalist—all blocky and geometric. The wall facing the Grand Plaza, for example, consisted of a great wall of glass in a steel frame, but with massive concrete pillars from floor to roof spaced about ten feet apart all along the wall and jutting out into the plaza by about six feet, creating a glass-roofed canopy offering some protection from the weather for people queuing to get in.

But when you enter through the double doors into the foyer, you found it wasn’t a single-storey building at all, but in fact two-storey. The foyer, which is level with the Grand Plaza, was actually between the two levels.

This is because the Grand Plaza, and the buildings on three sides of it, was built on quite a steep part of Westmouth Hill. The fourth side of the plaza—the south side overlooking the town and the bay beyond—had a staircase down to the road. This road was at the same level as the ground floor in The Union building, and there was an entrance to The Union from the footpath alongside the road.

The north side of the ground floor was actually below the ground level of Campus Green and Owain Hughes Library.

So when you entered the foyer of The Union there were three double-width staircases down to the ground level right in front of you and a triple-width staircase on either side of those leading up the second floor.

The ground floor was home to the Student’s Union offices, a small supermarket, a little coffee shop and a bookshop (which sold both new and used books). The upper floor housed the canteen which doubled as the dance hall and concert venue in the evenings, a newsagents and gift shop, and the bar, which had a great wall of glass—this one unobstructed by any concrete pillars—on the north side, overlooking Campus Green. There were two fire escapes at either end of the glass wall leading out onto The Green.