It’s not as though I haven’t been there before. I even slept in that room when I came to stay with Meggie, sandwiched into the single bed between the wall and my giggling sister, listening to drunken punch-ups on the street underneath her window. But now it’s different. ‘You can get in there?’ Her brown eyes are wide and proud. ‘No one’s supposed to. But Meggie gave me a spare key because she was always forgetting hers.’ Sahara is desperate to show me. But do I want to see it? I find myself nodding, and she takes my hand and marches off along the Thames, then back through the college grounds, past the arched temples to learning, towards the modern halls. It’s still lunchtime – now I definitely know Adrian was lying about being late for a lecture – and students laugh and flirt across the campus, which makes the gravity of what we’re about to do seem even more obvious. I’m out of breath by the time we’re back in the lift and going up to Meggie’s floor.
