University of London Leavers’ Ball Class of 2011
Kate Mundy was drunk on promise. Drunk on a cheap bottle of white wine too (and the half a bottle of Lambrini before that), but mostly promise. Promise and expectation and the knowledge that tonight was the night it was all going to come together. Tonight was the night she was going to leave her juvenile years behind her and finally step into the adulthood she both demanded and deserved.
‘You have the glow,’ Lindsey told her, bumping Kate’s shoulder with her own as they crowded through the lobby of the banqueting rooms.
‘The glow?’
‘Yeah. Like you’re shining all this amazing energy.’
‘If by glow you mean sweat, then definitely. We’re not even in the main bit yet and it’s like a sauna in here,’ Kate laughed.
‘No, I mean glow,’ Lindsey said. ‘You’re putting out all these pheromones, all these signals. You know?’
‘Signals?’
‘Kate’s gonna get laid tonight! Kate’s gonna get laid tonight!’ Pippa sang, the wine in her glass sloshing over the sides.
‘Signals. Sex signals! You’re a massive freaking green light for it right now,’ Lindsey clarified as Pippa wrapped the arm not attached to a glass of wine around her.
‘Sex for Kate! Sex for Kate! Sex for Kate!’ Pippa yelled.
‘Guys, stop it,’ Kate shushed. ‘That is not what tonight’s about. Tonight is for cherishing what we have right now, you know, before real life gets in the way?’
Even as she said it out loud, she knew that she was lying. Knew that she was glowing in just the way Lindsey had described, and was pleased about it too. It meant that everything was still going according to her masterplan.
Pippa blew a rude raspberry in response. ‘Nope,’ she cried, ‘tonight is the night that Katie finally gets her rocks off!’
‘Sex for Kate! Sex for Kate! Sex for Kate!’ Freddie Weir heard the drunk girl yelling from across the lobby and winced.
‘Well there’s one for you,’ Baz nudged him, his voice just a little too loud.
‘Leave off,’ Freddie groaned.
He needed a drink. And then he needed to find Camellia. She’d said that she’d see him here, and he’d bought the ticket especially. They’d been flirting all term and tonight was the last time he’d have a chance to see her, to tell her how he really felt. At least, he thought that they’d been flirting. To be honest, he wasn’t entirely sure. The one thing he knew for certain was that he liked spending time with her, and that she’d been nice to him. They always sat in the same seats in the library as they revised for finals, right next to each other. He’d even got her a Yorkie from the vending machine once, without her asking him to. That was flirting, wasn’t it? And then, when she’d asked if he would be at the Leavers’ Ball, and he’d instinctively nodded, she seemed so pleased. It was as if there was an unspoken promise there, a realisation that they were both on the same page and that tonight, at this ball, the rest of their lives could finally start. So where was she?
‘You OK?’ Baz asked. The buttons of his dress shirt were already open down to his navel, revealing a riot of dark chest hair.
‘Just got to find someone.’
‘Ahh, of course, the infamous Camellia?’
‘Leave off, all right?’
‘Whoa, easy there . . . go find your girl. And then, when you do, pound her to next Wednesday!’
Freddie winced again as he tore himself away from Baz’s side. This was different. This wasn’t going to be one of Baz’s drunken hook-ups or next-day regrets. This was Camellia. He’d sat by her side all term, helped her understand concepts that weren’t even on his syllabus, reassured her when she thought she was going to fail. She was real, she was special. Which meant tonight was going to be special too.
Kate finally stepped into the ballroom and took a moment to gaze around. Drapes covered the walls, lit by a pulsing array of blues and pinks. The music thumped, heavy with bass, and before her she saw a great sea of writhing bodies in black tie, ridding themselves of their cares and worries through flailing limbs and sweat. There were hundreds of people in here; surely one of them – just one boy – would want to sleep with her. Someone had to.
She was dragged from her thoughts by Lindsey and Pippa, who – one on each side – pulled her forward into the beating heart of the dance floor, bumping into people as they made their erratic way to the centre. Pippa did her signature move, a disjointed tilting of her head as her arms came out in front, a weird homage to ‘Thriller’, while Lindsey held out a bottle of wine and swigged from it liberally, glassware already completely abandoned.
‘Got your eye on anyone?’ Pippa asked, wrapping herself around Kate during a lull in the music.
Kate glanced around, her eyes alighting briefly on a tall, slightly gawky boy with a serious face, before honing in on another guy next to him, one she recognised as a bartender at the Union. She thought he was single; hadn’t she overheard him moaning the other week about how bad his recent break-up had been? She couldn’t think of a more suitable candidate. A man with nothing to lose couldn’t possibly say no, and she was just about drunk enough to shoot her shot.
Come on Kate, you’ve got this, she told herself, as she stepped away from her friends and towards the dancing bartender.
Briefly disturbed by the sight of a fierce-looking blonde girl with a dishevelled up-do marching towards him, Freddie started to move away before realising that it was actually the guy next to him in her line of sight. He watched in baffled wonder as she stepped up close to him, and without a single word of warning, lunged in for a kiss. His sense of respect for a person who could pull a move like that battled with his discomfort at the thought of sudden, unprovoked proximity, and he moved away, craning his neck over the dance floor to see if he could spot Camellia.
He didn’t even know what she would be wearing, or how she had styled her hair. Didn’t have her number – not yet. But that was OK. Freddie was nothing if not a man of logic, and so he had decided that the only way to cover the entirety of the dance floor was to move in concentric circles. He’d just have to hope that if she was indeed part of the manic throng, she wouldn’t be moving about too much.
Every time he looked towards a corner, or around a pillar, his heart thudded with disappointment. Perhaps there were two Leavers’ Balls tonight? What if he’d got it wrong and she was at the other one?
‘Freddie!’ Baz called. He was on his second lap and had managed to avoid his best friend the first time, but not now. Baz’s shirt was now fully undone, his round belly just protruding over his belt in a way that seemed provocative and cool rather than gross. Freddie could never get away with things like that, but he liked that Baz could. Despite the barrel-ness of his frame, he had the kind of round, open face and bright blue eyes that other people (especially women) tended to find attractively bold and charming.
‘Where’s this Camellia then?’ Baz asked.
‘Oh, I just left her at the bar. Had to go and get something.’ The lie was out before Freddie even had a chance to think about it. Freddie hoped that the music was too loud for Baz to hear.