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Published in the United States of America by

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ISBN-13: 978-1-61935-
308-4

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The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

This book is for Lana and Jake

who made me believe

that I could create anything

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without some very important people. I am going to keep it short and simple and hope you all know that I will always have far more to say than this page allows.

Mr B who has completely embraced my new ‘career’ with 100% support. Who not only supports me in this, but in everything that I do – thank you for taking a chance on the crazy British girl.

My Sister for being so supportive and offering so much of her time to my surprise project, her support has been phenomenal and I am not sure I would have seen it through to the end without her.

My Mum and Dad who always believe in me and love me no matter what I try to do. I wish I got to see you more so I could share this all with you.

Ann Mauren who smoothed my manuscript into something people could actually read and became a good friend whilst doing it.

Zoe, whose blog I read and enjoy every day. It started as a simple email asking for advice now we are BFF’s! A day is not the same without an email or text from you! No seriously I value your support more then you will probably ever realise.

Lastly and by no way least to my besties Suz and Jaq. I will be eternally grateful that I met you those first few days on campus and that you listened to me dribble into my Pinot for the next three years. This is for you.

A.B

Sometime in August

“Psst, Lilah.”

“Huh?”

“Lilah, are you asleep?”

“No, of course I’m bloody not.” I glare at the annoying work experience girl with her shiny swingy blonde ponytail and endless exuberant enthusiasm.

Exuberance is not a trait of which I'm overly fond. I am not that fond of enthusiasm either.

I may have been asleep. Just a little bit. I am just so bloody bored I cannot keep my eyes open. The buzz of the computers and the distant hum of voices are quite frankly relaxing. I did not get a huge amount of sleep last night and I am keen to catch up when and where possible. I dozed the entire Tube trip to the office and I reckon I have had a sneaky fifteen minutes at my desk.
Result.

This is what happens when I go for mid-week after-work drinks. I get completely blotted and then spend the next day attempting not to look hung-over whilst trying to catch up on sleep in various sneaky locations. Last week I had to hide in the bathroom where I spent twenty minutes with my head resting against the partition while sleeping off the mother of all white wine hangovers.

Yesterday evening was worse than most. I drank a crazy amount of alcohol just in case I ended up having sex, but then instead managed to slur my way through my entire repertoire of ‘no sex’ excuses. I had a sore back, a migraine, and was on the third week of my period.

The girl with the annoying ponytail is still standing by my chair, so I lift my head off the desk and look at her expectantly. There may be a little bit of drool pooled by my keyboard. Oh well.

“Mr. McCannon wants to see you in his office.” She informs me of this with a smirk that I would like to wipe off her face, preferably with the keyboard I am currently trying to clean my dribble off of.

“Why?” I ask. Then I have a thought, maybe he is calling me in to tell me that Annoying Ponytail Girl is going to replace me in my job and I am free to go and find alternative employment someplace else. I am thinking along the lines of a supermarket.

“He didn’t say, but he has been waiting a good few minutes,” she warns with a swing of her ponytail before walking away in towering stilettos.

My dad, a.k.a Mr. McCannon, is not good with being made to wait, it makes him go purple and a vein pulsates on his forehead.

Great.

“Dad, you asked for me?” I say in greeting as I edge around the door to his office and attempt to sit down before he notices that I am wearing jeans (not a suit) and Birkenstocks (not stilettos).

“Ah yes, Delilah, there you are.”

I hate being called Delilah, especially when he does it. “Here I am,” I counter. I can’t help it, being in the same room as him makes me act like a sulky teenager.

“Mother and I were wondering if you had made any plans yet regarding that event we are all waiting for?” He shuffles some papers and looks at me over the rim of his varifocals.

This is what he does. He talks about plans regarding my future like they are a game the whole family is playing. It is a glorified Game of Life.

I scrunch my face as I think of a suitable response. What I really want to do is to tell him to sod off.

“Dad, please. Can you and Mum just back off a bit?” I ask as politely as I can muster.

He frowns at me and the tips of his ears turn a little purple—this is not a good sign. “Well, I wanted to tell you that Southwark Cathedral has an opening, I spoke to the rector.”

What?
“Pardon? Where?”

“Southwark Cathedral, you know that gothic place down by London Bridge.” His forehead wrinkles in confusion at the fact that I apparently do not know the location of one of London’s landmark churches. My sarcasm has always been wasted on him.

“What do you mean? The tourist trap which is flooded every day with people walking past taking photos, or, with people eating their lunch from Borough Market, the place where every single posh person living in London goes to buy their groceries?”

“Yes, that one.”

“No. I don’t know it. Excuse me, Dad, I am feeling a little sick.” I dash out of the door as quick as I can and head to the exit grabbing my bag on the way through, ignoring the interested stares of my colleagues. Nosey buggers.

We work on the 53
rd
floor and it is a long elevator ride down to fresh air, but I make it and push through the doors to the freedom that the crowded streets of Canary Wharf offers.

Ducking down the alleyway I like to fondly call ‘Lilah’s Smoke Den,’ I draw a cigarette out of my packet and lean against the cool moss-covered brick wall as I contemplate my options.

What are my options? I honestly do not know.

All I do know is that history seems to be repeating itself with me. I am going to become my mother, in twenty years from now I will be married to a banker wanker, dressed in a twin set and drinking Gin all afternoon. I will have a lovely house, a lovely garden, lovely holidays and knowing my luck two children who think I am a raving pisshead.

This is what I have to look forward to. Or is it?

I could choose not to.

I eye the door to the office with speculation as I finish my cigarette. I can see it clearly from my little hidey-hole. I stand and watch all the people rushing by, rushing with their lives, doing lots of super-duper important things that I cannot contemplate.

Stubbing my cigarette on the wall of the alleyway I tilt my head up and gaze in the general direction of the floor my office is on. Annoying Ponytail Girl is probably looking for me. Hell, there are probably a few people looking for me.

They are not going to find me, though.

I have no idea where I am going, but I know it is not back into that office, nor back into the vacuum that has become my life; my life of endless repeated cycles.

I am not going back.

Instead I turn on my heel and towards the Tube station and a direction that I am not sure of yet.

Autumn Term

September

14th September

Dear Diary. Ugh! That’s rubbish and sounds like something a thirteen year old would write.

Dear Journal? Nope, that’s crap, too.

Oh, who gives a shit what it is called? It’s not even a posh leather-bound volume. It’s a spiral pad. A jotter.

I, Lilah McCannon, aged twenty-five, have just run away from home. I am trying not to think about it too much. Every time I do, I start to hyperventilate with that hitched breathing that precedes a full-scale panic attack.

It’s my first day at Roehampton University, the only institution to accept a desperate application from a mid-twenty-year-old with slightly-below-par exam results. I would have preferred it a little further away. Scotland, perhaps? Or, Land’s End? I guess Roehampton will have to do.

Twenty minutes ago, I screeched my car to a halt outside my new home. Okay, technically it is not just ‘my’ new home, but still, home it is for the next year. If I had to be completely honest it does leave a little to be desired. Not that I have investigated in great detail, but, as I struggled down the corridor with my boxes of books and bag of clothes I caught a quick glimpse of a room which I think is supposed to be a lounge ‘communal area,’ but looks more like an office reception. It’s filled with those brightly coloured low chairs that look all inviting and comfortable until you attempt to sit on them and realise they are made out of some sort of spiteful foam created for torturing purposes.

Still, best not to moan.

It was me, after all, who decided that this was a great idea, an exciting venture in the next phase of my life—or something like that.

I am going to be a GROWN UP at last!

I have written some very strict University rules that I plan to stick to:

1. No Alcohol

2. No Cigarettes

3. No Boys

4. No Going Home

These will be
so
easy to keep for a ‘very’ mature student such as myself I don’t know why I am wasting time writing them down. Hurrah! I am going to be an intellectual!

After seven years of delay I have finally made it to an establishment of Higher Education. Not that I have been sitting around doing nothing, but still, seven years is a long gap year even by my standards.

I should have been called Lilah Procrastinate McCannon.

Every time I think of my parents’ faces, when I told them I was quitting the boringly dull (serious yawn fest) but outrageously lucrative job at the bank, and that I was going to attend university instead, I have a hearty belly jiggling laugh to myself.
Complete and utter shock! Ha, ha, ha.

It’s fair to say that the news was not well-received in Camp McCannon.

1. Dad went purple

2. Mum dropped her Gin and Tonic

3. Brother (Tristan the Arse) laughed and walked off

What a bloody wanker.

Why I chose this University

I think Roehampton University actually chose me. In August, when I left my desk for the world’s longest cigarette break, I had no plan of what to do next. The only thing I did know was that there was no way I was going back into that hellhole again.

A few days later I came up with a career plan and was on my way to Asda to pick up an application form—I was excited about my new prospects, my sole aim was to become the fastest check-out girl in South London and hopefully work my way up to join the supermarket social elite and be accepted into the smoker’s gang that hangs outside the back exit of the store—when fate stepped in.

The A3 was closed due to a rather inconvenient accident. I followed the traffic diversion and ended up bombing down the Upper Richmond Road, which ultimately led me past the university gates. There it was, a huge banner advertising ‘Clearing Day.’ I pulled up, got out and then begged to be let onto a degree—any degree. Oh, okay, now I am exaggerating. I did ask for History and then sat with my fingers crossed as they
um’d
and
ah’d
about whether to let me in.

11.00 a.m.

I have just worked up an impressive sweat lugging all my boxes of books onto the bed. There is not a huge amount of space in my new room, which I shall forever more refer to as the Guinea Pig Cage, as that is about the size of it. I can either have the boxes on the floor, or on the bed—there is no combination of both that works.

I am not sure whether to go out and explore campus or hide in my little guinea cage and flick through my books for the afternoon. I am going to stick out like a sore thumb on campus. I just know it. My confidence (which has never been high) has officially gone on holiday. There are three words to describe me: Frumpy, dumpy, and old. The Student Union should give me a special badge: ‘Old Person. Approach with Caution.’

I think it best to hide today, I can go out tomorrow, or sometime next week.

11.09 a.m.

Shit. There is someone knocking at the door. What on earth should I do? I have not gotten myself together yet to be seen by another human being. If I stay really, really quiet they may go away.

Or not.

Meredith

“Hey, girl from Room Five! I am Meredith,” says the stunner with flame-red hair who has been pounding on my door with relentless determination for about five minutes. She grins at me as I stand there with my mouth hanging open.
Holy shit.

I am pretty sure there has been a mistake and she should be on a catwalk runway somewhere, not in a dingy dormitory hallway. I actually have to look up and down the hallway to check that this is not a joke of some kind. There is no camera crew so I assume I am not being Punk’d as some form of Fresher’s prank.

“Uh, Lilah,” I offer after an uncomfortable silence.

Excellent.

I, Lilah, Frumpy, Dumpy, and Old McCannon will be living with a supermodel. Oh, the irony.

“Come in. I’m in a bit of a mess.” I eventually shrug once the faculty of speech has returned to me. “I think I may have over packed.”

“Ooh, me, too,” she says, “I didn’t know what clothes to bring . . .” She trails off as she eyes my room filled with six jam-packed boxes of books and one small holdall of clothes.

“Well at least I won’t have to traipse to the library all the time.” She laughs and makes herself at home squeezing into a tiny gap between boxes on the bed.

There is no chance I could have manoeuvred one butt cheek in a space that small.

An awkward moment of silence passes as we stare at each other, both contemplating what to say next.

“I will pass, and you place,” Meredith suggests, handing me a book, but unpacking suddenly seems like a terrible chore.

“Nah, sod it, let’s not bother,” I say, starting to shift the boxes back off the bed which effectively means all my heavy lifting of a few minutes earlier has been completely wasted.

Meredith stares at me, and I squirm under her scrutiny. I know what she is thinking.
Blimey! How old is this chick? And what on earth is she doing here?
Both are good questions, but not ones that I want to answer. Instead, she surprises me.

“I love the colour of your hair. It’s like melted chocolate,” says the amazing flame-haired beauty, with no apparent sarcasm.

“Uh, thanks,” I offer in return.

I have no idea how to respond. I am not good at accepting compliments. They make me outrageously uncomfortable, and normally I just end up nodding and smiling at people like I am completely unhinged.

“So have you met anyone else?” she questions, thankfully changing the subject from my hair.

“Nope. You’re the first person,” I reply with a smile, feeling ridiculously nervous.

“So did you come far to get here?”

Hell yeah, I came far.
I ran away from a life that I hated, left most of my possessions behind, and put most of my money into a savings account, and if that was not enough, I sold my lovely car.

But this is not what she means.

“Not really. My parents live in Surrey.”

Okay, I made a teeny tiny white lie on my application form and said I lived in Surrey and not down the road in Putney, just three miles away. (That’s why I would have preferred a University in Scotland, or Timbuktu). I would rather no one knew about the little fib that got me into halls of residence.

“So what did you do for a job?”

I take a deep breath and fill her in on my time spent working at the investment bank. I don’t tell her exactly what I did: working on the trading floor (being shouted at by my dad), making mega bucks. Instead, I underplay it and leave it vague. She probably thinks that I used to push the tea trolley around. That’s good with me.

I end with, “I am twenty-five.”

“Well I think you are really brave,” she says, giving my hand a squeeze.

I don’t know how she has reached this conclusion considering I just told her I ran away from my job, but, hey, I am not going to argue.

“Do you think we should go and investigate campus?” I ask, keen to get out of the Guinea Pig cage. It is stifling hot and seriously lacking in oxygen. “We could go and find the library?” I add hopefully.

She glances at my still unpacked boxes and bursts out laughing.

“Hey, you can never have access to enough books,” I say, shooting her a mock glare.

“Well, I plan to do no studying at all this year,” she states with a resolute flick of flame hair over her shoulder.

“Well, I do. I am an oldie and I have to concentrate very hard,” I declare with a laugh. “I have very clear University rules which I shall be sticking to all year.”

Thing is, I do actually plan to stick to my “Uni Rules” as I call them. The non-breaking of the Uni Rules is the one rule I am not allowed to break.

The Geese of Death

Under no circumstances do I remember the University prospectus showing photographs of students running screaming across campus, arms flailing in panic as they are chased by mutant geese.

Meredith and I have been conducting a recce of campus, which I can confirm is stunning although it does have a scary line in wildlife.

Our excursion is most relaxing. It’s really hot and there are students hanging around on the grass enjoying the late summer sun. We join them and lean back against the lawn listening to the sound of the insects buzzing around over the pond.

Well, that’s until a flock of crazy Geese decide to re-stake their claim of the pond and squawk at us until we run off screeching to the safety of our dormitory.

Before the attack, Meredith had been telling me all about her eighteenth birthday the two weeks before and about her now ex-boyfriend with whom she split up a couple of months back because she caught him snogging someone else at the Sixth Form Leaver’s Ball.

“He sounds like a wanker,” I assure her. It’s not a hard conclusion to reach; I think most blokes are wankers.

“What about you?” she asks.

I just shrug my shoulders in response and try to look vague.

The topic of my love life is a bit of a sensitive subject right now. Mum and Dad think that I am getting married, which I am not. Not ever.

I said ‘yes’ to a surprise question last year by accident, and now it appears that I am being made to keep my promises. It’s ridiculous really, and I don’t feel like explaining to anyone how I managed to get accidentally engaged to a guy I am not in love with. Fond of? Yes. In love with? Not so much.

I was saved from trying to lie (which I can’t) or explain (embarrassing) by the squawk of the mutant Geese beginning their attack.

Hopefully I will be able to avoid that conversation for the rest of the academic year.

15th September

8:45 a.m.

I need to go home. It’s a bit of a bitch.

Apparently there is a ball tonight on campus: a Fresher’s Ball. I am not sure what a Fresher’s ball is, but I know that I have nothing to wear to it. It seems that in my haste to pack every single book that I have ever purchased, I have failed to bring any clothes that do not originate in the denim or cotton department. I don’t want to go home because I may run into Tristan the Arse but then I can’t face shopping either. I hate both things equally.

I wonder if I can wear a duvet?

Last night we met the other girls living with us. The sixth, it seems, has failed to show up. I’m vague on names but they basically fall under the following descriptions:

Scary Goth Chick—Black make up and all

Teeny Tiny Girl—Who shall now be known as Sparrow Girl

Plain Jayne—To be fair she is not that plain but her name is Jayne

Deathtrap Cooper

I made my new flatmates evening by letting slip that I owned a set of wheels. The news of my car was met with a stunned silence. I may as well have announced that I was a transvestite.

"Soooo," I offer to the rest of the room, "I am heading out to the supermarket if anyone wants a lift or wants me to get anything . . .” I trail off as I take in the blank stares looking at me like I really am a lunatic.

"So what, you have a car?" screeches Meredith about three octaves higher than her ordinary speaking voice.

"Um, yeah."

BOOK: The Art of Letting Go (The Uni Files)

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