Subtlety is not Jasmine’s strong suit but this is a hope she has to end without giving offence. She chooses her words carefully. “He’s a lovely guy and a goodfriend.” She carefully stresses the word. Sean’s parents know he is gay, but his mother at least seems to be hoping it may be an aberration. Sean obviously does not share details of his love life, something that has Jasmine’s full sympathy, otherwise his mother would be in no doubt. “It was hard being at home after my boyfriend and I split,” Jasmine continues. “We had been together for years. It was kind of Sean to invite me.”
Far from ending his mother’s misconceptions, her words only seem to fuel them. Emily looks even more delighted as she pats Jasmine’s hand. “We’re very happy to have you. What it is to be young, free, and single.”
The alarm her words spark is broken by the arrival of her son. Sean takes in the scene and swings open one of the cupboards. “Jasmine’s happy with our normal stoneware, Mum. She doesn’t need your fine bone china.” He plonks a plate in front of her, mercifully thick, white and solid.
“Nonsense!” declares Emily. “She’s the daughter of a Baron.”
Jasmine could have done without Sean sharing that little snippet. She clings to the plate Sean has given her. “Oh, we use this at the Hall all the time,” she says, neglecting to add only when she is at home.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely!” She makes her response as emphatic as she can. She does not fancy starving for a week, unwilling to eat anything served on plates made from the burned remains of dead animals. Sean takes a plate for himself, cuts an enormous slice of cake, and artfully changes the subject. For the next week until they depart for university, he runs interference with his well-meaning mother, substituting stoneware for china, placing margarine on the table beside the butter, forestalling milk being added to tea. Jasmine, for her part, finds Sean’s mother a grown woman unable to see much beyond her own preconceptions.
Sean’s father, on the other hand, is a surprise. It is not until a couple of days after her arrival she meets the man himself, Parliament having restarted after the summer recess and his presence being required in London. From Sean’s depiction of his father during their early years at university, she expected him to be somewhat overbearing, probably tall and stern of countenance. Certainly, she had formed the general impression of an unsympathetic character and although Emily had spent a fair amount of time singing her husband’s praises, Jasmine was not inclined to trust the older woman’s judgement. She could have looked the man up if her interest had been sufficient, but alas, the parents of friends rarely excite that kind of attention unless there is prurient scandal attached.
When Mr Exmore walks into the kitchen on the third day of Jasmine’s stay, she is mostly impressed by his great ordinariness. He is distinctly average in all ways: middle-aged, middlebrow, and distinctly middle-class. The most remarkable thing about him is that he is aLabourMP, not a Tory. He greets her sensibly, with none of his wife’s fluttering at hosting the daughter of a Lord, and chats quite amiably about his journey, his work, and their plans for the weekend. Weirdly, although Sean would shrivel in disgust if she said it, Jasmine finds much of what she enjoys of Sean’s company is a reflection of his father.
At the end of a pleasant week, Sean’s father loads both Sean and Jasmine into his mid-range, mid-priced car to drive them to university, and Jasmine concludes her introduction to the dingy town of Hayburn, little guessing how much the place is to feature in her future.
A Love So Bold
Despite having very different political interests, both Sean and Jasmine, along with most of their fellow final-year students, filter into the largest lecture theatre in the department for one of the most popular third-year options, Globalisation vs Democracy. Globalisation is the latest episode in the unending battle between money and people. Whilst extremely rewarding for businesses and economies, it can also damage local job markets and the environment. Democratic government is caught in a conundrum: it exists to serve the people locally but can do little without money.
Jasmine and Sean sit in their usual seats, halfway down, halfway across, and watch the hall fill up, back to front. Jasmine always finds this counter-intuitive, as surely the keenest arrive early and sit at the front?
“Term has only just started and already I’m tired,” she groans and puts her head down on the fold-out desk.
Sean nudges her. “Do I need to remind you how much you are paying for this?” he says. “If you aren’t going to pay attention, you might as well take a fistful of tenners and rip them into tiny, little pieces.”
“Okay, okay.” She raises her head and nods to the lad just about to sit in the row in front. Now in her final year, she is familiar with most of her course mates. With few choices in the first year, they have all sat through hours of lectures together but there are only a handful whose names and natures she has garnered from smaller seminars, tutorial groups, and Labour Party meetings. The four pretty girls who had ignored her at the start still do so, and the group of jokey blokes who seem obsessed with sport continue to be an amorphous mass in which no single character emerges as notable.
While Jasmine dated Petey, she never really looked at other boys, never actually considered them with a predatory eye. So it comes as a surprise to her when her eyes snag on a tall figure moving slowly down the steps, looking, it seems, for a particular seat. He is unfamiliar, not known despite her hours spent surveying her compatriots during the most tedious lectures. He halts by a lad whose hair is tightly braided in cornrows, and they exchange a greeting, one of those hand-slaps, fingertips to fingertips, knuckles to knuckles, fist to fist – far cooler than usually seen in her politics classroom. A group of students stand like a chorus line, shuffle down one seat, and drop. The tall man sits.
She nudges Sean.
“Who’s that?” she asks. Sean seems to have a phenomenal ability to garner gossip and could probably put a name to everyone in the large lecture hall.
“Who?”
“Five rows from the front, at the end, next to the cornrows.”
Sean lifts out of his seat to see better. “They’re all the year above, back from studying abroad. Huh! Guess it must be hard starting again. Most of their cohort have graduated and gone.”
“Do you know the guy at the end?”
“Don’t you?”
Jasmine shrugs.
“Ben Khan!” Sean mocks her with his shocked-look face. “He’s Labour royalty. His mother is a frontbencher and his grandfather stood on the pickets with the striking miners in the ’80s. Round our way, his gramps is a saint. The grapevine says he spent last year in Washington and worked for the Democrats over the summer.” Sean heaves out a dramatic sigh. “He’s just my type, but alas, he’s straight.”
She looks again. He is tall, lean, dark. Like Sean said, just his type. She has never considered it before, but maybe it is her type, too. She had never been one to admire men built like bodybuilders, muscular but stiff as a board, usually in both mind and body. She studies him. His thick, black hair flops forward. Although she gets the impression he is good-looking with his bronzed skin and aquiline nose, she can only see his face in profile.
Then a strident voice from the front interrupts her perusal. “Good morning and welcome to Globalisation vs Democracy.”
She pulls her attention from the handsome stranger and focuses on the middle-aged academic at the front. If she is paying a substantial sum to hear what this guy says, then she had best listen, even if by the end she profoundly disagrees with some of his conclusions. She concentrates on taking notes when the lecturer veers off-script with his explanations, and tries to follow his occasionally convoluted arguments. Every once in a while, though, the monotony of the delivery finds her eyes sliding to Ben. She doesn’t want to be the girl making calf-eyes at the unattainable boy, but she cannot seem to stop herself. Jasmine is unaware, but it is similar to the way she first watched Petey all those years ago, picking up his habits and mannerisms, formulating his character from what she observes.
As they are all filing out, while she and Sean wait patiently to slip out of their row, she hears him speak. Ben has reversed his position and is sitting on the back of the chair in front, facing his friend with the cornrows, when one of the pretty quartet catches him with the corner of her bag.
