My mouth formed a little oh shape. ‘And is that the case for the girls in your flat?’
She shrugged again, this time a tiny movement of her shoulders. ‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘Marianne went to school with Lavinia and Poppy. And although Betsy and Flora didn’t, they still went to one of the big public schools, so they all know each other from hockey and parties and friends of friends. There’s this big social network going on, like, Marianne’s godfather works with Flora’s dad and Betsy’s brother played rugby with Poppy’s cousin. It’s all one big happy family of terribly well-connected people.’ She sighed. ‘And I’m just not one of them.’
‘Well,’ I said crossly. ‘I’m sure they’ll be horribly miserable living together. They sound ghastly, the lot of them.’
‘Have you talked to any of them about it?’ said Joe, a little more rationally.
‘Not yet,’ she said, her face downcast. ‘I didn’t even know they’d gone to look at a house until an hour ago. And it’s going to be awkward raising the issue once they’re back because I justfeel, like, reallylame. And I don’t think I’d have wanted to live with them anyway. It’s just it might have been nice to be asked. It’s like, the whole flat apart from me, Leon, Karl and Viti.’
‘But Viti’s nice,’ I said, clutching at straws – I’d only heard Layla mention her name once.
‘She is,’ said Layla. ‘But I don’t think she’d want to share a house. Her parents are already horrified that there are boys living in our flat. She says that her dad’s talking about removing her from halls and making her commute to her lectures from home.’
‘Well, look. You don’t need to decide who you’re living with next year just yet,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t get swept up in the panic about rentals. I’m sure there will be plenty of student lets on the market well into next term.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. You’re probably right.’
‘Try not to take it personally, love,’ said Joe. ‘If most of them know each other from school maybe they’d decided right at the very start that this was what they were going to do. I’m sure they’re not excluding you deliberately.’
She nodded again, a watery smile on her face. ‘Yeah, I know.’
‘And maybe when they come back this evening,’ I said, ‘just ask them whether they liked the house, and what it was like, and whether they’ve signed a contract… Show that you’re interested but – you know – in a casual, relaxed way, and then it’ll be less awkward.’
Joe raised his eyebrows towards the screen. ‘Because your mother’s terribly good at coming across as casual and relaxed,’ he said, and Layla giggled. I didn’t even mind that my husband had thrown me under the bus for a cheap laugh – not if it worked.
‘And anyway,’ I said, elbowing my husband in the ribs, ‘you really don’t want to end up jumping into a big decision like that too quickly. You’ve probably dodged a bullet – far better to makeloads of other friends and take your pick over who to live with in a nice leisurely fashion.’
She looked doubtful and then her head turned towards her door. ‘I think they might be back,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘Should I go and speak to them?’
‘Yes,’ I said in a whisper. ‘Go into the kitchen, make a cup of tea and just style it out. If you sit in your room stewing over it then it’ll feel more awkward next time you see them.’
She nodded and stood abruptly, her phone screen lurching to the side so we had a view of the cobwebbed ceiling. ‘Right, I’ll let you know what happens,’ she said, and the call disconnected.
Joe sat back in his chair. ‘Well, that call didn’t exactly have the intended effect,’ he said, taking in my worried expression. ‘But I don’t think it’s anything to panic about. It doesn’t sound as if she’d have really wanted to live with those girls anyway.’
‘But it would have been nice to be asked,’ I said, feeling myself well up. ‘Can you imagine what it must have been like to hear from one of the boys that that’s where they’d all gone? They didn’t even mention it to her. It all feels really underhand.’
‘She just needs to find a group that she’s better suited to, that’s all,’ said Joe. ‘It’s still early days. It doesn’t matter that she isn’t best mates with the girls in her flat.’
‘No, I know,’ I said as I started to run the taps into a bowl for washing up. Since Layla left home it was taking an eternity to fill the dishwasher, and it seemed more sensible to do it this way. ‘But she doesn’t seem to be making friends outside the flat either. She just doesn’t seem to be meeting people. She’s not joined any clubs or met anyone she really gets on with on her course.’
‘Well, she needs to push herself a bit more,’ said Joe, plugging the iPad in to charge. ‘Maybe that’s what we should be advising her to do – force herself out of her comfort zone.’
‘But then the whole process is outside her comfort zone,’ I said, whisking a cloth around the rim of the Best Mummy mug (which I used all the time now). ‘Maybe what she needs is a bit of familiarity, a reminder of home. We could go and take her out for lunch again like we did last weekend?’
‘That wasn’t a huge success though, was it? I’m not sure it helped anyone really.’
I considered this. Last weekend I’d basically held my husband at emotional gunpoint and said that I was driving up to see my daughter with or without him. He had eventually capitulated and agreed that of course he wanted to see Layla too, he just felt it was a bit too soon, but seeing as I insisted… However, with hindsight he’d been right. The drive there and back had been exhausting and the three hours we’d spent in her company had been strained. She hadn’t settled in enough to really show us around, so we wandered aimlessly through damp and chilly streets, past the imposing library and the less impressive Seventies architecture of the lecture theatre. We didn’t see any friends for her to introduce us to, she didn’t know where a nice restaurant might be and we ended up in a horrible Starbucks eating tepid paninis and making stilted conversation about the few lectures she’d been to and how she was managing her food budget.
It was probably the least reassuring enterprise I’d ever conducted, and I was silent for most of the drive home, feeling all the sadness of the first day when we dropped her off, but this time with an additional helping of anxiety. At least on that first day of term there had been an element of the unknown, a tiny frisson of excitement that this would be a lifechanging experience for her and perhaps manageable for Joe and I – but now I knew categorically how much I missed her and how much she was evidently missing us.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘How about instead of us going up there again, maybe she should come home for a bit, think about her options. I’m really starting to wonder if maybe it’s not a good fit for her after all…’
Joe turned sharply in my direction. ‘Don’t be giving her the idea of giving up, Hattie. She needs to stick it out. If you suggest she comes home, subconsciously she’ll think she’s failed. Or she might be tempted to jack it all in. It would be such a shame. She just needs to settle into the whole thing, embrace it a bit more – it’s an amazing opportunity.’
‘But what if it’snotan amazing opportunity?’ I said, my voice a bit tight and squeaky as I tried to articulate my growing concern whilst rinsing out the saucepan. ‘What if it makes her miserable and then she ends up clinically depressed, and anxious, and on medication, and feels she can’t tell us? There’s a mental health epidemic out there, Joe – I don’t want my daughter falling victim to it just because we turned a blind eye to her distress.’
Joe leaned back in his chair. ‘She’s not distressed, Hattie.’ He sighed in frustration. ‘And she’s definitely not mentally ill. She’s just a bit homesick and a bit lonely, but that’s what growing up is about, learning how to live on your own, learning how to navigate life without your mother micromanaging every tiny aspect of it.’
