I deposited my suitcase and laptop bag on the bed in my room, in Earnshaw Hall at the University of York. It was my first day back to start year two of my Creative Writing master's degree.
I was looking forward to this year, last year's final exam had been approved as a pass, at a first class honours level and, not only that, it had been accepted by a literary agent, one of those strange people who, if they take you on, undertake to market your writing not to booksellers but to publishers and mine, Richard Philips, had two such companies interested in mine. A police procedural novel with a central character that it would be easy to develop and write more tales about.
But for now I needed to unpack and go out to eat.
I still had stuff to bring up from my car, but that could wait. In half an hour I had my clothing away in drawers and cupboards and my laptop set up on my desk along with the charger for my phone. The toiletries went into my shower alcove and I was ready.
There's no catering on Sunday apart from snacks and whatever the union bars may be offering, so I took the shuttle bus into York and found an all you can eat Chinese Buffet for dinner.
I decided on a relatively early night so walked down to the Blue Bell Inn, a quaint, tiny pub down Walmgate, just two very small rooms and a central servery. But excellent beer and they always have a dark beer on and I do like dark beer.
I bought a pint of Old Peculier, drank it slowly and then made my way back to the railway station to get the shuttle bus back to campus. I needed to register on Monday morning and if I didn't get there early, I'd be stuck in the queue all day. I wouldn't get my student loan money for at least a week after I registered anyway, but the sooner I got the process under way the better and I worked on the principle that it was better in my bank then theirs. Not that it was a problem, I'd worked all summer behind the bar for my dad and had plenty of money squirreled away.
So, fifteen minutes after I arrived back at Earnshaw, I had my bed made up and was sound asleep.
I was up at six and out for a run before breakfast, got back, showered, dressed and was waiting by the door of our little NISA supermarket when it opened at seven.
Two bags of groceries and half an hour later I was in the shared kitchen, there were two on each floor, breakfasting on Croissants and cheese.
There were four queues in the foyer of the Sir Jack Lyons concert hall, one for returning students, three designated for new students with surnames beginning A to I, J to R and S to Z.
At eight am when registration opened, the longest queue was for returning students, the freshers would, no doubt, still be in bed. There were twelve of us in the queue for returning students and about ten spread between the other three. One of them was the most strikingly beautiful girl I'd ever seen, in the J to R queue. She wasn't tall, about 165 centimetres, but she was slim, pretty and had bright red hair, not orange, but actually red, a sort of very bright auburn. She was second in her queue; I was fifth in mine. Thanks to re-registration being a faster process then initial registration, we arrived at the long table at the same time.
I looked across at her and smiled, she looked back at me and didn't.
"Welcome to York," I said.
She just grunted and handed over her acceptance letter and her student loan documentation.
I handed over my student card, they swiped it, I signed the rental agreement for my room and I was finished. I took the welcome pack that they gave me and headed off to Blackwell's to spend a small fortune on books.
Really, we only had two set books for this term and I already had one of those. But one of the things I'd picked up in the first year was that if you wanted to be a good writer, you had to be a good reader. I'd set myself a target of reading at least one good novel a week this term. The term was ten weeks long so I picked out ten good novels that I felt I wanted to read, rather than needed to. Since my first novel, written last year as a course exercise was a police procedural and I wanted to continue in that Genre, I also bought a couple of police sergeants' exams text books.
I saw the girl again a few times that term, usually on the arm, or hanging onto the arm of some guy wearing one of the sports team sweatshirts that they seemed to favour. I think they felt that showing that they were in one of the sports teams would be more impressive to the female population and it seemed to work, since you seldom saw anybody wearing one without a girl, usually a first-year girl hanging onto them.
Suddenly it was December, specifically, Wednesday the seventh of December and term would be ending on Friday.
I was in the Alcuin bar with half a dozen of my fellow creative writers when the red haired girl walked in, as usual on the arm of a sporting non-personality. He looked like he'd started the party early.
My friends and I were discussing the relative merits of being a plotter against being a pantser when the incident happened. I was walking across to the bar to get a refill of my pint when I heard a female say, "NO!" very emphatically followed by a body slamming into me and knocking me across a table. The body was the guy the redhead had come in with.
I went sprawling into the lap of a girl I knew vaguely; she was on the second floor of Earnshaw and managed to spill about five drinks on the way.
"Watch where you're going, spaz," he spat at me.
"That's funny," I said as I got to my feet and apologised to the girl I was sprawled on, "I should watch where I'm going, yet you barrelled into me and knocked me over. I think you owe these people a drink."
"Do I?" he asked, "and who's going to make me buy them one. You?"
"Well it would be a much better gesture if you just offered, that way you'd reinforce your apology with action."
"Steve," the redhead said, tugging at his sleeve, "let's not make a scene. I pushed you and you knocked into him. He's right, you should buy these people a drink."
"And if I do, you'll do what I asked you to."
"No," she said, "I told you I won't do that."
"Then that's tough, I'll see you around bitch," he said.
He stalked off, nodding to four others in the bar who followed him.
"Be careful," the redhead said, the first words she'd spoken to me, "he can be vicious when he gets drunk, he may try for revenge?"
"Revenge?" I said, "For him knocking me over?"
"In his tiny mind he thinks the world should get out of his way. Let me buy you a drink to apologise for the idiot I was with."
"No, thanks," I said, "not because I hold it against you, but just because I never accept drinks from people I don't know the name of."
"Diana," she said, "Diana Jepson."
"Dan Collins," I said.
She held her hand out and we shook.
"So what are you studying, Dan Collins."
"MA in Creative Writing," I said, "what about you?"
"Medicine," she said.
"You're going to be here a while then."
"Five years, then two years pre-reg, it's a long time to get qualified. What are you hoping to do with your degree?"
"Write," I said, "or failing that, I'll teach."
"Do you think you can make it as a writer?"
"My first novel has been taken up by an agent, he's showing it to publishers at the moment, a couple are bidding for it."
"So you're likely to be an author, a published one, before you even graduate?"
"It's a possibility, but I'm not counting on it."
We spent the evening discussing our individual hopes for the future. She seemed sensible, she wanted to be a doctor, but she also wanted the things most girls of her age wanted, husband, house, the cottage, the two point four children, perhaps even a dog.
I walked her back to her room in Vanbrugh just before eleven, at the door she turned and threw her arms round my neck. Our lips met and stayed together for what seemed like a long time but, in reality was less than a minute.
"When do you have to leave for home?" she asked.
