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it in too hard. This was the reason why, however much Olly wanted a job, chauffeur punting had never been the option it was for several of his fellow former students.
    Isabel was watching the boats. ‘It looks so romantic.’
    ‘It’s very romantic. Especially when water from the pole runs down your arm into your armpit.’
    As Isabel laughed, a voice Olly recognised, one with a distinctive Northern twang, floated up from below: ‘. . . known throughout the university as St Wino’s . . .’
    He looked down, horrified. A punt full of American tourists was being poled along by a chauffeur punter, a fellow ex-St Alwine’s student called Kevin Strangways. Kevin had been, Olly recalled, even more of a fish out of water among the Bullinger hoorays. Apart from the times they had dumped him in the college fountain, of course.
    Kevin was clearly eager to settle the score now: ‘. . . sexist, racist braying toffs from hell, basically.’
    His voice, amplified by the stonework, boomed up from beneath the bridge into Olly’s ears with what seemed to him unmissable volume.
    ‘They have window-smashing parties with strippers and dwarves. They tear money up in front of homeless people.’
    Olly felt panic rise. It was not difficult to work out what was being described.
    ‘You’re not serious?’ gasped one of his passengers. ‘You’re making this up, right?’
    Olly was almost running over the bridge, Isabel hurrying behind him. ‘What’s he saying?’ she asked, straining back to hear.
    ‘. . . bras and suspenders . . .’ boomed Kevin from under the bridge. Olly plunged on through the crowds with Isabel’s rucksack.
    As they continued up the road the rich college architecture gradually gave way to new-build offices, apartments and hotels.
    Eventually Branston’s rounded concrete dome hove into view with the covered walkways that projected from it like wires from a skull undergoing some revolutionary and subsequently discredited therapy. The scrunchy silver of the exposed heating and water pipes glittered in the sun.
    ‘Here we are,’ Olly said.
    They approached up a wide tarmac path flanked by yellowing rhododendron bushes. Age and weather, while it had mellowed the stone buildings of the town, had here done the concrete few favours. The front entrance had sliding doors, like an airport. Above it, a large rectangular clock with a red digital LED number display reinforced the effect. The doors meshed together by means of rubber edging which parted with a slight farting noise as people went in and out.
    But Isabel, Olly saw, was gazing at it all with delight. She turned and smiled at Olly. ‘Thanks so much for carrying my stuff.’
    ‘S’OK,’ he shrugged. ‘Pleasure.’
    Was that it then? Not so much as a cup of tea? But he could tell she was too distracted by arrival to consider niceties such as this. Her green eyes were swivelling everywhere, taking it all in.
    As slowly as was possible, he peeled the rucksack off his sweating back. ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, feeling rather desperate, ‘I could take you for a drink later, once you’ve unpacked and everything.’
    ‘Or I could take you,’ Isabel suggested, remembering her manners. ‘I owe you a drink. I’m not sure whether there’s a bar here though.’ She looked vague.
    Olly hid a smile. Every college had a bar. They were the centre of student social life and some chose colleges entirely on the basis of them. But probably not at Branston, where the bar did not enjoy a good reputation.
    ‘The Turd,’ Olly said.
    She blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘The bar. The bar at Branston. That’s what it’s called.’
    ‘Is it?’ Her eyes were round with wonder. ‘I don’t remember that in the prospectus.’
    He felt suddenly rather weak about the knees. There was something utterly adorable about her earnestness. ‘It’s not an official name.’ But, as he explained, given that Branston’s bar was concrete, subterranean, fatly tubular in