FSE

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Sitting on the narrow bed, I performed an inventory of my new home:

• Four off-white walls, awaiting posters.
• One desk.
• One chair.
• One bookcase.
• One washbasin.
• Two suitcases.
• Three cardboard boxes, two containing books, one containing food.
• One computer, inherited from Dad's office.
• One hi-fi, inherited from a friend's big sister.
• One kettle, a parting gift from Mum in the hope that her little girl will make friends and give them tea.
• One single bed with lumpy, stained mattress, currently occupied by...
• One chubby puma, a little sweaty from carrying boxes, wearing a band T-shirt she hopes will help her find friends to make tea for.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my paw. Yes, I'd snivelled a little as I waved my parents' car off, but I was relieved they'd gone at last. Now I was on my own. I was at university, not at school; I was personally responsible for turning up to lectures and tutorials, for feeding myself, and for doing my own laundry. I was a grown-up!

Well, sort of.

The task of unpacking was so daunting that I devoted several more minutes to sitting on the bed and staring at the walls while I decided what to do first. Music, I concluded. I plugged in the hi-fi and rummaged in one of the book boxes for my meagre CD collection.

Now I had a suitable accompaniment, the rest of the job went more easily. I made the bed and placed Blue Dog, the imaginatively-named soft toy I'd had since I was born, on the pillow. I covered the duvet with a throw my mum had insisted I take; she seemed to have some weird, Victorian idea that allowing boys to sit on my naked duvet would be immoral. If she thought that sitting on your bed was the worst thing boys at university got up to, she was sadly mistaken.

It was probably the worst they'd get up to with me, though. I'd nursed dreams of reinventing myself at university, of coming out of my teenage cocoon as a beautiful, popular butterfly, but the more I thought about it the less likely it seemed. I'd be lucky if I even made one friend, T-shirt notwithstanding.

I was in danger of crying again, so I threw myself into my domestic arrangements. I'd set up my computer, organised my books and even put my posters up when it dawned on me that no one had told me where the loos were, and that this would be valuable information pretty soon. I set off to explore - or, failing that, to find somebody to ask.

There were still a few mums and dads milling about with their embarrassed offspring, but at last I spotted an unaccompanied red wolf. She was wearing the same T-shirt as me - only mine had gone a funny shape in the wash, while hers was tied up in a knot so it stretched across her breasts and showed off her tight stomach.

"Do you - " I began.

"Have you - " she said at the same time.

We both smiled.

"I'm Romy," I said.

"Viola. Great T-shirt!"

"You too!"

Five minutes later we were sitting in her off-white cell (on the opposite side of the corridor to mine and a perfect mirror image), drinking coffee. I hadn't been allowed coffee at home and I wasn't sure I liked it. I'd put in two sugars. (Luckily, Viola had known where the loos were.)

A couple of Viola's posters were the same as mine, too, and the stuffed animal on her pillow was a balding kangaroo. She didn't have a CD collection at all, just an MP3 player in a pink dock with speakers.

"What are you wearing to the freshers' bop tonight?" she asked.

"Don't know. I'm not really into dancing," I admitted. Or dressing up, which was probably obvious already.

"How about...snogging?" The wolf leaned forward with a suggestive smirk. It had teeth in it.

I cringed. I was right - this was going to be like sixth form all over again. Hormones raging left, right and centre, Romy in a corner with her nose in a book. I'd thought university would be a meeting of minds, not a meat market.

Viola was frowning, probably wondering how to break the news that actually she was far too pretty and slim to hang out with a sad case like me. I took a big slurp of coffee - it really wasn't very nice - and prepared to slink back to my own cell.

"Hey, check out what my mum gave me," Viola said suddenly, bouncing on the bed. She reached into her bag and brought out a pawful of little foil packets. I recognised them instantly from 'that' Biology lesson.

"She said 'Have fun, but be careful'!" Her pointed ears drooped. "So embarrassing!"

I blinked at the condoms. "My mum gave me a kettle," I said.

Viola looked at me and yelped with laughter, the ice thoroughly broken. I started giggling too, and we both flopped on our backs on her as yet unmade bed, shaking and hiccuping. Screw paranoia. I'd found someone to make tea for after all.

Mum had worried so much about her baby setting off for the big bad world of uni - she would be glad to know her gift had cemented a friendship. Although I wouldn't be telling her exactly how.