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great doors of an elaborate gateway and a man stepped over the lintel. Nick caught the door before it swung to. On the other side was an open-air space hemmed in by grey buildings. A dark passage led through the building on the right, plunging Nick into cool damp gloom. He emerged into the dazzling sunshine of an immense quadrangle.
    ‘Courtyard,’ Nick corrected himself, remembering his father telling him that it was ‘The Other Place’ (aka Oxford) that had quads.
    Squinting into the glare, Nick saw a fountain topped with an ornate crown of carved stone. Trinity. This was the Great Court in Trinity. Ahead was the chapel, all creamy-grey stoneand, to the right, the Great Gate, looking like it should be part of a Tudor castle. Beside it, running along the rest of the college frontage and then down the side behind him, were lower buildings of golden-brown stone with gabled windows.
    I get to come here every day , he told the air, finding a smile breaking across his face.
    He wandered the College for an hour, eventually finding his way to a quiet courtyard with a circular lawn around an enormous tree that towered above the surrounding roofs. An arched gateway let out on to the Backs, falling away to a stone bridge over the river and, beyond, an avenue of lime trees, all green and gold, ablaze with sunlight. Somewhere to explore another day.
    He turned with a sigh and headed back into town to buy some more kitchen and bathroom essentials. They’d forgotten everything from bins to toilet brushes on the ‘keeping the house clean’ front.
    When Nick staggered out of the department store an hour later, laden with bags, he hailed a taxi to take everything home, then set out again for food. A short walk led him to Mill Lane, where he’d seen a bunch of shops as the Replacement drove them past the day before. One of the small family-run supermarkets was halal and the other stocked mostly with Asian ingredients, labelled in characters he couldn’t even begin to decipher. In place of the hotdogs and garlic dough balls he’d planned to buy, he gathered up the weirdest-looking fruit he could find (including something leathery purple-brown that a handwritten sign identified as‘mangosteen’), some chilli-flavoured crisps and a box of eggs, then took it all home.
    The fridge looked less clinical with things on the shelves, and the kitchen brightened with a bowl of apples and bananas on the counter. Or maybe it was the sunshine, spilling in the huge bay front window and reaching every corner of the living room. There were no curtains yet, but Nick had fallen in love with the wide wooden window seat the first time he had seen the house. Soon he was curled up with a mug of coffee and a book, the dust motes dancing above the pages, bathed in light and warmth.
    In the street beyond, a child laughed and Nick looked up to watch the family pass: a father and two toddlers, chasing their way down the street. A beep from his mobile startled his eyes away from the road.
    Dad:
    Might be home late. Sorry.
    By the time he looked up again, the street was empty.

Chapter 3
    (1 × October)
    ‘You’ve really improved the place this month, Nick,’ said Bill as he made himself comfortable in an armchair.
    ‘Hey, how do you know some of it wasn’t me?’ Michael asked.
    ‘That is not an appropriate question to ask a man you shared a set with for two years in College, and then a flat for five years in London.’
    ‘You never know, I might have—’
    ‘No, Mike. You mightn’t. Anyway, Induction tomorrow, Nick. You ready to meet your new classmates?’
    ‘If I say no, will you find a way to pause time so I can get used to the idea?’
    Bill laughed. ‘They’ll be nervous too, Nick. Maybe more than you, because they won’t know the town yet. You could offer to show people about.’
    Nick shrugged, leaning forward to tidy the mess of papersfrom his Induction folder that had been spread across the coffee table. ‘I guess I can try