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when he’d next see her, let alone in a bathing costume. What exquisite agony it was to let his eyes roam over her body, especially on a rare occasion when she appeared to be lying there unselfconsciously. All week she’d seemed to be hiding under a towel or pulling her dress on just to go from the pool to the bathroom. Was she making sure he didn’t get any ideas, or did she genuinely not know how beautiful she was?
     He’d thought it as long as he’d known her, right from the moment they’d met at the icebreaker party during Fresher’s Week, when she’d spilt a pint of cider down his trousers and then spent half an hour drunkenly apologising. Was it possible to be both clumsy and poised at the same time? Eva embodied a strange contradiction both in looks and temperament, shambling but upright, uncertain but determined. She wore an unfashionable selection of outfits, long flowing skirts and big boots and slogan T-shirts. Sometimes he suspected she was hiding behind her voluminous clothing, but her naturally straight-backed posture belied her five-feet-five-inches and made her stand out like a peacock in a flock of geese, at least to his eyes.
    It was her face, though, that really got to him. He often had to remind himself to stop staring at the way her green eyes seemed to flicker from humour to concentration to determination at a second’s notice, in a face framed by silky, tangled brown hair that gave the impression of never being brushed. Her mouth too, was perfect, wide and upturned at the corners, though he’d noticed that she often kept a hand in front of it to hide the crop of spots that invariably broke out on her chin whenever she had an exam or a heavy night.
    They’d met at a party in his hall of residence so he’d guessed she lived nearby but hadn’t been able to believe his luck when she’d turned out to be studying Physics too. They’d quickly fallen into the habit of going to lectures and then grabbing a coffee or three together afterwards. They were naturally on the same wavelength; he never got tired of talking to her and she seemed to feel the same way. She was interested in everything, wanted to experience all that life had to offer. He worried that he would seem boring to her by comparison, too focused on physics and narrow in his horizons, and he rued the fact that their natural rapport had translated so quickly into matey familiarity, the shackles of which had proven impossible to throw off even once he’d broken up with Emily halfway through the first year.
    Emily: what a mistake that had been, and the consequences still echoed with him now. She’d been his back-home girlfriend, approved of by his parents and slotting frictionlessly into his group of friends from school. When he’d left for university and she’d been shipped off to finishing school in Switzerland he’d gone along with her assumption that they would stay together without giving it much thought, but his error had quickly become apparent after arriving in Bristol and meeting Eva. At first he’d avoided the subject, but their friendship had bloomed with an intensity that left him with no choice but to mention his girlfriend, which he’d done with a studied casualness designed to imply the relationship wasn’t serious. He’d hoped and expected that Eva would give him the shove he needed to end it, but instead he found himself watching helplessly as something slammed shut behind her eyes. Then before there had been time to redeem himself, Lucien had appeared on the scene and all he’d been able to do was to look on miserably at Eva’s transparent attempts to make him notice her.
    The thing with Emily had finally met its grisly and inevitable end during the summer after the first year, and the night he returned to Bristol he’d girded himself with a few pints and then gone to see Eva with the intention of confessing his feelings. That night, trudging back to his room after Eva had pleaded tiredness and he hadn’t