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remember too the blow I got
    Deep in my side and how I ran confused
    Lost, and my hooves snicked on the herby stones
    You should have been behind me…

    Deeply affected by her own words, she sobbed aloud around masticated primrose-green and whole-meal mouthfuls. “Oh God. OH GOD. God, God, please don’t do this to me, I can’t bear it. AWOooooooh! AWOooooooh!”
    The people in the cells on either side woke and groaned. An Iranian Media Studies student pulled her pillow over her head and stuck her fingers in her ears. The American Exchange smacked the on switch of his ghettoblaster and slammed it against the wall, full blast drastic thrash right in the monster’s ear hole. Made no difference. He switched it off and lay grimly enduring. Amplified music in the small hours was a chucking-out offence, whereas there was no obvious sanction against Howling Wolf’s behavior. He was a timid soul.
    Ramone did not have a bedtime. She fell asleep at about four, dropping like a stone into oblivion in the middle of a sentence in Anti-Oedipus. It was the only way she knew.
    ii
    Anna Senoz preferred male company, because guys tended not to interrupt her when she was explaining things. Patrick Spencer Meade, the American Exchange student, had noticed this. When she talked to fellow females they would speedily glaze over and soon it would be yes, yes, yes, but what about my new hairdo? Okay, to be fair, yes, yes, yes, but what about ? Result: Anna bewildered. She didn’t know how to leave a thought unfinished. She had no idea why the average male undergraduate let her gab in peace. She had no idea she was sexy. Picture it: Marilyn Monroe is sitting beside you—a brunette Marilyn, which is so much classier, and brainy, which to the male is subconsciously incredibly attractive, resist the dreadful idea as he will. Holy baloney! Those lovely, clear, taffy-colored brown eyes are gazing into yours, that body is staying nice and close, as she explains to you the role of small particles of molybdenum in the process of photosynthesis. No sir, you are not going to interrupt, not for your life.
    The guys didn’t know what was going on either, not consciously. Anna’s signifiers were neat and sober clothing, hardly-there make-up, an air of cool comradeship. There was nothing about her dress or manner that said THIS WAY TO THE HONEYPOT. The guys, who jumped up slavering whenever anything marked GIRL walked by, if the body under the labels belonged to Dumbo or to a stick insect, never mentioned Anna in their parodic, hard-on discussions of female first-year talent. But they kept quiet for her, and in a puzzled way they gravitated. He guessed they had to be aware, at some level, of her wide shoulders, hand-span waist, and curvaceous little bottom; of the pert, round-as-apples breasts under her clean and modest tee-shirts.
    Or maybe Spence was partial.
    She had been pointed out to him at an early stage in his Exchange Year, by Charles Craft whom he’d met at the Computer Club. She was the girl in Biols who had read everything on the reading list and then some, the one who spent hours in the library reading science journals that had nothing to do with any first-year course. Charles had laughed unpleasantly and called her Mr Spock. Spence, who’d already discovered to his personal cost that Craft was full of shit, had detected envy and insecurity, and looked on the cause of these emotions with approval. Then, one weekend, they all went up to London for a critically vital music gig. They all, meaning those members of the loose group of friends who had the funds for a daunting ticket price, plus Spence and Anna Senoz, poor but scraping by. They’d hardly spoken to each other at this point. They all had stayed at Rosemary McCarthy’s parents’ house. Rosey and Wol (otherwise Oliver Tim) had cooked a large Sunday meal. Spence and Anna, both of them maybe feeling socially marginal, had independently decided to clean the