Three weeks later it turned cold. My God, so cold, as if someone had turned off a switch. Sydney was never like that, never so cold, never so sudden. All us first years were totally unprepared, with a run on the op shops to buy second hand jumpers, scarves, coats to keep us warm. We'd huddle by the radiators in our rooms - the heating was done by a big boiler that sent hot water in pipes all around the hall. The furnace must have been huge, with 250 rooms and the public spaces to fill.
Alex, being in his second year knew, and came prepared. The first day it turned really cold, he appeared at breakfast in the most gorgeous white woolly jumper, his fair cheeks flushed, his blond hair long down his back.
"Where on earth did you get that jumper?" I asked, nuzzling my hands onto his chest, into the wool, amazed at how thick it was. How a young man could wear white, I didn't know, but Alex could, like a snow bear. Or a snow leopard, because I knew he loved cats.
"Mum. Every year she'd knit us kids a jumper, and we'd get it at Christmas. Of course, in summer, we wouldn't need it, but come winter, there it was, all ready."
"It's beautiful," I said, sad that my mum didn't knit.
"The amazing thing was, she'd predict our height for the next year, coz they'd always fit, even when we were teenagers. I got this one for Christmas, before my parents went overseas. Good planning, huh?"
"Good planning! I reckon," said Arabella, who was sitting with us that breakfast. "Can I wear it?"
I looked at her, gob-smacked she'd even thought it, let alone said it.
"Are you kidding?" Alex replied, "how would I stay warm?"
Me, I thought instantly, I'll keep you warm, just like your tee-shirts kept me warm, those days in your room.
"Well, me, obviously," Arabella said, with her hand on his arm, kneading that sleeve like a cat does, with her claws.
"Bella, you're full of shit. You're not that kind of girl."
I looked at them both, caught outside the conversation. Did Alex know something I didn't? But the moment passed, and they were talking about something else.
Later, I asked her, as we sat in her room that evening after dinner, "Arabella, what did Alex mean, 'you're not that kind of girl'? This morning, when you said -"
"Me, obviously..."
"Yeah. Who wouldn't want to keep him warm?" I'd been thinking about this all day, and was a little worried it would sound rehearsed. But I didn't expect her reaction.
"Leah, it's not what you think. I..." Suddenly, Arabella seemed very serious. She took a deep breath. I was holding my own breath, and could feel my heart beating fast. It struck me then, in a quick rush, the same intuition as the day with Alex walking up the avenue, that Arabella was lonely. Even alone. With a clunk, like a key in an old lock, things fell into place.
Before we'd started to hang out, her two spoons of sugar to match mine, I remembered that Arabella often sat by herself for meals, came down to breakfast late, to catch the tail end of the sitting. The private school jerks had given her the name Red Arabella, on account of her hair, I'd thought; but later I realised, her politics too. She talked her beliefs a lot at first, loud and abrasive, in the private boys' faces. Almost visceral, red faced and angry. She'd fling that great mane of hair about her, and walk away with her head held high, muttering, "Morons," under her breath.
Then she stayed away from them completely, and it was then, too, as I cast my mind back, that I remembered seeing her occasionally with Alex, sitting across tables down at the university's central courtyard, talking. Something else hit me, the way Alex looked nowhere else but me, when we talked. Did he give Arabella that same deep attention too, was it just what he did? Why would he limit his undivided attention to me?
"Bella, are you okay?" Instinctively, I used Alex's name for her, I didn't know why. "Bella?"
"He talks to me, Leah. That's all it is. He's told me about his older sister, and that helped."
He'd told me about Caroline too, how she'd...
"Arabella, are you gay?" I blurted it out without thinking, the mention of Caroline being the final clunk of that lock. "God, I... fuck, that was rude, I -"
"Leah, it's okay. But yes, I think I might be. Not that I've ever..."
"Done anything? God. Neither have I." I blurted that out too, quicker than my brain was thinking.
"That's because you're not gay, Leah. I don't think you know this, but when you're next to Alex, your Alex beacon is pretty bloody bright." She looked at me, seeing something flicker across my face.
I blushed to the roots of my hair. "Fuck, am I that stupid, that obvious?"
Arabella looked at me with the loveliest, softest smile. "Oh Leah!" she said, "yes, you are." She touched my knee. "But weren't you looking after me, here?"
"I think I'd better make coffee," I said, "because it's going to be a long night."
"Not coffee," she said, "I'm too bloody jittery as it is."
We each got through three cups of Milo that night. There were a lot of tears from both of us, because we each had so much to tell, and when we couldn't keep our eyes open for tiredness, Arabella said, "You're staying here tonight, Leah, because neither of us should be alone. It wouldn't be right."
There was no sex, no embarrassment, nothing happened. We slept with our arms around each other, face to face, front to back, back to back. We both crept down to the loo, at about two in the morning, holding hands like kids in a playground. No one saw us. "Silent like cats," Arabella said, back in her room, as she wrapped her longer body behind mine, her warmth against my back, her hands holding mine.
We didn't do anything that night, but we often slept together for the pure comfort of human kindness, like the sisters we each never had. Sex might have hovered like a bee, but it didn't land on the flowers. And together, later, we put our minds to our virginities, for despite her sexual bravado, Arabella's was intact, too.
"Your problem is Alex," Arabella said. "He's oblivious to your beacon, he's still shattered from Clio." We'd pieced together what might have happened between Alex and Clio the year before, from the little bits he'd shared with each of us. "But you're small and dark like she is, so maybe..."
Arabella drifted into her own problem. "And I'm not ready to out myself. I'm just not. Besides which, Madelyn is with that prick Bernhard, so she's..."
"Unavailable. Fuck," I said. We both sat there, contemplating our dilemma. "But it's not like it's the end of the world, or even important, is it?" I think we both realised this was an indulgence, and it wouldn't matter at all in five years time. "Madelyn?" I caught up.
"God yes. She's a proper fucking bitch, but there's something so exotic about her. Perhaps it's her sylph thin body, I don't know, those barely there tits and those fuck long legs. The way she looks like she wants to eat you. Fuck, she could eat me alive!"
I looked at her, incredulous. "Jeez, Arabella, you really are fucked up. Madelyn?!"
"I know," she replied, "it's a bit pathetic, really, isn't it?" She shook her head in dismissal. "But Leah," Arabella had a sudden thought, "are you on the pill?"
"No, but I should get it, if I want to..." I knew a ton of other girls had been to the doctor, got themselves sorted. Sorted for sex. I giggled. Arabella laughed when I told her. "Atta girl!" she said.
