Page 1 of How We Began

PART ONE

September

I Lilah McCannon will abide by the rules.

The Rules:

No drink

No cigarettes

No boys (and/or sex)

No going home

No failing

Absolutely no failing

Under any circumstances

EVER

14th September

Dear Diary (Ugh, what am I, a thirteen-year-old with her first crush and a lockable diary?)

Seven years after failing my A-levels with quite spectacular results… I’m here… at university.

Mum thinks I’m having a breakdown, but then Mum likes to think that anyone who has a deep and meaningful thought about anything is in the throes of a breakdown. Last week, Aunty June was having one because she was considering swapping her ash blonde-hide-the-grey-highlights for a plum purple.

“She’s having a breakdown, I tell you,” Mum whispered down the phone so Dad couldn’t hear. From what I could tell, Dad was at the drinks’ cabinet. The unmistakable sound of Gordon’s being unscrewed, and ice being clinked, followed by a shout of, “Olive?” gave it away.

“Yes, of course I want an olive. It’s one of my five a day,” she told him before whispering back down the phone to me. “You know. It’s just her skin tone. And she wears so much pink, she’s going to look like one of those Trolls.

“Mum.” I sighed. “You can’t call Aunty June a troll.”

Truthfully, Mum lost no love with her husband’s sister, and I’d had to sit through one too many strained and heartburn-inducing family roasts to bother trying to referee anymore. Uncle Derek always made sure they arrived just as food landed on the table and then bored everyone with tales of which exit off the A3 he took to make better time. Aunty June, usually tinged with grey, downed a glass of sherry as she recovered from the drive.

All of this, me being here at university and not at the job my dad got me at the investment bank where he is CEO, started back in August.

God, I was soooo bored. Like really bored. Every day it was the same thing. The. Same. Thing.

Get up, go to work, drink wine, go to bed. Get up, go to work, drink wine, go to bed.

I started to realise that there had to be more to life. So I’d been driving past the university and I saw a sign advertising their clearing week (okay, first I thought it said, Cleaning Week, which I thought was a little strange). I pulled over my car and had a long, hard think. It was one of those deep and meaningful conversations that every so often you are forced to have with yourself, and you know you have to follow the decision you have made.

I decided to go into clearing. (Not cleaning).

I went home and got my dusty and, until that point, totally unnecessary Record of Achievement where my exam certificates were kept, then I drove back and applied for university.

I got in! The lecturer who did my application was so wonderful, reassuring me that even though I was going to be a ‘mature’ student I’d have the time of my life.

You know what? I need the time of my life. Something has to give.

Unfortunately, this left me with one MAJOR problem. HUGE problem.

I had to tell my mum and dad. Had to tell them, ‘thank you but no thank you’ for all the plans they’d made for me. To be fair to myself, they hadn’t actually discussed the plans with me. I’d just been swept away with them, agreeing to everything they suggested because it seemed easier than saying no and forging my own path.