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1.
Sarah groaned.
Then she groaned again, louder.
Then she hissed, 'Saffy!'
The answer was a reluctant 'Mm?'
'Are you awake?'
'No,' Saffy said, even more reluctantly.
'I've seized up,' Sarah said.
Muttering, Saffy flailed across the floor and hauled herself into Sarah's bed. She cuddled up close into Sarah's back and flung an arm over her.
And fell asleep again almost immediately.
It hadn't really been what Sarah had intended. But Saffy's breath was warm and soft on the back of Sarah's neck, and she felt herself melting into her, her stiffened joints and muscles easing back into compliance. And after all, it was a Saturday, and they didn't have to be up for hours yet.
Although... 'Saffy,' she murmured. 'My mum will be cooking breakfast...'
Saffy only cuddled closer.
2.
'Bastard!' Sarah sobbed. 'Bastardy bastardy bastardy bastard bastard!'
'Bastard,' Saffron agreed, and passed Sarah another tissue.
'Saffy, I can't bear it! It's such a cliché!'
'What is?'
'Him! Me! The ice cream!'
'For good reason,' Saffron said.
It was fairly representative of the way that conversation had been going all night. They were huddled together on Saffron's bed. The odds of someone being around were far greater than at Sarah's house, but the Cassons were far more practised in the gentle art of minding their own business than at least Mrs Warbeck.
Sarah jumped back into the loop. 'A hockey match! I should have known...'
'I could kill him?' Saffron offered. 'I'm very good at killing people, probably.'
It made Sarah laugh. 'You could go and see if that ice cream's softened up?'
'You'd have to let go of me if you wanted me to do that,' Saffron pointed out.
'I'd have to let go of you if I wanted you to kill him,' Sarah retorted, but she took her head off Saffron's shoulder and wrapped her arms around a pillow instead.
Saffron sighed and, none too steadily, went down to the kitchen. The ice cream had disappeared from the side. Eventually she tracked the tub down in one of Rose's works in progress, and the ice cream itself in a pudding basin in the fridge, melting into a sticky puddle. It must, she realised now, have been out of the freezer for several hours. That was mostly her fault, but enough of it was someone else's for her to feel justified in rolling her eyes.
'Oh, Rose. Why the fridge?' she asked, despairingly. She took it upstairs anyway, pudding basin and all, and a couple of spoons.
When she came back, Sarah was asleep, curled up in an exhausted, miserable ball at the head of the bed. Saffron looked at her and shook her head. Then she went to the bathroom and dumped the ice cream in the washbasin to melt down the plughole in its own sweet time. Back in the bedroom, she tucked the duvet over Sarah, switched off the light, and made herself as comfortable as she could at the other end of the bed.
3.
At one point, they'd been planning to have a joint gap year.
The way things turned out, they had a gap year at the same time, but separately.
Sarah said it was Saffy's fault; she hadn't actually been going to sign up for the tall ships thing, but no, Saffy had to go and book a non-refundable flight to Australia.
Saffy said it was Sarah's fault; it had certainly sounded like she was going to sign up for the tall ships thing, and Saffy wasn't eligible, so she had to go somewhere.
At the end of it all they managed to coordinate a little better, and met up in London, talking all the time.
'When you're back on dry land, it just won't stay still...'
'You spend all your time working! And you resent it, because you could be on the beach, but instead there you are...'
'… and a force nine gale...'
'Sharks! Actual honest to goodness sharks!'
They went on like that all evening.
'Saffy!' Sarah said at last. 'Have you heard a single thing I've been saying?'
'No! Have you heard anything I've been saying?'
They'd been talking over and past each other all the time, but that was fine; it just meant that they could say it all over again tomorrow.
Sarah had booked a private room in the youth hostel opposite St Pancras, because of course she had, and expected Saffy to share it, because of course she did. Which wouldn't have been a problem, except that Saffy first failed to fasten her water bottle properly, and then managed to knock it off the shelf in her sleep, and woke at three in the morning with wet, freezing feet. If they'd been in a dormitory, there might have been a spare bed.
As it was, she prodded Sarah until she woke up. 'Sarah! My bed's all wet!'
'Why?' Sarah asked suspiciously.
'I knocked my water over.'
Not opening her eyes, Sarah shuffled over to the edge of her own bed. 'Come on, then,' she grumbled. Then, as Saffy's feet made contact, 'You can put some socks on, though.'
4.
When they were filling in the UCAS forms they'd deliberately picked different universities, had made high-minded declarations to their indulgent but cynical families about having their own lives and not living in each other's pockets. All of that fell by the wayside within the first month of term, when Sarah, succumbing to an unexpected fit of homesickness, took three trains and a bus and appeared in the porter's lodge at Saffron's halls.
Saffron, feeling rather smug that she hadn't been the first to crack, took Sarah on a grand tour of campus. They got free pizza from the Christian Union, and free shots from the rugby team, and ended up drinking snakebite in the bar with the Classics Society. Saffron thought, not for the first time, that it was just as well that her room was on the ground floor.
There wasn't much room in Saffron's narrow bed, but they managed, top to toe.
5.
They danced all night at Caddy and Michael's wedding.
Actually, Caddy and Michael had sloped down to the registry office one lunchtime, but they had a party after the fact, with the hotel and the champagne and everything that Bill thought he ought to want for his eldest daughter, and Saffron and Sarah danced all night at that.
They didn't think anything of it. It was what they'd done a hundred times before, in sad hometown clubs or sticky students' union bars, Sarah draped comfortably over Saffron and neither of them thinking to dance with anyone else, because why would they?
Until:
'Are you two together...?' Indigo asked, and Rose said, 'Of course they are!' just as Saffron and Sarah were both saying 'No!'
And Saffron wondered, suddenly, what it would be like just to sit across Sarah's knee, to feel her arms around her, not actually dancing at all.
To take her mind off it, she hauled Michael onto the dancefloor to flail around to the nostalgic strains of S Club Seven and give him a completely superfluous lecture about treating Caddy properly, to which he listened with an indulgent smile. Over his shoulder she could see Sarah dancing with Indigo.
Some time after midnight, Sarah said, drunkenly and reluctantly, 'I suppose I'd better get a cab back to my parents'.'
'I wouldn't bother,' Saffron said. 'Have you seen the size of the beds here?' Just too late, she remembered. But it could have been worse. Neither Indigo nor Rose had heard, and anyway, Sarah had got the number of one of the bar staff, and Saffron knew that Sarah knew that Saffron knew. So that was fine.
'Do you have a spare T-shirt that I can wear?' Sarah said.
Sarah tended to snore a little when she'd drunk too much. Saffy already knew that. She would probably have lain awake all night anyway.
+ 1.
Things might have got awkward after that, but Sarah refused to let them. 'So,' she said over breakfast, 'when are you coming to stay with me?'
'Oh,' Saffy said, surprised, 'whenever you like, I suppose.'
Sarah pouted. 'You could sound more enthusiastic.'
Saffy said it again, more enthusiastically. 'Whenever you like.'
'That's better,' Sarah said. 'When do you think? Can you do next weekend?'
Saffy said she couldn't see any reason why not.
'Good,' Sarah said. 'My room's a lot bigger than yours, by the way. Accessible.'
'I bet it isn't. Not with all your crap in.'
Sarah ignored that. 'My bed's bigger than yours, too.'
Saffy blushed. Sarah smiled, and, watching Saffy out of the corner of her eye to make sure that she was watching her back, took out her phone and deleted the number she'd entered last night.
The week toiled past unbelievably slowly. Sarah thought about skipping her Friday morning lecture. Saffy's train wasn't due until two hours after it finished. Sarah went to her lecture, and listened to so little of it that she might as well have skipped it, and she was at the station with a good half hour to spare.
'Hello,' Saffy said, shyer than Sarah had seen her in years.
'I thought I should say,' she said, as soon as they were out of the station and heading towards the taxi rank, 'straight away, that I think your siblings have a point.'
'Traitor,' Saffy said. 'What do you mean, they have a point?'
'You and me. We should be together.'
'Oh,' Saffy said. 'Really?'
'Really. What do you think?'
Saffy's grin was wide and devastating. 'I think yes. Really.'
Sarah released a sigh of relief which was only half staged. 'Good. This evening could have been awkward otherwise.'
Saffy elbowed her gently. 'This whole weekend could have been awkward otherwise. The whole of the rest of our lives could have been awkward otherwise.'
'Yes. Well.'
'Made plans, did you?'
'I did,' Sarah said. She lowered her voice as they joined the end of the queue for taxis. 'They started here, and they ended in bed. And I thought we could skip the bit where we get drunk.'
'Oh,' Saffy said. 'Oh.' She shifted her overnight bag to her other shoulder, and took Sarah's hand. 'Yes. Those are good plans.'
And, unlike many other plans, before and since, they worked perfectly.