Riding a wave of calm, Milly comes into the empty kitchen. A luxury, seeing as the university thought it perfectly reasonable to have eight people share one tiny kitchen, overloaded with the required storage space for eight lots of pots, pans, colanders, whisks, the lot.
Each cupboard had a name sticker on, some level of personalisation collectively decided upon during Fresher’s week. Names - or rather, rude nicknames - given out after the first night’s antics:
Chunder-Chan (Chandler, whose mum personally identifies with Monica Geller from Friends, managed to projectile vomit outside the student’s union and still be let in, despite getting splashes on the group in front of them in the queue)
Posh Spice (for Ellie, Bangor was her second choice uni, making everyone else acutely aware of the fact that she was a Durham hopeful by bringing it up every 20 minutes & she had a ridiculous amount of cooking spices - oregano?? Seriously?? You’re 18!)
Rotisserie (Jac, who had somehow managed to order a rotisserie chicken instead of a chicken kebab & just went with it. He awoke the next morning cuddling the carcass incredibly confused and has not gone back to that kebab shop since)
Mr Brightside (Ang had requested this at least five times that evening and then taken over as DJ during the predrinks. She claimed it was ‘the best song to end the night ever’ and, when it was pointed out that they were just beginning the night, claimed ‘you never know when the night is going to end. We all need a dose of Mr Brightside in our lives’)
Catwoman (Catrin got teary at the end of the night and facetimed her mum, demanding to see the five kittens. They’re all named after DC characters so the name just stuck, Some of the housemates are fed up with being shown pictures and given updates on Bruce - who has recently been involved in a squirrel fight but should make a full recovery - but Milly could see Cat’s face light up every time she could talk about her babies so generally humoured her)
Steroid (Rhys was doing push ups to impress Bron after his first pint of Brain’s Dark & tried to get her to touch his biceps. He now spends most of his free time in the gym after joining the Bangor Weightlifting Soc and vehemently denies ever touching steroids. He was still pining after Bronwyn though, hopeless romantic he is)
Blobby (Josh was a force of nature - he would cause Mr Blobby-style havoc whenever he had a Snakebite and had recently taken to shouting ‘Blobby blobby blobby!’ whenever he came into a room. He was another post-grad like Milly, but liked to party like a first year and she wasn’t too sure how he was juggling his social life with the demands of his PGCE…)
Mummy Mills (she’d somehow taken on the role of Mother Hen that night - maybe due to being a bit older, having been there & got the t-shirt with being horrendously drunk during her undergrad. She was the designated shoulder to cry on, mediator of house arguments & one to arrange the cleaning rota, despite Ellie’s claims that she wanted to pay for a cleaner and refused to clean the toilet)
Milly’s cupboard is next to the fridges - both a blessing and a curse, depending on whether Rhys was on his tuna diet or not. This time it seemed as though he had moved onto another form of protein, thankfully…
She walks over to her cupboard, taking out a banana. Pulls a chair out from the table (still clean after her moan on Sunday - good job Blobby) and plops into it, her bag slipping onto the floor. How the fuck did she manage to get herself into this mess? She tries to distract herself by writing a shopping list:
Potatoes
Oat milk
Orange juice
Sausages?
Strawb yoghurt -
The kitchen door opens; Catrin and a new love interest are holding carrier bags, the clinking of bottles confirming that she was ready to go out out tonight. The guy - who had sandy blonde hair and fantastic bum, Milly noted - puts the bag down and moves Cat towards the wall. They haven’t noticed her sitting at the table, she notes, as they begin to passionately french kiss.
Definite moaning from both parties going on. Milly contemplates making a quick escape out of the window, wondering how far she could jump without causing too much damage, when they take a break from tonsil tennis and Cat giggles.
‘Oh fuck.’
Milly gives them a little wave with her banana skin.
‘How’s it going?’
The guy turns to regard Milly, blushing.
‘Oh, this is Rich - he’s doing Economics. Rich, this is Mills - she’s our postgrad mum,’ Cat picks up the carrier bags and sets them onto the table. ‘Did you want to join us tonight? We’re planning on having some pizza and wine, maybe watching Bake Off?’
Rich does a double take. Bake Off and chill didn’t quite have the same ring to it. Cat rustles in the carrier bags, opens a bag of crisps and offers him one.
‘I’m all good, thanks - I’ve got some uni stuff to catch up on and I need to go to the shops. Boring life admin. You two have a good time, though,’ Milly gives them two finger guns and immediately regrets it. Sometimes she felt ancient compared to the first years.
‘You’ll be missed. Let’s do something soon though, yeah? Pub tomorrow?’ Cat has a concerned look on her face - she knows the situation with Ollie but, thank god, has the foresight not to mention it in front of Rich,
‘Yeah - I’ll text you. Have a good night, you two,’ Milly picks up her banana skin and goes to the bin.
*
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