This section comes right at the beginning of the book. Tom has just arrived at The University of Exeter and is feeling a little anxious. He’s just met his room-mate (who seems a bit odd) and they are heading back over to the main hall of residence building to meet the other new arrivals. Tom is anxious to make a good impression and he wants people to think he’s super-confident, but in reality, he has huge doubts about himself.
The walk, although brief, provided me with an opportunity to take more notice of my surroundings, as I was no longer preoccupied by a suitcase hovering on the brink of imminent collapse. To my untutored eye, there wasn’t much in the gardens to inspire deeper thought and I felt a sudden yearning for home. Devon was pretty enough, I suppose, but it had little to appeal to an adolescent who was a city boy to his core. The rolling landscape held no great attraction to one whose ideal view was the city of London from Tower Bridge: a sprawling cityscape where you were jostled impatiently should you ever have the temerity to attempt a moment to stop and appreciate the sights around you. It was a city impregnated with history but obsessively focused on the immediate; intimately aware of its heritage but insistent on living in the now. London, with its safety net of anonymity, where you could be whoever you wanted, do whatever you liked and no-one would even give you the satisfaction of a second glance. After all, who were you to warrant one? We’ve seen it all before, their indifference shouted at you. You were no-one special, just another living dot on a landscape so diverse, it believed itself to be un-shockable. It was totally at odds with this area of the country and I felt the difference in my heart with a sudden longing for the hard pavements and grimy air of the capital. The fresh air here was suffocating. The gruff tones and lost letters that belied the caring heart within my home city had been replaced by the softer sounds of the West Country. Its gently modulated tones were accompanied by kind-eyed looks that spoke of a genuine desire to know you better. Gone was the frenetic pace of life that screamed in your ear, telling you that like a child late for a school trip, you’d get left behind if you paused to take a breath and savour the moment. A much calmer, quieter voice took its place, reminding you to look around. It didn’t want you to miss the red-orange smoulder of the sunset that illuminated fields full of grazing sheep, the glow of the dying day setting the white wool afire.
It should have made me feel more relaxed, but it didn’t. I still felt like that child: I hadn’t quite given up hope that something, or someone, would come along and rescue me, but was experiencing the dawning misery that I was the proverbial fish out of water here. This was not my home territory and I would have to fight to keep my standing. I wanted to have my intellect recognised, to prove I deserved to be here. I needed reassurance that being rejected from Cambridge did not signify the end of my dreams – this was the beginning of a new and different, but equally exciting future. My Cambridge failure had left me feeling as though my life had ended before it had even begun. I’d been so focused on the path I’d set out for myself that I failed to anticipate that just occasionally, life cannot be planned. The world doesn’t read the script you’ve written for yourself and its author sometimes decides your character must travel a different path.
In this latter area at least, I knew I would not be alone. During my brief wait in the hall prior to being assigned to my room, I had overheard part of a whispered conversation.
‘Of course you can do this, sweetheart. Oxford just wasn’t meant to be; you’re more than clever enough to be here.’
‘I am good enough,’ I told myself.
Maybe if I told myself often enough, I would begin to believe it.
These musings occupied me until I became aware that the sharp crunching underfoot had changed to the silence of the tarmac, melted into submission beneath the many feet that had trodden its well-worn surface. This change signalled we had almost reached the back of the house and it drew me out of my funk and focused me back in the present. I turned to Peter with a rueful grin as I pushed the door open and prayed he’d not said anything important while my thoughts had been wandering. As my mum would have no doubt reminded me, had she not already been on her way back eastwards; he may not have been destined to become my best friend, but he’d done nothing to deserve my rudeness, however inadvertent it may have been.
That started me thinking about home once again and I slammed the gate on that particular avenue of thought, not wanting to lose myself for a second time in memories of home. It was tempting to meander down that road, but however comforting those contemplations might have been, I needed to be here, now. The two hundred and fifty miles that separated me from everything I knew could have been a whole world away for all the good that thinking about it would do me. Home was safe and this was scary, but scary was good. Scary got the adrenaline going and kept me on my toes. Scary meant I was pushing the boundaries and making myself a better person. This was a challenge I was ready for, one I fully intended to face head on and overcome. I would seek out the people who I’d spend the next year living with, I would make friends and I would be a success. This was the mantra I repeated to myself through the library and the laundry room, along the corridor and out into the main entrance hall. Earlier, it had been full of freshers, dragging bags and saying their goodbyes to parents, some of whom were embarrassingly tearful. Now it was eerily quiet and gave the impression it was mourning its lost occupants.
There are first loves and there are last loves. But what happens when they overlap?
Tom Blythe falls in love quickly. He fell for Olivia the first time they met. The same thing happens when he meets Grace. The problem is: Tom is still in love with Olivia.
Pulled in two different directions, Tom has a choice to make. He knows he’s unhappy, but is that enough for him to forget the vows he made? Both women have difficult pasts and Tom is desperate to help them, but at what cost?
Can he let Olivia go and commit his future to Grace? Or will the pull of the past prove too strong?
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