"I swear to dictionaries there's wedding bells on the horizon. He bought her a promise ring for Christmas. Twenty pounds says they're engaged by the end of this year."

"You swear to dictionaries?"

"...Oh alright, whatever, leave me alone." Millard scoffed and held up his hand in defence of his unique colloquialism, "Nothing wrong with that."

Olive giggled and closed her laptop. They had just gotten off a Skype call with Fiona and Hugh in Bristol and the moment it had ended Millard was commenting on the silver promise ring on Fiona's right hand.
"You're awfully interested in other people's relationships, Mill."

"Interested? Purely from an academic perspective I assure you, and if that's we're going to play it, Olive, then how long is going to be before Enoch pops a question?" His green eyes narrowed and a smug smirk spread over his round, rather boyish for a twenty year old, face as Olive whipped around and glared at him. She knew perfectly well that the future was usually the last thing on her boyfriend's mind, he liked to take one day at a time and was probably the kind of man to get quite alarmed at the idea of marriage unless he was the one to think of it.
Millard must have known what kind of person Enoch was too, and the knowing look on his face told Olive that he knew he had ended that argument and won it. Or he thought he had, she had one more trump card up her sleeve.

"Have you asked that girl out yet?"

Millard's smirk vanished and it was Olive's turn to look pleased with herself. He had fancied a girl who shared half of his classes for months and done nothing about it but mention her every time he and Olive caught up for coffee, or, in this case, dinner.

"Touché, Elephanta." He screwed up his freckled face and stuck his tongue out at her which only made Olive laugh. "Now how about that fish and chips huh? It's just a block down and I'm starved."

The chair scraped across the floor as Olive pushed it out from the kitchen table and picked up her laptop to return it to her room. "I'll get my coat."

The flat was a good deal emptier now that it was only Althea and her sharing it. After the disastrous moving out in the holidays between university years, Nathan had been given marching orders and happily taken them. She hadn't so much as seen him on campus since and nor had they found another roommate.

Even then, Althea, whose hair seemed to grow impossibly longer every time she emerged from her room, mainly kept to herself and hardly even used the common areas. Millard had talked about moving in for awhile, but his campus was further away and would only be less convenient than his dorm room was.

Olive returned her laptop to her desk and spared a few seconds to glance at the group picture from Sixth Form graduation again. She smiled. A lot changed even in just two years, not even two years of university yet. She only have one year to go now, and then it was back to the city, back to wonderful London that she really did love.

But Cambridge was still home until then, and it had taken a full year to really feel like she could actually find her way around reasonably well. She'd found herself a part time job she liked to think was very appropriate to the Literature degree she was undertaking, what was more appropriate than a bookshop? A bookshop that was also a coffee shop perhaps, and Olive enjoyed it. It might be a bit of a cliché student job to serve coffee but being able to do it in a cosy bookshop was perfectly reasonable for Olive. It wasn't like she had time to look for a full time career while she was studying.

Olive broke out of the thoughtful reverie she had slipped into for a few moments and turned on her heel so quickly her fringe flickered a little. Strands kept falling into her eyes sometimes, she needed to get that trimmed. Briefly she let herself be reminded of that one stubborn curl in particular of Enoch's that constantly fell over his forehead and annoyed him to no end. Watching him frustratingly rake his fingers through his hair to push it back was simultaneously extremely amusing and quite attractive.

She grabbed her navy coat and swept out of the room and across the hall to knock on Althea's door.
The other girl opened it after a moment and tilted her head curiously without a word.

"Mill and I are going for fish and chips, you want to come for the walk?"

It wasn't a likely yes, Olive knew that, but she was always going to offer. It might be good for Althea to actually speak to other people, and despite her quiet nature and unhurried movements, she was a perfectly nice enough person. Just as antisocial as Enoch was.

"Alright."

"Really?" Olive's eyebrows shot up in surprise, completely taken aback by the answer.

xxxXxxx

Five minutes later the three of them were walking along, Althea always a step or two behind and silent, the block beneath the streetlights in the darkness of early evening February. Their breath misted in the cold air as Millard and Olive chatted idly between each other.

"So what's her name again, Mill? What's she like?" Olive teased, enjoying finally having something to hold over Millard's head when he got particularly pompous.

Millard just sighed and through his curly haired head back to stare at the sky for a second.

"Well then you shouldn't have teased all of us!" Olive added, anticipating what was going on in his head and Millard glared at her.

After a moment he finally spoke again.

"Melina, alright? Melina Manon and she's...rather spirited, bit of a temper, but perfectly nice. There you go, have I sated your curiosity?"

"Not quite. If you've liked her for this long why haven't you asked her out?"

"Relationship advice from the girl who pined over Enoch for months and wouldn't tell him how she felt?"

The headlights of a car ghosted past in the dark, and no sooner had the vehicle reached the corner just ahead of the group, than it braked and backfired with a loud, residual bang that resembled that of a gunshot.

Millard, seemingly recovered of his indignation at being asked about Melina, immediately turned on his heel and started walking backwards, clutching his hands to his chest. He proceeded to perform what Olive could only describe as a pantomime worthy death scene.

"I've been shot! Struck down in my prime, what a cruel world! Go on without me, ladies, I don't think I'll make it, just let me bleed in peace!"

"Are you a History major or a Drama student?" Althea said unexpectedly which made both Millard and Olive exchange a glance. Millard dissolved into chuckles and dropped his act and Olive smiled to herself and rolled her eyes at his antics.

"And speaking of Enoch," Millard said as suddenly as if they hadn't been interrupted at all and his little performance hadn't happened. "Is what Hugh said true?"

"What was that?"

"Did he really run into Enoch getting a tattoo?"

"I don't have a clue if Hugh ran into Enoch or not." Olive answered evasively, it wasn't something Hugh had mentioned to her, and Enoch wouldn't have bothered to say it if he hadn't even bothered to mention getting one at all those weeks ago when he did it.

"But did he though? Get a tattoo? Because no one mentioned it when we were all home for the holidays."

Olive sighed, she was a poor liar anyway so pretending he hadn't wouldn't be any use.
"Did you expect him to?"

"He actually did? Holy thesaurus..."

"Honestly, Millard, Enoch didn't even tell me he was getting one, I had to see it myself before I had any idea whatsoever."

She was a lot less annoyed about it now. In fact, she had been a lot less annoyed about it the very next morning. It hadn't even been the tattoo itself so much as the lack of communication that didn't seem to bother or even occur to Enoch at all.

Truth be told, the skull really did suit her boyfriend, whether one he hadn't designed himself would have suited him quite as well she had no idea but this one did. She'd thought it very silly of her to begin with but there was something right from the first time she'd really looked at it on him, that was undeniably attractive about Enoch with a tattoo. And he was a very good looking man to begin with but the skull just seemed so somehow manly a thing to have on his torso that once she was used to it Olive couldn't help grinning about. Okay. So she really liked it now.

"Yes, he did. I know, I didn't think he'd ever be the person to do it either."

"No, not Enoch, he's too...reserved and grumpy."

Olive laughed, "And grumpy people can't get tattoos?"

"No, well-" Millard looked for all the world that he was theorising about something actually important for a second. "I guess he's into all the gloomy, dark stuff. It's a tombstone isn't it?"

"It's a skull actually."

"That would have been my next guess. I suppose, if you think about the rest of our little posse, he'd be the most likely to ever do it out of all of us. I can't imagine Jacob or Emma ever doing it. Even Hugh."

"Yeah well...true I suppose."

They had just stopped outside of the chip shop when a thought struck Olive. She'd slipped her phone into her pocket before leaving the flat but had she actually turned it off silent in the hours since class had let out? She didn't remember any messages or anything.

Althea and Millard stepped past her as she stopped in the middle of the pavement and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Sure enough, the little switch on the side was flicked to expose the orange, it had been on silent the whole time. She flicked it off and her screen woke up.

"Oh my goodness..."

"Hmm?"

She stared wide eyed at her screen and scrolled down the list of banner notifications. There were a couple of messages from an hour or two ago but they didn't concern her. What did was the amount of missed calls. Five, all within the last ten or eleven minutes, and all of them from Enoch.

Enoch wasn't even good at texting back, he rarely was the one to call her, and he never called her that desperately.

As if he'd been summoned, her phone began to ring in her hand and Enoch's name and frowning picture popped up on the screen. Without wasting a second she tapped answer and didn't even have time to say hello.

"About bloody time!"

"I know, I'm sorry, I had my phone on silen-"

"The one damn time I need ya to bloody pick up, what the 'ell?"

"Enoch!" To say she was taken aback would have been an understatement. Olive was downright appalled how he was suddenly speaking. As if the fact he'd called her five times in ten minutes wasn't bizarre enough, his voice was stranger than she'd ever heard it before. He sounded out of breath and choked up. "I said I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. What's the matter? Are you okay?"

"Couldn't be much worse. Fanks for freakin' askin'." His words were punctuated by a long, unsteady breath that Olive had never heard quite the like of. Enoch was frantic. That was the only word for it. Something was very wrong.

"Enoch. What's happened? Tell me, darling."

By now Millard and Althea were staring at her with wide eyes, and Althea suddenly looked more emotive than Olive had ever seen. But that was hardly her priority, she'd never, ever heard Enoch sound like this before and she hated it. He barely even sounded like himself.
Then after a few silent moments during which she almost started to think the connection had dropped out, he answered her.

Her phone slipped through her fingers as she gasped and her hand flew to her mouth instead. It would probably had shattered the screen on the concrete had Millard not moved fast enough to catch it and hand it back to her in record timing before stepping away again.

Olive didn't bother to thank him, her whole head had just begun to spin and it took a lot of concentration just to bring the phone back to her ear.

"I'll come home."