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Carole arrived at the ancient university via bus, tube, train and a long walk from the station through crowds, dragging her suitcase on wheels, and moved herself in, climbed the winding, creaking wooden staircase to her room in the eaves that overlooked the quadrangle with sheets of ivy clinging to ancient masonry on her own her mother couldn't get the day off work and anyway, it was just as well because she'd wear her most outlandish Nigerian outfit consisting of thousands of yards of bright material, and a headscarf ten storeys high, and she'd start bawling when she had to leave her only child for the first time Carole would forever be known as the student with the mad African mother that first week she counted on one hand the number of brown-skinned people in her college, and none as dark as her in the baronial dining hall she could barely look up from her plate of revolting Stone Age food, let alone converse with anyone she overheard loud reminiscences about the dorms and drugs of boarding school, Christmas holidays in Goa, the Bahamas, gap years spent climbing Machu Picchu, or building a school for the poor in Kenya, about haring down the M4 for weekends in London, house parties in the countryside, long weekenders in Paris, Copenhagen, Prague, Dublin or Vilnius (where was that, even?) most students weren't like that but the really posh ones were the loudest and the most confident and they were the only voices she heard they made her feel crushed, worthless and a nobody without saying a word to her without even noticing her nobody talked loudly about growing up in a council flat on a skyscraper estate with a single mother who worked as a cleaner nobody talked loudly about never having gone on a single holiday, like ever nobody talked loudly about never having been on a plane, seen a play or the sea, or eaten in a restaurant, with waiters nobody talked loudly about feeling too uglystupidfatpoor or just plain out of place, out of sorts, out of their depth nobody talked loudly about being gang-banged at thirteen and a half

when she heard another student refer to her in passing as 'so ghetto', she wanted to spin on her heels and shout after her, excuse me? ex-cuuuuuse me? say that to my face, byatch! (people were killed for less where she came from) or had she misheard it? were they actually saying get to – the library? supermarket? she couldn't even make eye contact when she walked along the narrow corridors built for the smaller men of long ago, centuries before women were permitted entry, as she'd been told at the first induction where everyone seemed to be making instant friends and she spoke to no one people walked around her or looked through her, or was she imagining it? did she exist or was she an illusion? if I strip off and streak across the quadrangle will anyone notice me other than the porters who will no doubt call the fedz, an excuse they've been waiting for ever since they first set eyes on her when a student sidled up after a lecture to ask for some ecstasy, Carole almost texted her mother to say she was on the next train home at the end of her first term she returned to Peckham informing her mother she didn't want to return to university because although she liked her studies and was managing to stay on top of most of it, she didn't belong there and wasn't going back I'm done, Mama, I'm done eh! eh! which kain nonsense be this? Bummi shouted, am I hearing you correctly or you wan make I clean my ear with matches? listen to me good, Carole Williams firstly – do you think Oprah Winfrey (VIP) would have become the Queen of Television worldwide if she had not risen above the setbacks of her early life? secondly – do you think Diane Abbott (VIP) would have become Britain's first black woman MP if she did not believe it was her right to enter politics and represent her community? thirdly – do you think Valerie Amos (VIP) would have become the first black woman baroness in this country if she had burst into tears when she walked into the House of Lords and seen it was full of elderly white gentlemen?

lastly, did me and Papa come to this country for a better life only to see our daughter giving up on her opportunities and end up distributing paper hand towels for tips in nightclub toilets or concert venues, as is the fate of too many of our countrywomen? you must go back to this university in January and stop thinking everybody hates you without giving them a chance, did you even ask them? did you go up to them and say, excuse me, do you hate me? you must find the people who will want to be your friends even if they are all white people there is someone for everyone in this world you must go back and fight the battles that are your British birthright, Carole, as a true Nigerian Carole returned to her college resolved to conquer the place where she would spend the next two and half years of her life she would fit in, she decided, she would find her people, as her mother had advised not with the misfits who skulked about the place with scowls on their faces, their hair gelled up into purple Mohicans or those with multi-coloured dreadlock extensions, people who were going nowhere fast, as far as Carole was concerned, as she watched them walk through town with placards and loudspeakers, people who would horrify her mother if she brought them home to have come this far? did your Papa sacrifice his health so that you could become a punky Rasta person who smells? nor was she interested in the boring ordinaries, as Carole began to think of them, students who were so bland they disappeared, even to her certainly not the cliques of the elite, now that she knew they existed, who were unreachable, who went to public schools renowned for producing prime ministers, Nobel laureates, CEOs, Arctic explorers, famous theatre directors and notorious spies who clearly belonged more than anyone when they had to sit fully- gowned in the dining hall every evening overlooked by the faculty who lived in, who'd probably never left since they were undergraduates there themselves, who passed on rituals the students found ridiculous such as 'donning your sub-fusc and walking backwards around the Fellows' Quad

with a glass of port in your hand at two a.m. to stabilize the space-time continuum at the changing of the clock back to Greenwich Mean Time' faculty who probably found the idea of not eating dinner while facing a room full of future prime ministers and Nobel laureates rather discombobulating Carole's school was renowned for producing teenage mothers and early career criminals she preferred the pot noodles in her room route she studied the inmates to find the best match for her, approached those with the most friendly demeanours, was surprised when people responded warmly once she actually started talking to them by the end of her second term she had made friends and even got herself a boyfriend, Marcus, a white Kenyan whose family owned a cattle ranch there, who unashamedly had a thing for black girls, which she didn't mind because she was delighted to be desired and he treated her considerately she knew she could never tell her mother about him, who'd made it clear she had to marry a Nigerian, not that Carol was even thinking of marrying Marcus, they were only nineteen, her mother would then ask her why she was courting someone who did not respect her enough to marry her it would be lose-lose before Marcus, Carole had been scared of men, throughout the rest of her school years she didn't want to be anywhere near them she imagined herself never finding anyone she could trust, who wouldn't violate her when she least expected it; she was surprised when her friendship with Marcus turned into something romantic after they began to study together in the library and go for walks afterwards soon she was sneaking him in for the night Marcus made her more socially acceptable than she could ever achieve on her own he was proud to show her off, linking arms or holding hands when out in public he hired a private room in a restaurant for her nineteenth birthday meal he was the first person to make love to her with her permission Carole listened and learned from her new social circle

what would you like? instead of whatdyawant? to whom were you speaking? instead of who was you talking to? I'm just popping to the loo instead of I'm gonna go piss she watched what they ate, and followed suit learnt that Spanish omelette with eggs and stuff was much classier than English omelette (with eggs and stuff) twenty-for-a-pound frozen bread rolls were no match for spongy, delicate, tearable fresh brioche polenta chips dipped in olive oil and herbs were much preferred to greasy potato ones dipped in the cheapest heart-attack-trans-fat and who knew that rice flour could be used to make bread, that bread could be stuffed with olives, that olives could be stuffed with bits of dried tomatoes, that baked tomatoes could be stuffed with cheese and that cheese could be made with bits of apricot and almonds, and almonds used to make milk she was introduced to sushi (preferably homemade with a sushi kit given as a Christmas present) and guacamole (pronounced gwacamolay) she discovered something called asparagus that made your pee smell funny, learnt that anything green was good to eat so long as it was served cold, lightly steamed and/or crisp Carole amended herself to become not quite them, just a little more like them she scraped off the concrete foundation plastered on to her face, removed the giraffe-esque eyelashes that weighed down her eyelids, ripped off the glued-on talons that made most daily activities difficult such as getting dressed, picking things up, most food preparation and using toilet paper she ditched the weaves sewn into her scalp for months at a time, many months longer than advised because, having saved up to wear the expensive black tresses of women from India or Brazil, she wanted her money's worth, even when her scalp festered underneath the stinky patch of cloth from which her fake hair flowed she felt freed when it was unstitched for the very last time, and her scalp made contact with air she felt the deliciousness of warm water running directly over it again without the intermediary of a man-made fabric

she then had her tight curls straightened, Marcus said he preferred her hair natural, she told him she'd never get a job if she did that she was invited into family homes that were privately owned homes without carpet on the floors (out of choice), with no nets at the windows so any old nosy parker could see inside (bizarre) homes with a preference for the old and decrepit such as grandfather clocks that rattled loudly in hallways and antique wardrobes that suffered from woodworm tatty old sofas were covered with blankets (throws) and were much preferred to shiny leather ones that squeaked when you sat on them wooden dining tables proudly displayed knife wounds from generations of graffiti vandalism such as The Rule of Man v. The Rule of Law: Discuss Is Grey the New Black? Esme loves Jonty who loves Poppy who loves Monty who loves Jasper who loves Clarissa who loves Marissa who loves Priscilla who loves Clemency or something like that her new pal Rosie's home even had sections called wings and parapets, in case the Vikings invaded again, as Rosie joked when she showed Carole around the gardens were called grounds with no neighbours for miles around, because they were in the middle of nowhere and could make as much noise as they liked, which in Rosie's case meant hiring a garage band to play on the lawn for her twentieth birthday party among the guests were those Carole also now called her friends, Melanie, Toby, Patricia, Priya, Lucy and Gerry in the morning she heard the squeaky toy screech of tropical green parakeets as they flew past the bedroom window, which she mistook for parrots she looked out on to a lawn, a lake, peacocks roamed free later that day she was introduced to the concept of walking just for pleasure.