‘If you send me the photos of you in your dress,’ said Mum on Skype the afternoon of the Bailey Ball, ‘I’ll get them printed out and sent to all the grandparents!’

I sighed. ‘It’s not the same as prom. I don’t think there will be official photography.’

‘Well, just make sure you get at least one full-length pic of you in your dress. I bought it so I need to see it in action.’

Mum had bought me my Bailey Ball dress, though it had been my choice. I hadn’t actually planned on getting it because it was too expensive, but when I was sending links of potential dresses to her while we chatted on Messenger, she offered to pay for it. It was really nice of her, and honestly, it made me feel a pang of homesickness more intense than I’d experienced so far at uni.

‘Did any boys ask you to be their date to the ball?’

‘Mum. British universities don’t do that. That’s American schools who do that.’

‘Well, it would have been nice, wouldn’t it?’

‘Everyone just goes with their friends, Mum.’

Mum sighed. ‘You’re going to look so beautiful,’ she cooed. ‘Make sure you do your hair nicely.’

‘I will,’ I said. Rooney had already offered to do it for me.

‘You never know – you might meet your future husband tonight!’

I laughed before I could stop myself. Two months ago, I would have been dreaming of a perfect, magical meet-cute at my first university ball.

But now? Now I dressed for myself.

‘Yeah,’ I said, clearing my throat. ‘You never know.’

Rooney was silent while she did my hair with some thick curling tongs, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. She knew how to do those big loose waves that you always see on American TV shows, but I found absolutely impossible to replicate by myself.

Rooney had already done her own hair. It was swept back from her forehead and perfectly straightened. Her dress was blood red and tight with a long slit up one leg. She looked like a Bond girl who later turned out to be the villain.

She insisted on doing my make-up too – she had always been a fan of makeovers, she explained – and I let her, seeing as she was way better at make-up than me. She blended golds and browns on my eyes, chose a muted pink lipstick, filled my eyebrows with a tiny brush, and drew neater winged eyeliner than I had ever been able to achieve alone.

‘There,’ she said, after what felt like hours but was probably more like twenty minutes. ‘All done.’

I checked myself out in Rooney’s pedestal mirror. I actually looked excellent. ‘Wow. That’s – wow.’

‘Go look in the big mirror! You need to see the full effect with your dress. You look like a princess.’

I did as she said. The dress was straight out of a fairy tale – floor-length, rose-coloured chiffon with a sequinned bodice. It wasn’t super comfortable – I was wearing a lot of tit tape – but with my wavy hair and shimmery make-up, I did look and feel like a princess.

Maybe I could even enjoy tonight. Wilder things had happened.

Rooney stood next to me in the mirror. ‘Hm. We kind of clash, though. Red and pink.’

‘I think it’s a good clash. I look like an angel and you look like a devil.’

‘Yes. I’m the anti-you.’

‘Or maybe I’m the anti-you.’

‘Is this a summary of our whole friendship?’

We looked at each other and laughed.

The theme of the Bailey Ball had been a huge topic of speculation at St John’s College for weeks, and somehow I was one of the only people who hadn’t found out what it was before the night of the ball itself. This was probably because the only friend I had in college was Rooney, and she’d refused to tell me when I asked, and I wasn’t bothered enough to force it out of her.

Apparently, there’d already been a ‘Circus’ year, ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Fairy tale’, ‘Roaring ’20s’, ‘Hollywood’, ‘Vegas’, ‘Masquerade’, and ‘Under the Stars’. I did wonder whether they were starting to run out of ideas.

It wasn’t immediately clear what the theme was when we walked through the college corridors and out towards reception. The foyer had been adorned with flowers and the stairway had been turned into what looked like a castle wall, complete with turrets and balcony. Inside the dining hall, circular tables featured centrepieces of more flowers, but also crafted bottles of poison and wooden knives.

I only got it when I heard ‘I’m Kissing You’ by Des’ree playing overhead – a song I knew featured prominently in a certain 1996 Baz Luhrmann movie.

The theme was Romeo and Juliet.

We met Pip and Jason outside the doors to St John’s. Jason gave me an awkward nod, but otherwise said nothing to me.

They both looked incredible. Jason was wearing a classic tuxedo, and it hugged his broad shoulders so perfectly that it was like it’d been custom-tailored. Pip had styled her hair extra curly and was wearing black cigarette trousers, but with a velvet tuxedo jacket in a forest green colour. She’d paired that with a pair of chunky faux-snakeskin Chelsea boots, which somehow exactly matched the colour of her tortoiseshell glasses.

Rooney’s eyes flickered up and down Pip’s body.

‘You look nice,’ she said.

Pip struggled not to do the same to Rooney in her Bond girl dress, instead keeping her eyes firmly up at Rooney’s face. ‘So do you.’

Dinner felt like it went on for a year, even though it was only the beginning of what was to be the longest night of my whole life.

Rooney, Jason, Pip and I had to share a table with four other people, but thankfully they were all Rooney’s friends and acquaintances. While everyone else all got to know each other, I did what I always did and stayed silent but attentive, smiling and nodding when people spoke but not really knowing how to get involved in any of the conversations.

I felt lower than I had ever felt.

I wanted to snap out of it, but I couldn’t.

I didn’t want to be at a party where Jason hated me and Rooney and Pip were living what I would never have.

Sunil, dressed in a baby-blue tux, and Jess, who was wearing a dress covered in mint-green sequins, stopped by to say hello to us, though they mainly spoke to Rooney because she was three glasses of wine down and very talkative. When they went to leave, Sunil winked at me, which made me feel better for about two minutes, but then the brain goblins returned.

This was who I was. I was never going to experience romantic love, all because of my sexuality – a fundamental part of my being that I couldn’t change.

I drank wine. A lot of wine. It was free.

‘Only eight hours to go!’ Pip cried as we filed out of the dining hall after dessert. I was absolutely stuffed with food and, to be honest, drunk already.

I shook my head. ‘I’m not gonna make it till six a.m.’

‘Oh, you will. You will. I’m going to make sure you will.’

‘That sounds incredibly menacing.’

‘I’ll be here to flick you on the forehead if you start falling asleep.’

‘Please don’t flick me on the forehead.’

‘I can and I will.’

She attempted to demonstrate, but I ducked out of the way, laughing. Pip always knew how to cheer me up, even if she didn’t know I was feeling down in the first place.

The Bailey Ball wasn’t confined to one hall – it spread throughout the ground floor of the main college building and into a marquee on the green outside. The dining hall was quickly transformed into the main dance hall, of course, with a live band and a bar area. There were several themed rooms serving food and drink, from toasties to ice cream to tea and coffee, and a cinema room that was playing all the different movie adaptations of Romeo and Juliet in chronological order. The corridors that we hadn’t seen yet were decorated so intensively that you couldn’t see the walls any more – they were covered in flowers, ivy, fabrics, fairy lights, and giant crests for ‘Capulet’ and ‘Montague’. For one night only, we were in another world, outside the rules of space and time.

‘Where shall we go first?’ said Pip. ‘Cinema room? Marquee?’ She turned round, then frowned, confused. ‘Rooney?’

I turned too and found Rooney a few paces away from us, leaning against the wall. She was drunk for sure, but she was also looking at Pip almost like she was scared, or at the very least nervous. Then she covered it with a wide grin.

‘I’m gonna go and see my other friends for a bit!’ she shouted over the crowd and the music.

And then she was gone.

‘Other friends?’ said Jason, confused.

‘She knows everyone,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure how true that rang any more. She knew a lot of other people, but I was starting to realise that we were her only real friends.

‘Well, she can fuck off, then, if she’s gonna be like that,’ said Pip, but her heart wasn’t in it.

Jason rolled his eyes at her. ‘Pip.’

‘What?’

‘Just … you don’t have to keep doing that. We both know you like her.’

‘What?’ Pip’s head snapped up. ‘What –no, no I don’t, like – I mean yes I like her as a person– I mean, I admire her as a director and a creative person but her personality is very intense so I wouldn’t say I liked her, I just appreciate who she is and what she does …’

‘But you fancy her,’ I stated. ‘It’s not a crime.’

‘No.’ Pip folded her arms over her jacket. ‘No, absolutely not, Georgia, she’s – she’s objectively extremely hot and yes in any ordinary situation she would be exactly my type and I know you know that but – I mean, she’s straight and she literally hates me, so even if I did, what would be the point –’

‘Pip!’ I said, exasperated.

She shut her mouth. She knew there was nothing she could say to hide it any more.

‘I think I should go find her,’ I continued.

‘Why?’

‘Just to check she’s OK.’

Pip and Jason didn’t protest, so I left to go and find Rooney.

I had a feeling that, if she continued to get even drunker, she was going to do something she regretted.