It was now December. A Sunday in December. In one week’s time Heather would be back in Stornoway, Andrew in Barrowbury. How much his life had changed since that group hug. Drew, Rosie, Ed, Steph, Roo and Jo. Swearing never to lose touch, warm full kisses in the car park of The Pig. Yet, one letter from Rosie and a flying visit to Ed. That was all, since Heather. And who ever called him Drew anymore? To Heather, he was always Andrew, or occasionally (when she wanted something), Dee. The rest of the college saw him as an Andy. How many people was he? Was it split personality?

There were at least three Andrews. Or rather there was an Andrew, a Drew and an Andy: Andy, who had got half the college drunk on fifteen bottles of Polish Vodka; Andy who had never been caught for removing the screws from half of the doors in the block. Then there was Drew. Promiscuous, snobby - the boy striving for that preppie image.

Andrew belonged to Heather. She got to see a side of him, which he had never allowed to escape beyond his mind before. She knew it all. She knew the mastermind Andrew that controlled the rest of his life. The Andrew that was confident enough to admit the false arrogance shown to the rest of the world. The Andrew that was deeply contented being with Heather. The Andrew that had finally found companionship. Companionship, contentment but not complacency. In an undeveloped flash of inspiration, the words ‘Le Canard’ lodged in Andrew’s head.

He breathed into Heather’s ear, ‘Get out of bed, hussy. J’ai une surprise pour tu.’

‘Tell me. You’ve got to tell me now.’ Heather was always excitable when they sat on the top deck of the bus. Especially if the front two seats were empty and they got to ‘drive’. The surprise was not fabulous, but to Heather everything was a dream if you sold it to her in the right way. Andrew played it down,

‘Oh it’s nothing. I just thought it would be nice to get off campus for a couple of hours and spend some quality time together.’

‘Can we go to McDonalds? Pleeeeeease!’ Living on Lewis, Heather lived in a bizarre world, which had managed to escape modern life - sometimes the strangest things were treats for her. Even some of the most pedestrian occurrences gave her a child-like thrill. The first time that they had been to the local out-of-town supermarket Heather had been uncontrollable for the rest of the week. She had been unbearable for the rest of the students on her corridor, as she had filled the fridge and freezer with an astounding number of brightly packaged convenience foods. Then there was the multiplex cinema - a truly revealing experience. Andrew would have thought that the excitement was false but for the fact that Heather had to visit the toilet four times during the show. She was a marketer’s dream, a four-year-old child with the freedom and spending power of an eighteen-year-old student. A girl with wealthy middle class parents who always had to have Mega-Mania popcorn buckets and Cookies ‘n’ Cream pots of ice cream. Of course, that was her attraction - the gift of sophisticated looks married onto a bubbly and deliciously naive personality. It was highly addictive.

At first Andrew had worried that they would use up their fuel too soon. He tried not to spend too much time with Heather - he didn’t want her persistent company ever to become unwanted. Conversely, the attraction between Andrew and Heather had been so intense that the moments when they were not together seemed marked by their lack of sparkle. After a few weeks it had become apparent that separation was never needed. Now Andrew and Heather had become one. It had not become obsession, it was unspoken loving friendship. Andrew’s mind started calculating; he spent sixteen to eighteen hours a day with her, twenty-four on weekends. But it was not obsession. Obsession had sinister overtones. It was merely intense compatibility.

A frightening clatter like falling hailstones on metal disturbed Andrew. Heather squeezed his hand. She was giggling. ‘Hey Andrew, we’re being attacked.’ She nudged him. ‘Oh! I can’t make you jump out of your skin again. Where were you, sweetheart? I bet you were dreaming of a Quarter-Pounder with cheese! I was.’ Her eyes questioned Andrew. ‘Oh please. We haven’t been for ages.’

‘We’ll see.’ Andrew was playing 'Dad'.

As the bus approached the stop in the city centre, snowflakes caught in the light of a street lamp became lazy fireflies. Andrew knew the baiting effect this would have on Heather and was not surprised to have his arm tugged firmly the moment the bus's tyres squealed against the kerb. Before the doors had fully separated Heather was diving into the blizzard. She was skipping. In the ‘Pre-Heather’ days, the only people Andrew had ever known to skip were characters in Enid Blyton books. Heather was a frequent skipper, yet she managed it in a way that looked endearing rather than plain silly - which is how Andrew looked as he tried to keep up.

The city had a very warm feeling. Lights were everywhere. Not coloured lights, but the more traditional white light bulbs. The snow, the lights, the short woman in the large furry coat carrying a couple of bulky thick-paper-carrier-bags. They all were following their cues. Andrew would have preferred boxes tied with string over carrier bags - the woman did not know this. Somehow, Heather and Andrew managed to fall into these scenes so comfortably.

A couple of weekends earlier, they had flitted away late on Friday night to Durham. The oppressive smells and noises of college life were becoming too routine. Andrew had felt the need for perspective to be reintroduced into his life - Heather always fell for pseudo-meaningful lines like that. When they had arrived it was late, giving them only a few minutes for a quick nip before closing time. Heather was fretting over whether they should buy a train ticket for their return journey. After leaving university, they had arrived at the station to see a train on the platform. Andrew had consciously decided the odds were in their favour and dragged Heather, ticketless, onto the train. They had succeeded in their escape by surrounding themselves in ‘train debris’ and being deep in conversation when the guard had disinterestedly paced along the aisle asking for tickets from the previous station. The money they had saved on a train ticket had, in typical Heather and Andrew style, been more than spent on a palatial burgundy and mahogany hotel room near the castle.

Having left the pub, they were splashing through puddles back to their king-sized bed. Sheets of rain were cutting into their faces and hands as they walked onto the bridge. Andrew’s eyes stung as the water cut into them. Deep below the River Wear drunkenly followed a narrow path. Heather had stopped her splashing to look over the edge. She took Andrew’s hand and their smiles coincided. For many minutes they held each other, deep in their private world. Andrew was far away. He felt he could hold Heather forever, as they stood high on their own rock, their unity protecting their vulnerable fleshy-pink underbellies from the chaos that lashed about them. Their eyes were locked. Their gaze so strongly detached from materiality that Andrew knew nothing would ever blind them. The camera drew back into the distance, refocusing from Andrew’s sodden black overcoat onto Heather’s regency green duffel coat encrusted with a clinging thin layer of snowflakes. Her face was home to a persuasive smile that coaxed Andrew into a shop filled with brightly coloured woollenwear.

‘Dee, come on. Everyone will be so jealous of us when they see how jolly we look in hats and scarves and gloves.’

A small plump lady with glasses and hair the colour of seaside donkeys came over.

‘It’s so cold out there. You’ll be wanting a scarf’, she said in an Edinburgh accent, to Andrew. Andrew enjoyed the attention; he smiled. It was all the encouragement that Heather needed.

‘We’ll both be needing a hat, a scarf and some gloves. In complimentary colours.’ Heather meant business. Ten minutes later, following much frivolity, a few out-of-character giggles, and a couple of credit card swipes, Andrew and Heather left the shop wearing their purchases. Heather, had bought matching fuschia red gloves and scarf, and a dark green beret to match her coat. Andrew wore black gloves, with a scarf and rather silly bobble hat in black tainted by hazy dark green spaghetti swirls.

‘You hungry?’ Andrew dropped in as casually as he could manage.

Heather started jumping up and down.

‘There’s a nice looking chippie down there where I thought we could get some chips’. Andrew could not look at Heather - his grin would have given him away, hence he did not see her tighten her legs together and gyrate as if her bladder were bursting. She made a high pitched humming noise as Andrew paced off down the street. Andrew knew she would follow.

A minute later she caught him up. He was breathing misty vapour into the air outside a quaint building that emanated a warm glow through low-slung frosted windows.

‘Actually, it’s a bit chilly to walk all the way to the chippie - we’ll be snowmen by the time we get there. We may as well just pop in here and see if they can throw something together for us.’

‘Can we? Can we really, Dee?’ Heather’s eyes shone with life.

‘Well, we’ll have to see if there’s a table.’

Andrew led the way down some stairs into a Van Gogh painting. The headwaiter weaved his way through smoky air punctuated by the Ribena aroma of Cabernet Sauvignon evaporating in the warmth. Andrew spoke a few words, then turned to Heather; ‘It seems they have a table for two, booked in the name of McDonald - that must be us!’

Le Canard did not disappoint them. The atmosphere, the texture of the food, the extravagant corpulence of the wine. They were all perfect. The uneasiness that Andrew sometimes felt in restaurants never materialised, instead he felt relaxed and snugly content.

Heather touched his hand, ‘You will come back after Christmas, you promise?’

‘Where else would I go? Besides, you know I won’t promise. Promises cause more problems than they solve. A lot like religion really.’ Andrew deflected the conversation, he could tell that Heather was becoming sad. He did not want tears to spoil the evening. They were now drinking cognac in the Trader’s Hall. A few weeks ago, Andrew had learnt the word ‘digestif’ from a book he had been reading. This was the chance to use the word, and so they were living in decadence; drinking cognac in a building whose architecture moulded every sound into echoes distinctly from another era. The hall had been used by merchant traders from all over the empire who wished to discuss the exchange of goods originally purchased in far-off lands. He was certain that many storybook heroes of the past had drunk here. To Andrew, this escapism furthered his relationship with Heather, pushing it beyond the world of Rievaulx College, skipped lectures and snatched bedroom rendezvous’ during lunch-hours.

The time-lapse in arriving back in college was smoothed by a cinema-like return journey in a London-style taxi. The reds and greens streaked through the blanketed cityscape as the taxi hurtled through empty narrow streets normally pulsing with shoppers. The unfamiliarity of these blurred images held reality at bay.

In their block James was still up. He was burning crumpets in the kitchen. Andrew turned off the grill and opened the window.

‘Pom pom pom. POM! Pom paa daa de de’.

‘Your crumpets are toasted, James.’

James was holding sheet music and appeared to be deeply in his own thoughts, until the acrid carbon smell found him.

‘Thank-you.’ He put down the score.

‘We’ve been on a date tonight.’ Heather had been bursting to say something. The excitement of the night was too much for her to hold inside. She then went on to explain every material detail of the evening, pausing occasionally to lap up the encouraging noises that James vociferated as if they were notes from the operetta lying on the table.

By 1am they were spoons once more. Yet, the ardour of the evening and the passionate heat that had followed had moulded them. Now they were totally congruent. Not even a wisp of satin fitted between them as they lay perfectly still. Sleeping.