Myles had golden hair and rugby thighs so when he wrote Go to Paris stay in Belleville, next next thing, of course Connor did that. You’ll make 2, 3 x what you put in, he’d added, which made Connor laugh, the idea of him ever buying something. Myles was the only rugby player at university who hadn’t wanted to destroy Connor when he drank: put him in a headlock or a cold shower and slap him around, or leave him stripped and handcuffed to a Tesco trolley off the A47 after a night out. Reason enough to love him, in Connor’s book. Besides, no one else replied to Connor’s message on the UNIFRIENDS group chat saying he was leaving. Looks like UNFRIENDS Connor thinks, swiping away a new job alert and accidentally deleting the chat. He undeletes it, tries to zoom in on the profile photo of twelve soaked teenagers on Scafell Pike - locate Alex’s roman nose, or Jess’s sleeve tattoo of her GCSE results, but they just turn to blocks and blobs. He puts the chat in an archive inside a cloud.   

Come to think of it, Myles hadn’t ever been to Paris. Just the D-Day beaches, on a coach trip where Joe Watson had famously gotten off with a migrant in a toilet; setting off an unending chorus of fag/gay/batty, and even, bog blowie - which Connor felt had an oddly dated ring to it, conjuring up mid-century, mid-aged men in macs – that echoed down campus corridors wherever Joe (and, naturally, Connor) walked.

Trips were expensive ...