Hades' Halls

The Underwhelming joy of freshers - Part 3

Georgie sat back on her heels. Tilting her head to one side and making a sucking sound through her teeth, she assessed the remaining contents of her suitcase. Biodegradable floss, that goes in the bathroom. Headphones, she could put that in a draw somewhere. Single florescent blue trainer......that was trickier. Shrugging, Georgie put the shoe on her desk and filled it with an assortment of pens, pencils and highlighters. It was an old shoe so no bad luck would be brought upon her for putting it on the furniture.

That was it. Georgie had unpacked everything. She was now officially a university student.....and boy was she tired. Her parents had taken her out for a late lunch at a local pub and then they had wondered round the city, picking up a slice of cake for pudding. This had resulted in Georgie's waist band becoming a little tighter than she deemed comfortable and her eyes beginning to feel heavy with sleep even though evening had barely descended.

Getting back to her accommodation at the, quite frankly, lovely Persephone's Grove, Georgie had gone straight to her room to unpack. Now, she was finished. Her clothes were all folded and put away in the bespoke wardrobe and chest of draws and her cuddly unicorn had been lovingly placed on her already made, four poster bed.

Looking around her room, the cream-coloured walls, varnished floorboards, thick rugs and perfectly set window seat Georgie could see nothing else to do. With everything done and her waist band feeling looser, Georgie was beginning to feel settled. Everything was perfect.

"But what's the catch", she caught herself thinking.

"No Georgie. You can't think like that or you'll never be happy. You lucked out that's all."

Georgie stood still. She did not usually talk to herself. Was this a new thing? Shaking her head to clear her head from thoughts of impending madness, Georgie told herself to listen to the wise words she had spoken just moments before.

It had been most out of character for Georgie to leave selecting her accommodation for university to the last minute. It had just slipped her mind. One moment it was September, the first month of her gap year, the next and it was late August the following year and she had nowhere to live. Georgie knew she could have ended up in an under furnished flat with only one working hob and a laughable excuse for a plumbing system but there she was in a spacious, light filled room in a house seemingly straight out of a novel.

And her flat mates did not seem too bad. Georgie had met one of them on her way out to meet her parents. He'd introduced himself as Advik and had seemed to be an all-round decent sort of fellow, though Georgie still held her reservations. Judging by Advik's height, muscle definition clearly seen through his outrageously snug T-shirt, and shorts and knee length sock ensemble, he was some form of athlete. Georgie, proud engineering student she was, never really saw the point in athletes.

Three of the others living in the house, Georgie had yet to meet, but with any luck they would all be lovely and prone to social awkwardness. The less house parties that occurred, the happier Georgie would be. Eloise was a piece of work; Georgie could see that. But one did not go to university expecting everything to smell of roses (Footnote 1) 

Georgie smiled to herself as she left her room and travelled downstairs to the kitchen. A heart of gold; something told Georgie that Seb, red face and all, possessed such a thing. Perhaps it was the look they had shared as Eloise knocked on the door, the one which said 'eyup, this one's trouble'.

Georgie stopped as she reached the bottom stair.

'Trouble', she thought to herself, hand still on the banister. That was the word she had been looking for.