Lucy sat in her dorm room biting her lip to stop the tears. So far she thought she had done well at Queens. She hadn't cried when she had said goodbye to her parents and Lilly, although the elephant sitting on her chest and the concrete block in her throat had been incredibly painful. She hadn't cried when the door closed after them and she was left on her own in her room. Instead, she had started to unpack, pulling a brightly patterned quilt from a box and starting to make the bed.

So why was she fighting back tears now? Two weeks into term.

She was checking her email. It wasn't that her inbox was empty. She had an email from her parents, two from Lilly (one of which was co-authored by Teddy), emails from three of her school friends.

But none from Stig.

It had been that way for two weeks. Despite her own emails to him.

Email one (sent on day two of Queens):

Hi Stig. Where did you get to last night? You said something about coffee? Call me.

Email two (sent three days later):

Stig?

Email three (sent yesterday – two weeks into life at college):

Are you still on the planet? Because if you don't answer this email I'm going to assume I'm not cool again, and the whole 'best buds' bit was another Stig prank. …Please Stig.

Twenty four hours later and still no reply.

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After Paris, they had corresponded daily – sometimes more than once, for the whole of the rest of the vacation – even when Stig went off to Queens early. He told her all about the campus and this great little coffee shop he had found which did great hot chocolate and marshmallows. They had agreed that they would go there when she arrived.

Even the night before she left London, they had agreed to meet in the student bar at 7pm the following day. Lucy was slightly apprehensive about seeing him again after a month. The last time she had seen him had been the time he had put her fingers to his lips and kissed them.

But then when Lucy went to the bar that night, he never showed. And no emails, calls or anything since.

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This is what happened:

Lucy was unpacking in her room when there was a knock on her door. She opened it to find a friendly faced girl, blonde hair and grey eyes.

"Hi. I'm Suzy. You're my next door neighbour, so I thought I'd come and introduce myself."

Lucy smiled. "Lucy." They shook hands and Lucy opened the door wider to let her new acquaintance further in.

"Wow! That's pretty!" Suzy said, brushing a hand over the bright quilt.

"My mom bought me it to brighten up the room."

"It's lovely. Where are you from?"

"London, Ontario."

"I'm from Toronto. Do you know anyone else on campus?"

Lucy nodded. "A guy from my school. I'm supposed to be meeting up with him in the bar tonight."

"Boyfriend?" Suzy asked.

Lucy blushed. "No."

"But you'd like him to be?" She saw Lucy look even more embarrassed. "Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me. I've been here a day already. Come and meet some of the others."

So Lucy had carefully locked her door and followed her new friend into the common room to meet the rest of the dorm.

Lucy had been lucky with her dorm. For a start, they had single rooms each with its own little sink, so she wasn't forced to share and it was close to the campus. Now that she had met some of her companions, she was pleased to see that she had also been lucky with the people she would be living with. When she said that she was supposed to meet someone in the bar at 7pm, five of them said they would go with her and Lucy was quite relieved as she didn't relish the idea of walking in on her own.

Of course there were limits as to what they could order without ID and Lucy hadn't acquired a taste for alcohol yet. So she settled for a coke and started to chat to the girls she was with. In the bar, they met up with the school friends of one of the girls so the group was now quite large. Some of Anna's friends were male, but everyone seemed really nice. Lucy felt a little shy but she tried to join in with the discussions which ranged from who had the best dorm, to what subjects they were taking and who had left their girl/boyfriend at home.

Lucy got on well in particular with one of Anna's friends, Robin. He was an attractive guy, quite muscular, which he explained to Lucy went down very well with his sort of guy. She tried not to look too surprised as he bent to whisper in her ear that he had 'come out' to his parents just before he left for college, and was still reeling on the news of their acceptance.

"So we're both single." He said, putting a brotherly arm around her. Lucy grinned and feeling suddenly confident in herself, put an arm around Robin.

"Let's be single together!" she announced.

"Go Girl!" Robin laughed and pecked her on the cheek.

Which was exactly when Stig spotted Lucy in Robin's arms.

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It had taken Stig a long time to admit how he felt about Lucy. It was when he had seen her at the Prom that he realised it was more than just friendship. Because as they danced on the roof, he had begun to wish he had taken her instead of Jessica.

He could have kissed her there and then, but Derek had instilled certain values in his son when it came to women. One of those was you don't ditch your date at Prom, no matter how irritating she is being or how beautiful the replacement is..

He could have said something over the next few months too, but instead he realised that he wanted to prove something to Lucy. He wanted her to realise that college Stig was different to school Stig. So he resolved to wait until college before he made his feelings clear.

And that first night, it wasn't even that he had been planning to confess there and then. He had wanted things to develop slowly.

The trouble was when he walked into the bar and saw Lucy in someone else's arms, he realised there were other forces at work, and maybe he had left everything too late.

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Stig had left the bar straight away without stopping. Which the audience knows was silly. But he wasn't thinking straight.

He went back to his dorm room, shouted at his dorm mate, cranked up his music and tried not to think. Stig was new to this getting rejected lark. He didn't do it very well.

He did the following day badly too, when he spotted Lucy in the quad, again with Robin. So he avoided her and her emails. The following week when their lectures were due to start, he had been on his way to the journalism lecture they shared when he saw Lucy with Robin again.

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So now Lucy, who was finding college great, her lectures really interesting, and was relieved to have made some really good friends was now crying in her room, because "stupid Stig" wouldn't reply to her emails.

There was a knock at her door, and she opened it to find Robin.