I came to gradually, my eyes sticky with sleep and the previous night’s tears, and my left side aching from spending the night on what turned out to be literally a plank of wood. A weak sun reached out through the orange stripes of the curtains, relentlessly it seemed, after a long, late summer night in Aberdeen, where it apparently never gets properly dark. At that moment, I would have given anything for another hour’s sleep, but the doors banging down the corridor and the snippets of conversations filtering through reminded me that it was time to rise, to wash my face and start this new life I had chosen.
That first night, homesickness had felt like a slap in the face, and hot tears had welled up as I sat staring at the breeze block walls, bare and stark and, more or less, white. A single bed stood lined up against the wall, with a thin pillow and an even thinner duvet – not that I had ever owned a duvet – in a stiffly starched cover, and the novelty of it piqued my interest for a brief moment. A desk with a single chair, two bookshelves, an industrial, brown, easy chair in a corner. My new toothbrush and toothpaste and a sensible bar of soap, emergency buys at the onsite Spar last night, waited on the sink. The wardrobe remained empty, thanks to the airline not transferring my case successfully between flights. Hopefully by the end of the day I would have clean clothes; for today, I would have to make do with the underwear and the T-shirt I had slept in.
I gripped my room key with the bronze number disk for reassurance as I pulled the door shut and concentrated on the route down from the second floor, past endless identical doors, through fire doors hissing shut after me, and, at every turn, the stringent smell of industrial cleaner mixed with another, sweeter scent, which I would later learn had a lot to do with the strange ‘geraniums’ that seemed to grow on a lot of window sills.
As I stepped out of the building and headed for the square where the taxi had dropped me the previous night, I felt it distinctly chilly. I wrapped my arms around myself and walked into the central building, grateful for the stuffy intense heat you will get in any student hall. Three porters were chatting and laughing behind the reception desk. Seeing my confusion, one of them smiled and pointed to the stairs leading down. ‘Breakfast is downstairs. Enjoy.’
I was starving too. I had missed ‘tea’ because of the late arrival of my flight, the missing luggage and the non appearance of the people who were supposed to meet me. I don’t ever seem to be doing things by halves, you see. That day, in September 1993, I had left my parents and my sister behind in Luxembourg, bundled the last of my possessions into a suitcase, mustered my halting schoolgirl English and whatever shred of stubborn courage I could hold onto and got on that plane to Aberdeen. It was the first time I had travelled on my own, and that day broke not just my heart, but tore a huge chunk out of the hearts of those I left behind – something I did not fully understand until, some twenty years later, my own daughter waved goodbye as she toddled off happily for her first Rainbows sleepover, and I fought to hold back the tears.
The noise in the dining room was deafening, the long tables packed with students, gleefully polishing off vast quantities of toast and cereal, and enjoying their easy banter. Everyone seemed to have friendship groups already, and I wondered if I had made a mistake leaving my arrival until the day before my matriculation. I joined the queue at the servery and collected some cereal – I avoided the enormous pot of grainy grey porridge – and a ‘roll’ and some toast, and found an empty space at the end of a table. The girl opposite me smiled and pushed a small dish of butter and jam across to me.
‘Thank you,’ I said rather formally. ‘My name is Sandra.’
She watched as I put butter and jam onto my roll and pulled a face at the dense saltiness trying to cut through the jam.
‘They are called rowies, here,’ she laughed. ‘Takes a bit of getting used to. Let me get you a cuppa.’
And just like that I fitted in. We chatted over breakfast, she about how her parents had brought her in the car two days ago, leaving tins of cake and tea bags, blankets and cushions and her favourite posters, me about arriving literally in what I stood up in. We picked up our messages from the porters’ lobby and I was delighted to find that my suitcase had found its way to Hillhead. I would be able to make myself look tidy for matriculation day after all.
‘See you at the bus stop, then,’ she said as we returned to our rooms.
I selected a clean outfit from my suitcase and changed. The scent of the familiar washing powder made me long for my mum. I had to wait another five days before I would hear her voice again. By that point, I had learned to phone home with a ten pence piece and arrange a callback, had in fact won a ‘quid’ in a bet that I could make an international call with a ten pence piece, and I had begun to make friends. I had also been into town, been hugely impressed with the glamour of Union Street, and taken the boneshaker ride on the Number 20 bus across the cobblestones of Old Aberdeen, clutching several shopping bags. A thick duvet with a floral cover and two brand new pillows, posters, a kettle and some mugs had rendered room S17 into my new home. I dared to hope.