The quad at eleven in the morning was full of people who had no idea how the world actually worked.

I had my list going. Six names, written in the back of my chemistry notebook, because I wasn't dumb enough to write anything in the book itself. My landlord, who'd raised the rent twice and smiled while he did it. A professor who'd called my last essay an ambitious failure in front of ninety people. A rich kid from my seminar whose family name was on half the buildings in the city. A few others I was still deciding about.

I was adding to it when Anaïs found me. She had a way of arriving at my elbow without me ever seeing her cross the grass, and she did it now, threading her arm through mine like it belonged there, which it did.

"Hey. You look like you're plotting."

"Just a list."

"Of what?"

I folded the page. "Errands."

She didn't ask again. She never did. I'd told her once, two days ago, to be discreet, and she'd folded that instruction around herself like a coat and worn it every day since. Sometimes I said outrageous things just to watch for a flinch. Nothing. She'd just look at me with those patient eyes and wait for the next thing I wanted.

We walked. She talked about the seminar, about Rachel's cooking, about a dress she'd seen in a window. Normal girlfriend noise. The strange part of all this was how much of it was genuinely nice.

I stopped outside my building, the one with the broken lift and the neighbour who played accordion at two in the morning.

"I'm thinking of moving," I said.

Anaïs stopped dead. "Moving where?"

"I don't know. Somewhere bigger. This place is a shoebox, and lately it gets smaller every week."

She nodded slowly, and I could see the gears turning. She liked problems. When I handed her one, she took it like a present.

"How many bedrooms?"

I hadn't said the word harem out loud. She'd got there on her own, which was interesting. Maybe she'd been thinking about it too.

"Enough," I said.

"Then you need real money. Not a student loan."

"I know."

We started walking again, past the fountain, past the card players on the library steps. She chewed her lip for a while, and I let her. That was the …