The Timeline

42.

October 22nd, 2016:

Graduation had never felt so close, and Claire's nerves felt like they had been forced inside of a blender and beaten and shook until they no longer resembled nervous terminations but a great mess of a smoothie or nervousness and anxiousness.

At the beginning of the year it had been so easy to pretend like graduation was happening to another person, that she was not about to close another chapter of her life, that she wasn't about to enter the real world of adulthood and job hunting and trying to build a career for herself. Not only because Claire was a fan of routines and having a schedule to adhere to to find some type of order in her life. But also because - and mostly because of that - graduating meant that she would then have 365 days to find herself a job that was strong and stable enough to satisfy her father and make her meet her end of the bargain with him.

Easier said than done, to most.

Now, Claire couldn't ignore it anymore, because she was checking things off her list of things left before her graduation and the list was nearing its end.

The two shows at the beginning of the third year, the updated portraits for her portfolio, the shooting of the movie in the summer. And now, only two things were actually left, before the actual graduation: the premiere of the short movie, alongside all the other movies that had been shot over the summer; the year-end show, that would've marked her graduation and closed her life at LAMDA forever.

That night, Claire had to put a mental check mark on the premiere of the short movie she had shot in the summer.

Scheduled on a Saturday so that people could be a bit more late in the evening for the screenings and the short celebrations that would be held afterwards, the entire university had been adorned according to the occasion, and students had been required to attend the night in formal clothes, treating it as a real premiere held in Trafalgar Square and all.

And, as it happened during premieres, the students had also been allowed to invite people - much more than they had been allowed to bring to their shows so far. Claire had invited her friends David and Jacopo - Fabian was in Liverpool, and he was already asking for a leave to attend Theodore's birthday at the end of the month - Steven and his girlfriend (surprisingly, still the one he had at the beginning of the year) and Anna and Richard. The twins spoke too much to be allowed inside of a movie projection, so Anna and Richard had left them for a whole weekend at Claire's parents. Claire could've done the same with Theodore, since her mother was always complaining about never getting to see him enough. But she had chosen not to.

She had also told Harry about the movie screenings, told him when they'd take place, but hadn't explicitly invited him to go.

There were several reasons for that, the first being that the two of them hadn't seen each other ever since the Another Man launch party, because Harry had been busy finalizing stuff for the album and whatnot. He was still recording songs, making plans for the promotion and all the other things that needed to be done and taken care of.

And, deep down, Claire didn't want to see him. If her reaction would be the same one she had had upon returning from the Another Man launch party - crying on her sister's shoulder until she felt like throwing up - she would be really glad to avoid doing so. The main solution would've been to not see him altogether. Seeing him meant suffering, and suffering would translate into crying into her pillow because he didn't like her back, and hating herself for having gotten to that point. A point she had promised herself she'd never even see from afar.

Oh, she was so pathetic.

Bottom of the line, she hadn't invited him, so she didn't expect him to show up. And why would he? Apart from answering her texts, he hadn't done much in the sense of keeping their friendship alive. Yeah, Claire knew he was busy, but there had been times in the past, where he had been even busier than he was now, where he would make sure to hear from Claire at least once a day. Now it was a miracle if Claire heard from him once every two to three days, and always because she was the one making sure to text him.