THE SADDEST GIRL SINCE THE SONG DYNASTY

WORSE THAN EACH OTHER - PART I

Lady Zhao and Ander had first become close after they found themselves, for reasons of their own making, to be the most despised social pariahs at the summer program they had met at. The location was England, neutral territory for the two, at the architecturally divisive campus of London King Endowment School of Commerce, with its angular faculty buildings distributed anarchically between grass mounds like a giant vehicle accident in a park – a park with no trees, and paths that never took the shortest route between two points.

King Endowment was a generously funded institution that was closer to the shingly beaches of Brighton than to the city in its name. Indeed, with the majority of its students coming from abroad, many arrived shocked to find they were staying an hour by car or train from the banks of the Thames or the enclaves of fun along the Piccadilly Line, and was a reason to ask for a refund. Ander counted as one of the surprised, except he wasn't fussed about proximity to Soho; and Lady Zhao had actually read the brochure's small print.

Ander, even at that time, had been out of full time education and employment for nearly a year. He had completed an undergraduate degree in Management Practices that he was never truly inspired by, then spent some months struggling to find anyone who wanted to employ him in his field of academic enrichment. He and his peers, Fauster included, had put it down to unfortunate economic timing, inequality in general, and a sort of in-itself Gaian authenticity that manifested as failure to even get to interview stage because Ander didn't actually want to go into retail. During this period, with nothing more financially lucrative to do than volunteer, Ander found himself hanging out with like-minded and like-circumstanced people talking about and campaigning for all kinds of revisions to the economic consensus. He met a band of born-again Marxists, drank hoppy beers with them, and concluded after one particularly drunken week that his best next step was to do a Masters in Critical Theory.

The effort proved to be a waste of time and money. Two years later, all Ander had gained was another expensive certificate with his name on it – no job, no improved prospects. So his mother intervened.