Sophie Palmer watched in slow-motion horror as the Barclays Hole in the Wall swallowed her card. Term had not even started and she had already exceeded the agreed overdraft limit. Her first year at Oxford had been a financial struggle and her student debts were reaching proportions that even the wiliest of financiers would have struggled to parcel up, package and flog off to insolvent pensioners. And with no father and only a mum working part-time back home, Sophie could not expect the parental support that saw many of her friends through. To be so overdrawn so soon after the holidays was devastating. There was no way she was going to survive the coming term.
She walked back along Broad Street in silent dejection. Turning into Hollywell Street, a notice in the Tuck Shop window caught her attention. She had seen the advert two days ago but had not paid it much attention at the time. Now it seemed to hold far more significance, even the chance of financial salvation. She pored carefully over the details:
Rich Benefactor Offers Student Award
A wealthy Middle Eastern gentleman offers free accommodation and an annual grant of £20,000, to help one promising student with tuition and living costs. The successful applicant will be chosen by interview. Application forms can be downloaded from the website of the Royal Embassy of Ramliyya.
It was a curious offer, but Sophie knew of several students who had received awards or bursaries from educational trusts. This was probably another of the same; only the size of the allowance was strikingly unusual, staggering even. She rummaged in her rucksack for a pen and scrawled the telephone number on the back of her hand.
The implications of twenty thousand pounds in her bank account played on Sophie’s imagination all the way home. At the very least, it would enable her to stay at Oxford and finish her degree.
‘Go for it, by all means, I won’t mind,’ her best friend, Joanna, advised over coffee back in the kitchen of the terraced house they shared together with two other girls off the Iffley Road. But while Sophie located the Ramli Embassy’s website on her iPad and downloaded the application form, the look on Joanna’s face suggested that her indifference was only stoical.
‘I haven’t really got much of an option,’ Sophie shrugged, slurping coffee. ‘Short of a sudden windfall, Mum and I can’t hold out much longer and our combined debt is enough to spark another banking crisis.’
‘’Can I have a look?’ Joanna asked, snatching the iPad from Sophie’s grasp and clawing at the tablet’s interface to peruse the Word document.
After a few seconds she snorted mirthfully into her mug.
‘It says here, ‘How do you think others would describe you?’ Well, I think I can answer that.’
Then looking Sophie up and down with an unrestrained giggle, she launched into a mock-American voiceover.
‘Undoubtedly one of the best-looking girls in Oxford, witty and self-confident, gets noticed everywhere she goes. At a full-figured five foot seven, Sophie’s more Page Three Girl than trendy, emaciated waif; rich, wavy chestnut hair, naughty hazel eyes, and the sort of fleshy-cheeked facial beauty that you might see frolicking in the pastoral orgies of a Watteau or Poussin canvas. Maybe her flat London accent doesn’t quite meet the standards of her frightful snob of a boyfriend, Marcus Easterby, but in all other respects Sophie’s the Queen of Oxford, worthy of every penny of an Arab sheikh’s munificence!’
The laughter and the play fighting over the iPad took a long while to subside. But when Joanna and Sophie had finally regained their composure, Joanna stirred her coffee thoughtfully and gave her housemate a curious look.
‘Don’t you think this ‘offer’ sounds rather strange?’
‘The size of the allowance is certainly unusually large,’ Sophie conceded, ‘but that just means there will be legions of others chasing after the grant. I’ll have to be at my very best.’
‘Well, you’d better give it a try straight away then, I suppose,’ Joanna sighed. I’ll help you with the form and you can send it back here and now. If it means losing a housemate or losing my best friend in college, then I guess I’ll have to find someone else to take your room.’