Ragweek. 1974. Aberystwyth University.

Photographs . 1. Stanmore, Droop, Emily and Keith. 2. Emily and Stanmore. 3. Emily and Droop. 4. Emily and Keith

How important they’ed seemed.

Stanmore was “the legend”. He had the best traffic cone to statue ratio of anyone on the committee. Emily had first seen him in Fresher’s week, being wheeled down Pier Street in a hospital bed dressed as a St Trinian’s schoolgirl.

On the coach back from collecting in Coventry he’d thrown Emily a knowing leer as the gang bellowed out rugby songs; “A very fine lawyer is he! All day he facsimile, facsimile, facsimile” leaving her to the last line alone, “And when he comes home he facs me” amidst gales of laughter.

But he was a bad, self-regarding lover, too drunk to stay hard. She didn’t mind this but his bragging in the rag office the day after was designed to humiliate her for knowing. A valuable lesson in the weird ways of bitter men and casual sex. Served her right for shagging Chairman of the Rag committee just for the status boost she thought it would give her.

Droop was an altogether worse lesson, Dark-eyed and arrogant, there was something lupine, threatening and dangerous about him. Half way through their date she decided sex was not going to happen.

He’d raped her anyway in the woods by the golf course at 2am.

The next day in the rag office there was a nasty cartoon depicting her as a bicycle covered in rag office badges and flags.

For weeks after Emily’s confidence was shattered, so that she almost willed her public image true. Drinking till her liver ached and allowing poor, virginal Keith to fumble nervously at her bra straps. Twice managing something akin to sex.

But he was the safe space she needed. Helped her to start fighting back and valuing herself again, Buoyed by puppy-dog adoration.

Keith was dull, plodding and sweet. He suited her fragility while she worked out how to crawl away from her nightmare and swerve men like Droop and Stanmore. As her confidence returned she started to make friends with people in her halls and on her course instead.

She was soon able to dispense with Rag altogether, at which point she packed Keith in and enjoyed months without the dubious prop of coupledom.

When she saw them on Constitution Hill, the nasty boys communicated their disdain, feigning cold indifference whilst Keith trailed behind them and gazed after her longingly.

By 1980 she was happily married. She was pleased to hear that Stanmore’s post university life had unravelled and dismayed that Droop (now known as Rupert Ellcock-Jones) had become a Conservative MP. She’d heard nothing of Keith.

Until this morning, when his weird undying-love type letter had arrived in the post sent on by her parents.

Keith’s letter took her back uncomfortably to those stricken first two terms when she’d had no idea who or why she was, forcing her to remember how weak she had once felt. She wrote back the kindest letter she could and hinted that he too should try to find his way out of his memories and into adulthood. She opened the possibility of staying in touch by letter but, to her mild relief, he never wrote back.