The triteness of ‘friends are the family you choose for yourself’ normally makes me wince. However, it feels right to say that Tilda and Jakob, with whom I share a house in Cambridge, have become my haphazardly beautiful chosen family, brought together by both serendipity and misfortune to share life in the newest lockdown.

“Footsteps on the stairs are rarer than they used to be, as are chance encounters in the kitchen.”

Last week, we huddled around a laptop to watch Boris Johnson deliver another plot twist to the nation, our faces illuminated by the fairy lights of our small Christmas tree. In the institutional kitchen that we’ve made into a home by blu-tacking paper stars, handwritten cards and photos of those we love to the white plastic cupboards, we learned that our housemates would not be returning this term. That leaves just three people in a house intended for eight. Our new-found excess of living space feels like yet another absurd part of a surreal year; there’s a strange dissonance in walking out of the door of a house of unlived-in rooms, full of unseen boxes behind locked doors, only to pass the homeless begging in front of Sainsbury’s. The kitchen light of the house next door to us, which used to remain on until 3 or 4am every night, snatches of conversation and laughter drifting over to us, will stay off this term it seems, and there will be little small talk or happy greetings in the courtyards of college.

While our oversized house is far too full of quotidian joy to be called haunted – the collective cacophony of all of our singing in the shower, podcasts in the kitchen and blasting of music in our rooms all persist – we cannot conceal the muffled silence of absence. Footsteps on the stairs are rarer than they used to be, as are chance encounters in the kitchen. The three of us could go a whole day without accidentally crossing paths if we didn’t bump into each other making our morning coffee, or if our multiple trajectories out the door on walks, or downstairs for cups of tea didn’t quite cross. We rarely miss one another entirely, however; our group chat, descriptively named ‘friend and friend and friend,’ is full of impromptu plans for croissant eating and film nights, alongside all the necessary mundanities of cohabitation.

“I’m fiercely glad that in this house I still have a sliver of the freedom and friendship that we all expected would dominate our twenties much more than they have.”

Even before term has begun we have slipped into a quiet, pared back routine of work and films and walks; it can be hard to believe that the house was so recently full of people. Typically extremely extroverted, I’ve found spending more time on my own and none in large group settings surprisingly meditative and pleasant. As we each take turns cooking dinner, my typical uni diet of ramen and pesto pasta has been replaced by healthy and often elaborate meals.

One of my closest friends, Ella, tells me “romanticise your life!” in a voice message recorded at her parents’ house, which is where she, like so many of the other people who define Cambridge for me, will remain next term. This phrase has become a kind of mantra for me, a pithy reminder of my relative good fortune. Yes, the Cambridge I’ll live in next term feels irrevocably and sometimes eerily different to the town I’d grown to love; almost everywhere I go is marked by memories of people who, at least for now, are physically absent from my life. However, my primary emotion so far this lockdown has been gratitude.

I feel lucky to be sharing the ordeal of this time with two close friends, to be healthy and young and to be in Cambridge, knowing that so many people who I miss and love would do anything to be here too. I’m fiercely glad that in this house I still have a sliver of the freedom and friendship that we all expected would dominate our twenties much more than they have. As Tilda and I shout at the top of our lungs, making our own screamo versions of Lorde songs (c’mon, we all secretly want to scream: “I HATE THE HEADLINES AND THE WEATHER!” in an emo voice at this point in our lives), as Jakob scoffs at my dubious cooking techniques, as we burst into laughter at our terrible Russian and American accents, rap Little Simz together, dance in the kitchen, or watch films late into the night, all snuggled under one blanket, I feel a deep affection for our odd little family. Even in an empty Cambridge, my life is full.