When Taran met Cleo during freshers’ week at the University of Exeter in 2016, little did he know that she would become his best friend. “I wasn’t sure I was going to like university,” he says. “I didn’t enjoy my first lecture, but then I met a few people from my history course and ended up going back to their halls.”
Cleo was one of the people who lived there. She says: “I had just started studying law and wasn’t sure about the flat. There were 12 rooms and a shared kitchen and I was just getting used to it.” At freshers’ week parties, she started getting to know people – and met Taran for the first time. “Everyone was calling her Renault Clio, after the car, so I went up and called her Cleopatra,” he says. “I’d had a few drinks, though, so I don’t remember much else about her from that night.”
