He pulled a piece of the carefully provided scrap paper towards him and wrote on it in thick, black letters, ‘Why am I screwing it up?’ Then, underneath, ‘No more.’

Then Oliver put the cap back on his pen, crumpled up the paper, and walked out of the examination room. He ignored the smirking professor.

The eyes of the quiet girl followed him with a mixture of guilty fascination and nervous awe.

THIRTEEN

It was like running a race.

Helen felt like an athlete, pacing herself with miserly care for the bursts of intense effort. As each paper finished, she put it behind her and focused unwaveringly on the next. She was exhilarated, forging ahead on the adrenalin that pounded through her. And she barely dared to admit it to herself, but she was doing well. Each answer came to her out of the air, compact and satisfying. Her head danced with ideas and insights, long quotes which she had no idea she knew, as she ran down the long black and white tunnel of the week. It was a world of paper, the dry whisper of the question sheet and her own handwriting covering page after blank page. She came alive in the silence of the halls, deaf to the coughs and shuffles of concentration and the crisp instructions of the invigilators.

Between exams Helen slept, gratefully and dreamlessly, ate alone as far from other people as she could, and walked the river banks with her mind working at the next paper.

It was the longest and the shortest week that she had ever known. She felt that she had been living like this for half her life, and that it was finished before it had begun. It was the last day, and she was filing across the black and white tiles and down the long rows to her desk for the last time. She was vaguely surprised to see the grey, exhausted faces around her. Surely she couldn’t look like that herself. The familiar face-down oblong of question paper sat in front of her, and the empty answer book. Nearly there. It was nearly finished.

The black gown of the invigilator swished past and something made her look up. It was Stephen. The sight of him stirred submerged recollections of life a long way off and she forced them back again. Not yet. Finish this, first. ‘You may begin writing now.’

Stephen unhooked his thumbs from the bands of his gown and strolled to his desk on the raised dais. In his place he unfolded The Times and leisurely began on the crossword. Usually he enjoyed invigilating. The contrast between his own restful three hours and the feverish effort in front of him was amusing. But now the empty lights of the puzzle blurred and the monotonous refrain played in his head again.