Mum sat down on the bed and stroked her as she looked over at me, at a loss as to what to do. I couldn’t meet her gaze, I wanted to kick the door frame, I’d known it all along, this was always going to happen, scruffy, stupid Marthe with her hunched shoulders and her hair hanging in front 75of her face and her perpetual puppy fat and the dullest of friends, she would be the one to ruin everything.

‘I can drive you there, but I’ll have to come back to Marthe,’ Mum said. ‘You’ll be OK, won’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

I sat by myself beside Tine and her family in the gym hall, among all the families, and when they said my name, I stood up and walked onto the stage and gave my speech, I wasn’t nervous anymore, but still I stuttered and the microphone whistled, and when I reached the quote, I read it wrong, I just said ever fail, fail better, and then I thanked everyone, but nobody got it. People clapped as they always do, a feeble murmur of applause that had ended by the time I’d left the stage and returned to my seat, and a boy in the parallel class gave me a thumbs up, I’d never noticed him before, but I thought about him afterwards, I thought about him all summer before starting high school, even though he had a girlfriend, all because of that thumbs up, I always fell for the ones who complimented me.

Mum came to pick me up after the end-of-term assembly. I’d wanted to mingle with the parents and teachers a little longer, for them to praise my speech, for Mum to overhear, I wanted my form teacher to list all of my top marks for Mum’s benefit. We were surrounded by noise, chairs scraping on the gym hall floor, it was virtually impossible to see the painted circles and lines beneath the feet of the parents and teachers and other students, the pale-blue paper tablecloths flecked with drops of spilled coffee and chocolate cake crumbs. 76

Mum pushed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose, she looked unkempt with her untameable hair, she’d made no effort for the occasion.

‘It’d be best if we could head off,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to leave Marthe on her own for too long.’