‘Bloody hell, Tim, you pulled it out of the bag.’ I reach my arms around him so he can’t see my face, giving me time to recover so I can celebrate with him. He deserves this. He’s such a decent person – he’s forgiven me completely for the weeks when I avoided him, though he has no idea it was because I had been seeing Joel.

‘Hold on.’ He breaks away. ‘What about you?’

‘Don’t spoil the moment.’

But he snatches the slip from me and stares at it.

Even though I half expected failure, it’s still shocking to see it in writing.

‘This is a mistake.’ Tim’s face is the picture of righteous indignation.

‘It’s not. If anything, they’re better than I feared. I did warn you.’

‘But you weren’t being serious. Everyone says they did worse than they actually did.’ He stares intently at the paper, as though he can change the letters by willpower alone.

‘Nope. I really did fuck them up.’

He starts pacing the playground like one of those polar bears cooped up for too long in the zoo. ‘We’ll appeal . . .’ When I don’t respond, he tries something else. ‘Or call the university and see if they’d take these grades. Or you can resit, apply for next year . . .’

I shake my head. ‘I needed three As, nothing less. And they won’t consider resits for medicine with those grades, you know that. I’m OK, though, Tim. It’s OK.’

‘No. It’s not OK!’

I hate seeing him so distressed. ‘Tim, there’s more to life than being a doctor.’

‘For other people, Kerry. But not for you. There’s no reason for you to fail.’

Except there is a reason; just not one I can ever tell him, or anyone else.

‘We can’t let it spoil your celebrations! Come on. Let’s get to the Arsehole before they run out of booze.’

We follow the crocodile of sixth formers towards the seafront.

Tim still hasn’t called his mum about his results, though she’ll be on edge waiting to find out.

I make him use a call box by the pier to phone her and while I wait outside, I imagine what this day would have been like if I’d made the grades, too. The alternate reality where I wasn’t on Hove Lawns on Millennium Eve, where Joel would have died and we would never have slept together and he would never have broken my heart.

And the results slip tucked into my jeans would read A. A. A . . .

‘All done,’ Tim says, coming out of the call box.

‘What did she say?’ I ask.

‘She was thrilled.’ But he seems down.

‘What’s the matter?’