I refused to go to school to pick up my results at the crack of dawn because everyone else would be there like puppies panting outside the exam hall, waiting for their slips of paper. If I could hold off for an hour I would miss seeing everyone. I didn’t even go to see Mum that morning; I was too anxious and she picks up on that kind of thing. I figured I’d go after lunch. So I spent an uncomfortable morning pottering around the house with Dad asking me if I was quite sure I didn’t want to go yet. He was more invested in the results than I was. He and Beth even took the morning off work so we could all have a celebratory lunch after.

In spite of my ambivalent feelings about Oxford, I couldn’t help but worry about what I would get. I had studied so much and I worked so hard, but what if my memory wasn’t as good as I thought? What if it had failed already and I couldn’t actually remember that I’d done badly, or I thought I’d answered the questions fully, but it was only because I couldn’t remember that there was all this other stuff I was supposed to include? Getting the results I wanted seemed like it was more a test of whether or not I’d succumb to the dementia. As if getting all As would somehow prevent it.

At ten, Dad and I pulled up to the school gate and sure enough, I couldn’t see anyone around. With a swaying seasick feeling in my stomach, I left Dad in the car, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, trying to act cool.

When I was halfway up the stairs that led to the front door, he shouted frantically out his car window.

“I love you no matter what.”

I looked around, pretending to see who he was shouting to, because I obviously did not know this weirdo, just in case anyone was passing by.

“Saoirse!” Louise, the school secretary, had a big smile for me when I walked through the doors. “Don’t tell me you slept in?”

I did my best impression of “sheepish,” as if I was so embarrassed I’d slept in on exam results day. Oh shucks.

“Hold on—I took the rest of the results into the office for you stragglers.”

She had a stack of about ten envelopes on her desk. She sorted through them and handed me one from the middle of the pack. A grin on her face told me she definitely wanted me to open it in front of her. I smiled politely and put it in my bag. Her face dropped.

“Nice to see you,” I said, waving on my way out the office door.