Gwen could not remember a time when she’d worked with more deliberate, sustained exertion. Revision went by in a strange, feverish blur during which she sweated through light cotton tops like a boxer and ran dry a series of brand new ballpoint pens with the manic vigor of her practice papers. Nathan was home for the Easter holidays and she thrilled at his pride in her. Among Nathan’s friends it was cool to work hard, and the competitive indifference that Gwen imbibed at her own school had backfired unexpectedly when she’d tried it on him. “I did nothing for my GCSE’s last year,” she’d once said to him, casually, and he’d looked at her oddly and said, “That was dumb. Why not? You’re a more focused person than that.” It was gratifying to be observed and then described as any sort of person, even if the portrait wasn’t always immediately familiar or recognizable—it made her feel seen, and reminded her that he was close enough to see her. So when he told her that he knew she didn’t only prioritize “clay and shit,” she believed him. She did not yet know what sort of person she was becoming, and was happy to take his word for it. Inside she sometimes feared she was no sort of person at all, only a wisp, and Nathan’s observations were reassuring anchors, giving solid boundaries to her self.
Now it felt good, and the AS exams would all go fine, she felt. Tests were a different proposition if you had prepared for them; when the answers were not mysterious but obvious, and merely had to be transcribed from brain to page. She sat down to dinner ravenous each evening and meanwhile she was even getting the hang of sex. They had now done it eleven times. Since Nathan was home she was barely sleeping—the parents policed them, and it was usually long after midnight before it was safe for him to sneak in undetected. Yet during the days she felt wired, inspired, and as if she’d slammed back five espressos instead of the single mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream that she allowed herself each afternoon, at their three o’clock study break.
And then she ground to a halt. On the final weekend of the holidays she found herself listless and exhausted. It was as if she had paced a perfect marathon only to be told over the loudspeaker as the finish line approached that the new goal was thirty miles, and the final leg must be sprinted. The fuel tank, once bursting, was empty. It was all she could do to get out of bed late on Saturday morning, and this she did only when Nathan sat on the floor outside her bedroom door playing an old reggae tune filled with sunshine and goodwill, on repeat. With the pillow over her head she bellowed at him to go away but he merely increased the volume. A rumor had swirled around that this year’s French oral questions were about the environment—possibly vivisection, possibly carbon footprints—and Nathan was insisting she prepare the relevant vocabulary.
When she finally came down Julia was sitting at the dining table reading the newspaper, and James was making blueberry buckwheat pancakes as brain food for the final push.
“You’re being an arsehole,” Gwen said to Nathan, who was still whistling snatches of the song with which he’d eventually roused her. “None of you get how tired I am. You try revising hours and hours every single day and see how you’d feel.”
“I did,” Nathan told her, “I do. I’ve already done an hour of stats while you were snoring. It was awesome, I rocked it.”
“Please don’t bicker this morning.” Julia was keen to launch the day in an atmosphere of studious calm. “And, Gwen, please don’t swear.”
“‘Arse’ isn’t swearing.”
James ladled more batter into the frying pan. “And yet the British way does sound more offensive. “‘Ass’ is somehow more innocent.”
“That’s because it means donkey,” Gwen told him, and then laid her forehead on her crossed arms on the kitchen table and closed her eyes.
“I think ‘asshole’ has become the pan-Atlantic standard; ‘arsehole’ is for sure on the decline. It’s inevitable.” Here Nathan paused to spear a pancake from the stack beside his father and transfer one edge of it directly to his mouth. “With the dominance of American vernacular in the media I think ‘arse’ is over.” Gwen burrowed her face deeper into the crook of her elbow.
Nathan had stayed up the night before doing a series of practice Physics papers and it had been four a.m. before he’d made it to bed. Despite this, he had been awake bright and early to help his girlfriend. He tried again. “Come on, baby, allons. Effet de serre?”
“Dunno.”
“You do, you knew it yesterday. When you fart you contribute to the . . .” He gestured for someone, anyone, to complete this prompt.
“You’re so close to the end, darling, and you’ve done so well,” Julia coaxed, putting a plate down in front of her daughter, though Gwen felt she could not have been clearer that she did not want to eat. She pushed it toward Nathan.
“Just think, in a month or two they’ll all be over and you’ll be free. You can have a lie-in every single day this summer, you’re almost there, Dolly. Can I make you something else? Do you want eggs?”
“Not hungry.”
“Do you want to walk to Starbucks for an early frap?” Nathan asked. “I’ll test you while we walk? I need a break from my stuff.”
But Gwen shook her head and drew the hood of her sweatshirt down low over her forehead, pulling tight the toggles to cover her ears, and to shield her eyes from the lights, which this morning seemed offensively dazzling. The sweet indolence of the summer lay ahead, Nathan would no longer be away on weeknights, and they could be together every day. She had succumbed briefly to his results-obsessed propaganda and had expended needless energy tearing after the bloodless electric hare of senior school success, but in truth academic qualifications did not matter. They were all deluded. She could not summon the energy to tell them of their misconception, however.