Sunday 21 August

Oliver’s dad cooks us breakfast in the morning. He hums at the stove, making scrambled eggs and toast. The kitchen reminds me of the one back at the farm. It’s used. Garlic and lemons on the bench. Herbs on the sill. The dog (called Inca) licks my hand and begs for bacon that I’m allowed to give him, but only after we’ve finished eating.

Oliver walks me home. I’m thinking about waking next to him and the feel of sleepy kisses. I’m thinking about going to Iceland and all the new things that I’ll learn. ‘We’re close,’ I say. ‘We’ll practise every day next week until the long weekend?’ I ask, and he confirms that we will.

‘And then on the fourth we will blow them all away,’ I tell him.

‘The third,’ Oliver says. ‘The audition is on Saturday the third at ten am.’

‘You mean the fourth.’

‘Are you messing with me?’ he asks, smiling and putting a piece of hair behind my ear.

‘Yes.’ No. Shit.

‘Show me your calendar,’ he says.

‘Oliver.’

‘I know I’m being crazy, but I just want to make sure you have the right date and time.’

‘I have the right date and time. Nothing will stop me being there.’

‘Nothing,’ he says, with absolute faith in me. ‘And we’ll win.’

This is problematic but not unsolvable. Surely I can take the scholarship exam at another time?

When I get back to the boarding house the first thing I do is knock on Old Joy’s door.

‘Come in,’ she says, and waves for me to take a seat. ‘What’s up?’

I fill her in on my problem. ‘It’s an audition for Iceland,’ I say. ‘So I have to be there. But I have to take the scholarship exam, too.’

She actually looks sympathetic. ‘Kate, girls all over the state take the exam. They can’t move the date for one person.’

‘But I could take it early?’

Even as I say it, I know it’s impossible.

‘Why do I have to choose?’ I ask. ‘Why can’t I be a musician and a doctor?’

‘You can,’ she says, not understanding, but understanding enough.

‘But now I have to choose and my life will go in either one direction or the other.’

‘Bit dramatic,’ she says.

But that’s how it feels. ‘I want to be everything,’ I say. ‘Everything I want.’

‘And you can be,’ she says. ‘But at this particular moment in life, you have to choose. One way or the other. You can always go to Iceland next year.’

She starts shuffling papers and looks towards the door, so I leave but I can’t find the energy to walk any further than the seats outside her office. I need to make a decision before I go back to my room, before I see Iris. Because as annoying as she is, she talks sense and she’s certain about things. Her certainty will infect me. I flick through my phone, look at the calendar again. How could I have been so stupid?

But I was that stupid.

So now I have to decide.

And I have to decide soon, so Oliver can get someone else.

But he can’t get someone else. It’s too late for him to get someone else.

He got me.

And I’m about to fuck him over.

I’m possibly about to fuck him over.

Or I’m about to fuck over my parents.

And fuck me over, the old Kate says. Because if I don’t take the exam, I go back to the country next year.

If I don’t audition for Iceland next year, I won’t ever go to the Harpa International Music Academy. And I won’t audition next year. I might tell myself that I will, so I feel better now, but I won’t. I’ll get the St Hilda’s scholarship, I’ll study maths and science, and I’ll take that path. If I go to the audition and succeed, then that’s a whole other life. Maybe one is just as good as the other. Maybe it isn’t.

Old Joy walks out of her office and sees me still sitting here.

‘Why don’t you decide what you want, Kate?’ she says. ‘You’re a smart person.’

I feel pretty dumb today.

I walk into our room and find Iris sitting on my bed, staring at the door.

‘Where were you last night?’

‘With Oliver. I had a pass.’

‘Not to stay at Oliver’s.’

‘To stay at Ady’s. Clem had a party. We went straight there from detention.’

‘So you’re her friend now,’ she says.

I know Clem’s awful to Iris sometimes, but she’s not awful to me. ‘I think it’s a sister thing,’ I say to her. ‘But I can be friends with both of you.’

‘You’ll find out the hard way what she’s like,’ Iris says. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

I sit next to her. I’m tired, and now I have to figure out what to do about Oliver. Iris will find out anyway, so I don’t bother hiding from her what’s happened.

‘You can’t audition,’ she says without hesitation like I knew she would. ‘You can’t throw away your future for a guy.’

‘It’s not about Oliver. It’s about Iceland, and all the places that leads.’ It’s about who I want to be.

‘No scholarship, no St Hilda’s.’

I hate that the choices about my future can be reduced to that clipped sentence. Futures need long sentences, with lots of parentheses (maybe you might change your mind), go this way (but don’t worry, you can come back), try this for a while (see where it takes you).

‘Why are you so judgemental?’

‘You asked for my opinion,’ she says angrily, which is a fair point.

‘Can I still come to the farm?’ she asks, after we’ve been sitting in silence for a while.

I try not to think about how Ady and Iris will clash. ‘Of course,’ I tell her.

I walk to the Organic Grocers later in the afternoon. Ady’s agreed to meet me. She’s sympathetic when I tell her about my problem, but she doesn’t have an answer. I don’t need her to have one. I just need to tell someone who’ll understand how much life sucks sometimes.

‘This I can do,’ she says, and then leans back. ‘If I knew something about someone you’d kissed – scrap that, someone you’d had sex with – something like he’d kissed someone else, would you want to know?’

‘Oliver kissed someone else?’

‘You and Oliver had sex?’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘Stu,’ she says. ‘I saw him and a girl. I don’t know whether to tell Clem.’

‘You should tell,’ I say immediately. ‘Especially if they’ve had sex.’ I pick some seeds off the crust of my toast. ‘How do you know they’ve had sex?’

‘Some things you know.’

‘Oliver and I didn’t have sex. We kissed. A lot.’

‘I know,’ she says.

‘How do you know?’

‘There’s a hue about you,’ she says, waving in the general direction of my face.

She puts on her coat. ‘I have to tell Clem.’

I ask if she wants me to come with.

‘I think one on one is better for this,’ she says. ‘But thanks.’