Thursday 1 September

I want the map of my life to be drawn by me, but the truth is, everyone writes on it. It’s not just my map. My personal geography is connected to your personal geography. We’re all intersecting.

Later, after I’ve finished Years 11 and 12, I can go to Iceland. After I’ve done my science degree, I can study music the way I want to study it. I know I’m lying. I won’t go to Iceland, but it makes me feel better to tell myself I’ll go back and live that other life.

This is what I need to tell Oliver.

I’ll explain that my parents need me.

I’ll explain that at some point in the future I will go to Iceland, but it can’t be now. At this moment on my map I have to be here, at St Hilda’s, using the scholarship that I hope I haven’t lost the chance to get.

It makes sense in my head, but when I phone to tell him, the words won’t come.

He starts talking, telling me again that he’s sure we’re going to win. ‘No pressure because if we don’t win it doesn’t matter. But, Kate, I think we might. I mean, I think it’s possible.’

All things are possible. And all things aren’t.

My thoughts aren’t entirely making sense.

It’s been a long week. I’ve spent it worrying about Ady and staying up late trying to work out who runs PSST. Because when I saw how hurt Ady was after the last post, I decided enough is enough. The people running it are going down if it’s the last thing I do.

‘There’s something wrong,’ Oliver says.

‘I want to crack PSST. I hate it when there’s a problem I can’t solve.’

‘You’ve been strange all week. Tell me,’ he says.

It all comes out – not in any logical order. Just out: that I can’t do the audition because my parents need me and I messed up the date of the scholarship exam and I know I’m a disappointment. ‘I’m a total fuck-up.’

He doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t disagree.

‘I’ve ruined it for you,’ I say.

He still doesn’t speak. I can hear him swivelling on his chair. I wish I’d told him in person and not on the phone, so I could explain this better.

Finally he speaks. ‘Can I use the looping tracks?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

I offer him half the entry fee, and he says, ‘Thank you.’

And then, in a formal way that breaks my heart, he says, ‘Goodbye.’

‘He didn’t yell,’ I say to Iris, who wants to know why I’m so upset. She puts her arms around my shoulders and I start crying.

‘What did he say?’ she asks.

‘Nothing,’ I tell her. ‘He asked if he could use the looping tracks.’

‘Did you want him to yell?’

I wonder if I did. I wonder if what I really wanted was for Oliver to make me feel so bad that I chose the audition.

‘It’s for the best,’ Iris says, and she takes out her books and thumps them with her fist. ‘Let’s cram.’

Her advice is to focus on the scholarship, if that’s my choice, and it is my choice, so I cram. I cram till my eyes feel like they’re bleeding. I drink so much caffeine I jump every time someone closes a door in the boarding house.

Iris is coffee jumpy, too. Every time there’s a knock at the door she looks worried. Eventually she cracks and tells me she had a fight with Clem on Monday. ‘She didn’t say anything?’

‘She didn’t tell me what it was about.’

‘I did something awful,’ she admits, but that’s all she’ll say. She goes back to the books, and I do, too.

Around midnight we call time and get ready for bed.

‘Will you have a coffee with me before the exam?’ she asks. ‘For luck?’

‘It’s on me,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

‘You’re the smartest person I know,’ Iris says. ‘You’ll make it.’

We turn off the light eventually. I can’t sleep, though, and Iris can’t either.

‘Usually you sleep no matter what.’

‘I feel bad about Clem,’ she says. ‘And I’m nervous.’

‘You’ll get a scholarship. You’ve worked so hard.’

‘Did you read that quote, from the Wellness sheet?’ Iris never mentions Wellness. She thinks it’s a waste of time. ‘The one about getting lost and shaking off the shackles that remind you who you are?’

‘Do you want to talk?’

‘I’m fine,’ Iris says. ‘I’m just tired.’

We lie here awake, in the dark.