The journey home to Shrewsbury from Holyhead in the minibus with Mr Davis and the rest of them is torture. My face says it all when Mum finally turns up. Her sorry falls flat onto the pavement and I don’t have the heart to hug her back as she wraps her arms around me. I just hang there, limp, letting her never mind slide off me like the rain.

I see the concentration scratched across her face as she drives out of the car park. An oncoming lorry honks at her and she mutters something then catches my eye. She searches for something to say to break the stale layers of silence in the car, then turns the radio up.

I know she thinks I’m a failure, even though she won’t say it. She’d told everyone at work: I know because I saw it all over Facebook one night when she’d left her page open on her mobile. ‘So proud of my girl being recalled to audition in Dublin, knew she’d get through to the 2nd stage for Young RADA!’

And other status updates with more smiley faces. I didn’t want her putting my news on Facebook, but at the same time it made me feel good that she was proud of me. Now what does she have to be proud of?

‘So how did Callie and Aisha get on? Sounds tough. Did you know some drama schools accept less than one per cent of the applicants,’ Mum tells me, sounding like she’s swallowed a prospectus, or she’s been reading How to Talk to Your Teen. I appreciate the effort, I really do, but I want her to stop trying to make things better. I know she’s building up to asking me what went wrong. But I can’t tell her or Mr Davis or even Callie. Because I can’t remember.

‘Niall got through to the workshop day. Aisha didn’t get in either but she’s got a conditional offer from Liverpool Sixth Form at LIPA which is great,’ I choke out, not meaning a single word. ‘Callie was rejected but she’s probably going to get a call-back from the Birmingham Theatre School.’ I hear the sourness in my voice. Niall now has offers from Young Actors’ Studio at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Italia Conti. He’ll probably get Young RADA too, he’s spoilt for choice.

‘I’m sorry, I know how much you wanted this.’ She accelerates as if getting me home is the answer. I bet the first thing she does when we get in is offer me a cup of tea or suggest I take Scout out for a walk to clear my head.

‘Thanks, Mum.’ I close my eyes and hope she gets the message. I lean back against the headrest, picturing the twists and turns in the road as we get closer to home. The last place I want to be.

‘Hope, I’m taking Scout for a walk… Want to come?’ Mum calls up to me.

I ignore her. I fling my bag on my bed, shut the door and sit on the floor.

‘Hope? I’m going then.’

I wait until I hear the back door click shut then I get back up again. I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t want to be here, in my room, but I don’t know where to go either. I prowl my bedroom, but there isn’t much space so I put some music on. I lie on my bed and notice my poster of Macbeth with Judi Dench as Lady M is peeling off the wall a bit. I try to stick it back but the Blu-tack’s gone dry. I don’t want Dame Judi to look at me the way she is – judging me. So I rip it right off the wall, bunching it up in my hand so that the edges cut my skin. I rip up the prospectus for Young RADA, which is difficult. I can’t tolerate the smiling student faces shining out from every page. I tear down every photo from the pinboard: me playing Meg Long from Our Country’s Good and Shen Te in The Good Person of Szechwan. I rip up the picture of me in my favourite role as Christina in Dancing at Lughnasa and shove them all into my new wastepaper bin, letting the pins stab my hand. The bin is too full. I shove and squeeze and then I hit it. I hit the bin with the palm of my hand.

I hit it with my fist.

I kick it.

I hit it again. Hard.

It shatters down the middle like it has been struck by lightning.

I feel shame in my stomach. I’ve smashed the lid of my brand new bin and there’s a massive crack running down the side of it. I try to push the edges back together so the damage isn’t quite so obvious but it doesn’t work. I know I hit it, but it didn’t feel that hard, not enough to split it in two. I couldn’t have broken it so easily, could I?

Time passes; I don’t know how much. I sit on the floor panting, looking around at the mess I’ve made. My clothes have been flung with force from my overnight bag. My desk chair is upended, the wheels spinning uselessly, and one of my snow globes has smashed, leaving a little pool on my desk, shards of glass swimming in the remains.

I think there’s something wrong with me.

Before we left for Dublin I made an arrogant promise to Mum that if I didn’t make this audition I’d give up on trying to get into drama college. Mum worked out that she’d spent almost £60 on each audition, plus the travel costs to get there and back, the youth hostel we stayed in for Dublin, the B&B in Cardiff and the others, all the others. She’d agreed to let me apply for five drama colleges and no more. I went for it thinking I wouldn’t need more than three but better to be safe than sorry: Liverpool, Cardiff, London, Manchester and then the fifth and final audition in Dublin.

But I only said it because I never thought I’d fail. Up till now it’s all come so easy. I’ve had all the parts I’ve wanted. I’ve had it all planned out since I was little – pantomimes, concerts, youth opera group, school plays, drama club, youth theatre, singing in the chorus for touring musicals, stage school in the summer holidays when Mum and Dad could afford it, GCSE Drama and then drama college before auditioning for drama school. What am I supposed to do now? Mum keeps talking about Plan B but Plan Bs are for people who fail.

I just never,

not once,

not even for a tiny moment, thought that I would need one.