Dad down, and the chip he had carried around ever since was the size of a sack of spuds. I had been planning to do medicine at Cambridge for as long as I could remember. I say “I”: I think you can probably guess whose idea it was. Not that I minded—I had to do something, I supposed, and I had no real objections to being a doctor—but sometimes I wondered what would happen if I turned around and said, You know what, I want to go to drama school, or, I’ve decided to focus on PE next year. Actually, that rather appealed. Sports science, at Loughborough.
I wasn’t given the summer off, by the way, before results day. I had private tutoring every morning, with homework each afternoon. It’ll really give you a head start come September. My parents weren’t loaded, and I knew the lessons meant huge sacrifices on their part, but a kernel of resentment was already starting to build. They never asked me, Do you want tutoring? Do you want to learn Mandarin? How do you feel about taking six A-levels instead of three? It was presented as a fait accompli, my parents bursting with pride and excitement at this new opportunity they’d negotiated for me.
“Mr. Franklin says you can go into school on Saturday mornings,” Dad said, in the autumn year of my final term. “Sally too. Interview prep.” Mr. Franklin was the head teacher of our school, a comprehensive that—despite excellent results—had never yet managed to get a student to Oxbridge.
“Great.” I wondered if it was actually possible to die from mental exhaustion and whether the pressure that formed in my head like an electrical storm was real or psychosomatic. I thought about the next two years of study, of the summer before university, when I would no doubt find myself enrolled in extra study classes to prepare me for my degree. I imagined the top of my skull shattering into pieces, a single piece of knowledge clinging on to each fragment.
z2 = x2 + y2.
Fuck. This. Shit.
I couldn’t do it anymore.
“I’m going to take a gap year.”
My parents looked at each other before they looked at me. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Mum said. “Cambridge is incredibly competitive. Surely, they won’t take you if it looks like you’re not committed?”
“I guess if it’s relevant experience…” Dad was thinking out loud. “Voluntary work in a field hospital, maybe? I’ll speak to—”
“No!” It came out sharper than I’d intended. I took a breath. “I want to organize it. I want a normal gap year. Hostels. Traveling. Meeting people. Reading stuff that isn’t on a course list. I want—” To my horror, my voice broke. “I want to be normal.”
They said they’d give it some thought, but my mind was made up. I wanted some time out. I wanted to get drunk, get off with people, take drugs, go clubbing… I wanted to do everything my mates would be spending the next two years doing, while my mother sprinkled essential oils around my bedroom to help consolidate your learning while you sleep.
I’d get through my A-levels, then I wanted to get on a plane and get as far away from my parents as I could. I wanted to have the experience of a lifetime.
I wanted to live.
SEVENTEEN
10 HOURS FROM SYDNEY | MINA
When Mike and Cesca come down from the pilots’ rest area, neither look as though they’ve spent six hours in narrow bunks, high up in the nose of the plane. Cesca’s makeup is immaculate, the only giveaway a tiny pillow crease on one cheek. Carmel produces two coffees.
“Cheers.” Mike Carrivick has gray hair and blue eyes that crinkle at the sides when he smiles his thanks at me. In a moment, he and Cesca will assume control of the plane, and for the next six hours, relief pilots Ben and Louis will sleep.
Mike takes a sip of his drink and lets out an appreciative sigh. “Everything going well?”
There’s a second’s pause.
“Not for the guy in 1J,” Carmel says darkly. I leave her to brief Mike and Cesca, moving to the window, where the darkness reflects nothing but my ashen face. We’re somewhere over China, around nine p.m. UK time, and still hours before dawn in the East. Here in the cabin, the lights have been dimmed: a gentle suggestion to passengers to get some rest. I glance across to 1J where the privacy screen shields from view the blanketed figure of Roger Kirkwood.
What