Surely, if you’re potentially about to discover you’ll spend the next fifty years working in McDonald’s, you could do with a bit of a lie-in to prepare. Still, it was 8 a.m. and we were outside the school gates, waiting to be let in. Results day. It seemed like it would never arrive, but here it was. Me and Chris were totally silent as we waited. Robin talked – to himself more than anyone else. He’d been saying all summer that he didn’t care about getting into Loughborough but, as he stood there glancing at his watch and hopping up and down on one leg like he needed a wee, it was obvious that whatever was in that envelope would mean something to him. ‘This is bullshit,’ he muttered, digging his hands even deeper into his pockets. ‘Getting up at the crack of dawn to trek all the way here just to open an envelope. You know Ben’s school lets them check their results online? I’m going to lodge a formal complaint. I could be in bed with my laptop right now.’ It was raining – was that a bad omen?
