And Ivy Sandoe, two doors down, who is eighty-one and who came to the finals.
She came in a taxi that she paid for and would not discuss, and she sat next to me, and when Cai’s mark was read out she took hold of my wrist and did not let go of it for the rest of the ceremony.
She did four years of after-school for those two, from 2016 to 2020, and she would not take money for three of them, and in the end I had to start paying her electricity bill by standing order and telling her it was an administrative error at the energy company, which she has never believed and has never challenged.
In the car park afterwards, Dominic walked past about six feet from her and did not know who she was.
And she watched him go and then she said, to me, in her ordinary voice: “Is that him?”
And I said yes.
And she said: “He’s smaller than I thought.”
Which is not true. He is six foot one. It is the single best sentence anybody said that entire weekend.
