I did not argue. I turned round.
“Come on. Registration shuts in ten minutes.”
And walking down the corridor Cai said, quietly, “Mum. That was him, wasn’t it.”
“Yes.”
And Idris looked back once.
“Our dad?”
“Yes.”
And neither of them said anything else, and I thought that was shock.
It was not shock. It was the two of them deciding not to tell me something in a corridor, which I did not find out for another six hours.
What happened at four o’clock.
The Merrow Prize does the individual awards first and then the team.
Idris took gold in applied mathematics. Cai took gold in the physical sciences paper, with the highest raw mark in the state, which they announce, because that is the sort of thing that competition enjoys.
Two golds. Same surname. Same row.
And I watched my ex-husband, eleven seats along and four rows back, work it out in stages.
First when the surname was read out the second time.
Then when they stood up together.
Then when Cai — who has my father’s exact build and Dominic’s exact face, and there is nothing anybody can do about that — turned round at the front of the stage and looked for me in the audience and grinned.
And I have been asked by four different people whether it was satisfying.
