Chapter 4

The Score They Never Expected

“Yes,” I said.

Julian's grip loosened, and relief softened his face.

It was the truth, though not the answer he thought he had received.

If I could return to the first day of sixth form, before the lies and the black pens and the woman in the wheelchair, I would still choose him. I would choose every laugh on the walk home, every note slipped beneath my textbook, every cold evening when he warmed my hands between his.

Those memories had been real.

But so was what he had done.

“You see?” he said, lifting my hand to his lips. “Whatever happens tomorrow, we belong together.”

I withdrew my fingers and pretended to fix my hair.

“I should go. Results open at eight.”

He walked me home and hugged me beneath the streetlamp. His arms tightened as if affection alone could hold me inside the future he had designed.

“Tell me first,” he murmured. “Before Chloe. Before anyone.”

“Goodnight, Julian.”

I watched him leave, then went upstairs and checked my evidence folder one final time.

The original video of the disappearing ink was stored on my laptop. Copies were in two cloud drives and an email account Julian did not know existed. The sealed pens were in Dad's lockbox. I had screenshots of Julian urging me to use them, Chloe's café post and the photographs I had taken through the window.

At eleven forty-seven, Chloe sent a message.

Whatever the results say, you'll always be my person.

I saved that too.

At seven the next morning, I woke before my alarm.

There was no message from Julian.

For two years, he had sent me good morning every day. Once, with a fever of thirty-nine degrees, he had typed it with one eye open because, as he later said, I would worry if I woke to silence.

Today he had not forgotten.

He believed he already knew my result.

Mum and Dad hovered in the kitchen while I opened my laptop. Mum made tea no one drank. Dad stood behind my chair, one hand resting on its back.

The results portal rejected my password twice. On the third attempt, the page froze with a spinning grey circle in the centre.

My palms began to sweat.

What if the call had been a trick after all? What if changing the pens had not changed the ending? What if the examination board had lost a booklet, or I had made some mistake so large that I had failed to see it?

The page loaded.

Four A-stars.

Beside each subject was a raw-mark breakdown. Chemistry: 298 out of 300. Mathematics: 299. Further Mathematics: 297. Physics: 300.

At the bottom of the page, a message from the school waited in bold type.

Highest combined mark recorded by the centre. Preliminary data indicates highest result in the county. Examination-board confirmation pending.

For several seconds, I did not move.

Mum read the screen over my shoulder and made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. Dad bent down, wrapped both arms around me and pressed his face into my hair.

“You did it,” he kept saying. “Evie, you did it.”

My Oxford offer had changed from conditional to confirmed.

I should have screamed. Instead, tears ran down my face as I thought of a woman ten years away who had once watched this same screen destroy her life.

My phone rang.

Evelyn Hart—Ten Years Later.

I answered so quickly that I nearly dropped it.

The older Evelyn was still in her wheelchair, wearing the same pale cardigan as before. This time fear, not bitterness, filled her eyes.

“Well?” she whispered.

“Four A-stars. Oxford confirmed. Highest marks in the county.”

She stared at me.

Then she covered her mouth and began to cry.

There was no grace in it. Her shoulders shook. She folded forward until all I could see was the crown of her head and one trembling hand pressed against her lips.

“We did it,” I said.

She lifted her face. “You did.”

“No. We did.”

For one impossible moment, we smiled at each other across ten stolen years.

A warning tone sounded on her side.

Her expression sharpened.

“They'll come to you,” she said. “They came to me after the original results, pretending to comfort me. This time they'll come expecting to watch you break.”

“Let them.”

“Julian will say he did it because he loved you. Remember this: love that needs you to fail is not love.”

The picture dissolved into static.

Before I could answer, she was gone.

Another call arrived less than a minute later, this one from a Bristol number.

“Miss Hart?” a woman asked. “My name is Rachel Moore. I'm with the BBC's regional education desk. Your school has confirmed that you achieved an exceptional set of results. Would you be willing to speak with us?”

By ten o'clock, a producer had sent me a secure link for a short online interview. Rachel appeared on my laptop in a navy blazer, warm but brisk, asking about revision, Oxford and my interest in materials science.

The viewer count climbed as a local news account shared the stream.

“I like understanding why things endure,” I told her. “Why one material fails under pressure while another changes shape and becomes stronger.”

The doorbell rang.

I knew who stood outside before I checked.

Julian and Chloe waited on the step. Chloe held a bunch of supermarket flowers and wore the careful, sympathetic expression of someone arriving at a funeral.

I muted Rachel but left my own microphone live. Then I turned the laptop slightly so its camera faced the sitting room.

“Friends?” Rachel asked through my earpiece.

“My two closest,” I said.

I opened the door.

Chloe swept inside and embraced me before I could step away.

“We've been so worried,” she said. “You weren't answering. Have you checked?”

Julian remained half a pace behind her. He would not meet my eyes.

Their eagerness was almost beautiful in its ugliness.

“I checked,” I said.

Chloe gripped my arms. “And?”

I looked from my best friend to the boy who had asked me, only hours ago, whether I would choose him again.

“Four A-stars,” I said. “Oxford confirmed. Highest combined marks in the county.”

The flowers slipped in Chloe's hand.

Julian finally looked at me.

Neither of them smiled.