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And the next day I did Paper 2 and the Reverend Peters read The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but this time he didn't smoke a cigarette and Siobhan made me go into the toilets before the exam and sit on my own and do breathing and counting.

And I was playing The 11th Hour on my computer that evening when a taxi stopped outside the house. Mr. Shears was in the taxi and he got out of the taxi and threw a big cardboard box of things belonging to Mother onto the lawn. And they were a hair dryer and some knickers and some L'Oréal shampoo and a box of muesli and two books, DIANA: Her True Story by Andrew Morton and Rivals by Jilly Cooper, and a photograph of me in a silver frame. And the glass in the photograph frame broke when it fell onto the grass.

Then he got some keys out of his pocket and got into his car and drove away and Mother ran out of the house and she ran into the street and shouted, “Don't fucking bother coming back, either!” And she threw the box of muesli and it hit the boot of his car as he drove away and Mrs. Shears was looking out of her window when Mother did this.

The next day I did Paper 3 and the Reverend Peters read the Daily Mail and smoked three cigarettes.

And this was my favorite question

Prove the following result:

A triangle with sides that can be written in the form n2 + 1, n2 - 1 and 2n (where n > 1) is right-angled.

Show, by means of a counterexample, that the converse is false.

And I was going to write out how I answered the question except Siobhan said it wasn't very interesting, but I said it was. And she said people wouldn't want to read the answers to a maths question in a book, and she said I could put the answer in an Appendix, which is an extra chapter at the end of a book which people can read if they want to. And that is what I have done.

And then my chest didn't hurt so much and it was easier to breathe. But I still felt sick because I didn't know if I'd done well in the exam and because I didn't know if the examination board would allow my exam paper to be considered after Mrs. Gascoyne had told them I wasn't going to take it.

And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.

And Father came round to the house that night and I was sitting on the sofa watching University Challenge and just answering the science questions. And he stood in the doorway of the living room and he said, “Don't scream, OK, Christopher. I'm not going to hurt you.”

And Mother was standing behind him so I didn't scream.

Then he came a bit closer to me and he crouched down like you do with dogs to show that you are not an Aggressor and he said, “I wanted to ask you how the exam went.”

But I didn't say anything.

And Mother said, “Tell him, Christopher.”

But I still didn't say anything.

And Mother said, “Please, Christopher.”

So I said, “I don't know if I got all the questions right because I was really tired and I hadn't eaten any food so I couldn't think properly.”

And then Father nodded and he didn't say anything for a short while. Then he said “Thank you.”

And I said, “What for?”

And he said, “Just . . . thank you.” Then he said, “I'm very proud of you, Christopher. Very proud. I'm sure you did really well.”

And then he went away and I watched the rest of University Challenge.

And the next week Father told Mother she had to move out of the house, but she couldn't because she didn't have any money to pay rent for a flat. And I asked if Father would be arrested and go to prison for killing Wellington because we could live in the house if he was in prison. But Mother said the police would only arrest Father if Mrs. Shears did what is called pressing charges, which is telling the police you want them to arrest someone for a crime, because the police don't arrest people for little crimes unless