Sanctum of Death

You return to London, and Ireland becomes a kind of distant green dream, with your experiences in the cave as its disquieting coda. You are more focused on your A-levels, the final exams that will determine your possibilities for college.

Your results are poor; your attention was elsewhere during class and you never studied very much, preoccupied as you were with your other interests in life. It is unlikely that you will be able to go to university. On hearing the news, your father gives an indifferent shrug. Even your own academic failure cannot stir him out of his apathetic misery.

What is your own reaction?

I feel regret now and wish that I'd studied harder.

I don't care; I never intended to attend university anyway.

I laugh it off, although I feel inwardly frustrated.

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