44 days, 30

Last night around midnight, Nikita got an email from UWC. Only contact information, then a puzzling expression: 'for nominees 2012'. We looked at each other: could it mean...? Of course, we hadn't had any reply letter, still biting nails, painting walls and waiting...

For a while we looked at the contact sheet, looked at each other, sat in silence thinking at the slowest, most conservative pace possible. There were a lot of pauses, then tentative half-sentences: 'Surely....', 'Do you think?...', 'Must mean...', 'But then....' and 'Oh my God'... I always thought I'd cry if this happened, but no tears.

He went to sleep. I went to sleep. We couldn't sleep. Today we paced around the gate like young girls waiting for an invite to their first ball. The postman came, didn't have THE letter. That's it: we wrote to UWC. Sent, then back to Inbox and there, THERE was the LETTER! He's being offered a place at Atlantic College.

We read it many times. Once again, we sat in silence. So many things to do, to say, to feel – and in the face of this flood, the body felt drained and numb. No gushing, no big words, no tears.

Later on, I called my parents. Dad boomed, then passed me on to mum. She made a few strangled sounds, then nothing. I squawked something in reply, then waited. Nothing. Eventually I realised she couldn't speak, she was crying and gasping for air, and drowning in her great joy. What? Mum never cries. And then, finally, I found out that I too couldn't speak, so we sat there clutching our phones, drenching them in tears, looking for tissues, finding the sunlight blurred and bewitched.