“Anyway, I’m not making any big claims for myself.” 

Kathy is caught between her work commitments, the reality of her existence, and the strange memories of Hailsham. She wants to appear modest, but her skill as a carer is laudable and she cannot relate how she came to be such a good carer without invoking the memory of her time at school. Kathy dances around the key moments of her past and presents her story through the lens of her skills as a carer. Her one achievement in life is becoming good at her job, and such an achievement is the most students from Hailsham can hope for. Kathy’s hesitancy and modesty reflects the peculiar nature of her existence and her upbringing. 

“This was all a long time ago so I might have some of it wrong.” 

The opening line of the second chapter confirms the suspicions that Kathy establishes in the first. She operates as an unreliable narrator. The story is not necessarily an objective truth, but it is history as Kathy remembers it. The events, the emotions, and the results are products of Kathy’s interpretation, so Tommy and Ruth may disagree on the version of history as told by just one member of their group. The unreliable narrator informs the reader that events are