Thanks all. I am just so glad we sent DS. He came back from his gap year, and we talked about him coming with me, but decided that he wasn't waiting for GCSEs to finish, so he went on Wednesday and he arrived early Friday morning their time. We have a wonderful picture of her smiling with him there on Friday - and he has been a brick by the sounds of things to my father and brother. Quite a lot on the shoulders of a 19 year old though, I guess I somehow thought that if she had held on that long, she would until I got there. I did keep wondering whether I should have tried to go after physics, when everybody else finished, but thought I should be there for her final exam. I think that was right, and at least she didn't have to deal with this during the exams - but given the time difference, DM will have died literally hours after DD finished. Been not talking about it much during the whole period, because the less real it seemed to DD, the better I thought, even though she had to do without me for seven weeks in the middle and she knew, we all knew, in December they didn't expect her to last more than a couple of months.