First published in Great Britain 2020

by Egmont UK Limited

2 Minster Court, 10th floor, London EC3R 7BB

Text copyright © 2020 Jenny Oliver

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

ISBN 978 1 4052 9504 8

Ebook ISBN 978 1 4052 9505 5

www.egmont.co.uk

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For KY, SW & LG

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHELSEA HIGH 2

CHAPTER ONE

Back series promotional page

CHAPTER ONE

I stopped so suddenly, I nearly got hit by a taxi. The cabbie honked his horn, swerving to avoid my bike, but I barely noticed. All my attention had been caught by the sight in front of me – the teeming mass of beautiful people lolling on the wide concrete steps of the red-brick building, all in grey and white uniforms, all the same as mine but infinitely better, the chequered flags waving from turrets and the million mullioned windows sparkling through the haze of bus fumes, all stained glass like a church. My heart lurched. Surely this couldn’t be a school. It was a palace. A sightseeing dot on a map for tourists.

My eyes drank it all nervously in. The sun-kissed girls with big toothy grins who were draped like satin over the railings. The boys with their perfect shaggy hair, razor-sharp cheeks and ice-white shirts chucking rugby balls high in the air and laughing at stuff on their phones. My heart beat faster as they seemed to merge into one, a tangle of tanned limbs and glistening skin, posing for back-from-summer photos, shrieking, air-kissing, boys lifting girls into giant twirling hugs. All of them glowing like they’d been dipped in gold.

My every instinct was pulling my handlebars round, urging: go home, go home.

I thought about what would be happening at my old school right now. One of my friends would call a lazy ‘Hi’ as I ambled up the cracked tarmac path, toast in my mouth, hands trying to do something with my hair. On Mulberry Island, we saw each other every day regardless of whether it was school or holidays, so no one had a tan we didn’t know about. No one had new hair, no one shone like gold and the old sixties building looked nothing like a palace.

But this wasn’t my old life. And no one was waiting for me.

A huge black Rolls-Royce purred past me, so close it almost grazed my leg, pulling me back to the present. I felt everyone on the steps pause what they were doing. A chauffeur got out to open the passenger door, and I watched as none other than Coco Summers unfolded herself from the back seat – tall, blonde and impatient. I heard myself gasp. Model, influencer and selfie queen, Coco had maybe two million followers on Instagram, probably more. Her #cocostyle sold out within seconds. I recognised the slouchy silver backpack she’d just slung over her shoulder. I remembered how she once wore a grey woolly hat with a pink bobble that I owned, and then suddenly everyone had it. I was torn between a bubble of pleasure that we shared the same style and annoyance that she’d ruined my hat.

I stared, entranced, as she sauntered up the steps. Even if I hadn’t recognised her, I’d have known she was special. Her caramel hair with its over-long fringe was perfectly, artfully dishevelled, her skin was luminous. She walked like she owned the world, and she had an aura that made it impossible to look away.

From the school steps, a glossy brunette whooped and tottered down the steps to hurl herself into Coco’s arms before a guy with red hair and a deep golden safari tan leaped the bannister and grabbed them both, lifting them up as if they were weightless.

I had a panicked moment of tunnel vision. I couldn’t fit in here. As the Rolls-Royce cruised away, I wanted to jump inside, to drive back in time to the warmth of the island, to my desk with its graffiti carved with a compass, to the register taken by Mrs Wellington who always had a cup of tea and three plain digestives, to the café after school where we drank hot chocolate piled with marshmallows or played basketball with the boys on a court ravaged by tree roots. To a place where no one twirled anyone, no one pouted, no one wore rucksacks worth over a grand to school.

I looked up with a jolt of desperation. The turrets loomed sharp as daggers. I saw the gleaming gold sign above the doors: Chelsea High School, the words Vincere fecit inscribed underneath. And beneath that, for anyone unfamiliar with the Latin: Made to win.

Go home, my rusty old bike seemed to whisper again.

But my home had gone.

CHAPTER TWO

In a bit of a daze, I looked around for somewhere to lock my bike. The chatter from the steps filled the air. I felt like I was in an impenetrable bubble, watching a cinema screen. I self- consciously flattened my hair as I took off my helmet and tried to catch a glimpse of my fringe in the metal of my handlebars to check it wasn’t sticking up all over the place. The bike racks by the school were already full with spanking new Bianchis and other flash racing bikes, so I had to walk away, searching the side streets till I eventually found a spot much further up the road. I had to run back when I heard the bell ring – by which time the school steps were deserted. Everyone had vanished in a click of manicured fingers, leaving pigeons to peck at crisp crumbs and a forgotten school jumper slung on the railing.

I sprinted up the steps to catch the huge wooden doors just as they were closing. And then I stepped inside Chelsea High.

My eyes had to adjust to the darkness. As the fresco ceilings and gilded cornicing came into focus, I felt again like I’d come to the wrong building. This was a cathedral, not a school, and we should be silent in worship. Ahead of me, dark archways and low lighting led down endless empty corridors as doors slammed all around. The smoggy sunlight cast shadows like monsters across the gleaming parquet. I could hear my breath. I could hear my heart.

My old school came to mind again. The patches of damp on the plasterboard ceiling at Mulberry Island Academy, the Sellotaped window-pane cracks, my beloved locker. The railing I swung on to turn the corner every day. The smell of lunch cooking. The meadow with grass so long you could lie down and disappear. Eating Maltesers and talking to Jess about nothing. I would do almost anything to talk about nothing now. What a luxury – that careless boredom.

‘No dawdling. First day of term. Start as you mean to go on.’

A deep voice echoed down the empty corridor.

Instinctively I stood up straighter, hitching my old rucksack higher, starting to walk forward. But I didn’t know which way to go. I was completely lost. I vaguely remembered a map arriving in the post with all the other introductory papers in a brown envelope, but I had no idea where it had ended up. Everything at home now was just a mess of confusion.

I’ve lived on a houseboat all my life, and all my life I’ve loved it: the narrow cosiness, the cocooned security, the gentle lapping of the tangy water in summer and the harsh battering of the rain in winter. But this morning, the sharp rap on our front door had been like a crack splintering the boat’s hull. I watched my dad spill his coffee in his haste to answer the door. It was bad enough that he was dressed so differently today. He’d always been one for a bright shirt and, if he had to, a funny tie. ‘Hook them with a laugh,’ he’d say. This morning he had been wearing a pale yellow shirt, grey tie and suit trousers. Almost as if he was the one going to school.

My mum straightened up, visibly nervous as she said with vague dismissal: ‘Time to go to school, Norah. Quick, off you go.’ She’d put her arm round my shoulders and given me a distracted kiss on the top of my head.

‘I don’t want to go,’ I’d muttered.

But my mum just waved the statement away, her interest diverted by the front door. She moved away from me, and my shoulder felt suddenly empty.

Dad stood to one side to let a humourless man in a dark blue suit pass on the narrow steps, arm stretched out to show him which direction to go. On a houseboat, there is only one direction.

My mum beckoned for him to sit at the small, round table where the remains of our breakfast had been cleared away. She had wiped the table and was now retying the black bow at the end of her plait, looking uncomfortable and fidgety in her long yellow and black patterned skirt, white shirt and bright yellow sandals. Dressed up but trying to look casual.

‘Off you go, Norah,’ she said. Insistent.

I didn’t like the look of our visitor. No one in a suit had ever set foot on our boat. Our visitors usually wore old baggy shirts and carried musical instruments or bottles of home- brewed beer.

‘I’ve got to get my bag,’ I said, watchful and hesitant.

The man in the suit was pulling out one of our mismatched chairs, scraping it on the floor, setting his black briefcase on the table. It wasn’t my imagination that he gave the boat a disparaging once-over.

‘Get a move on, Norah!’

The snap in my mum’s voice surprised me. She’d never shouted at me before in my life. At my old school I would always scrape in just as registration ended. My best friend Jess would watch, bemused by how I could be late when she’d already squeezed a thousand and one things into her morning. As a family, we are always late. My mum doesn’t own a watch.

‘I’m going,’ I said, hoping someone might notice the hurt in my voice.

But my mum and dad were already taking their seats at the little wooden table.

The humourless man in the suit was a lawyer. To him I didn’t exist, a waste of time billed in five-minute increments. As I made my way to the door, my dad gave me a quick surreptitious wave, like displays of affection were no longer allowed.

Now, in the oppressive magnificence of the Chelsea High corridor, I was faced with another man in a suit. This one was older, wearing what looked like a cape over his black jacket and a white bow tie. Even the masters had a uniform here. He came nearer, stopping right in front of me. He unfolded his arms, pushed back his cape and put his hands in the pockets of his suit trousers. ‘Name?’ he said.

‘Norah Whittaker, Sir,’ I said, palms sweaty. I’d never called anyone Sir in my life, but nervousness made it roll off my tongue. At my old school we called the teachers by their first names, and half of them were our neighbours. ‘I’m –’ I saw his eyes squint as he processed the information.

‘Whittaker.’ His voice whistled on the W. ‘Well, well. We’ve been expecting you, haven’t we, Ms Whittaker?’ There was the whistle again. ‘Not the best first impression.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Late on your first day.’

I shook my head. ‘No, Sir,’ I said. ‘Sorry, Sir.’

He tilted his head like he was trying to get the measure of me. ‘Your father was always late,’ he said in the end. ‘Shows a sloppiness of character. Wouldn’t you agree?’

I swallowed, unable to reply. The reference to my father had caught me off guard.

For the whole of my life, Mulberry Island had been our home. The life my parents had led before they owned the boat was never mentioned. They talked only of life on the island – the river, the land, the community was ingrained in our blood. But just over a week ago I had learned the truth.

It still felt unreal. I had discovered, amidst the chaos – in hurried, snatched conversations – that my parents weren’t native islanders. In fact, my dad had gone to this school; to Chelsea High. It was where he had met my mother. They had been rich. Were rich. Might be rich. I didn’t know. His parents, the grandparents I’d been told were dead, were definitely rich, though. Very rich. It was them paying for the humourless lawyer who had arrived on our boat this morning. They were paying for everything. They were the reason our colourful old boat was now moored at one of the most exclusive docks in London, surrounded by stark grey floating palaces like sharks circling to eat us alive.

‘Look at me when I’m talking to you, Ms Whittaker!’

My eyes shot back to his. I could see them, watery and angry.

‘I warned them to steer well clear of you lot. Trouble. Always have been,’ he sneered.

‘Let’s leave it there, shall we, Mr Watts?’ A woman had swept up next to him, black pantsuit, cropped black hair, big pearl studs in her ears. ‘I think Ms Whittaker understands the importance of timekeeping. Am I right?’

I nodded, a lump forming in my throat. It all suddenly felt too much, too overwhelming. If this woman (whoever she was) had hugged me at that point, I would have gladly hugged her back. But this wasn’t Reception class. There would be no hugs.

Mr Watts straightened up. He folded his arms again, pursed his lips and said, ‘Late again, Ms Whittaker, and it will be detention.’ He gave a curt nod to Mrs Pearce before striding away.

Putting her hand on my shoulder, Mrs Pearce ushered me down the dusky corridor. Our footsteps echoed. There were closed classroom doors on one side of us and big windows with mottled glass and a view out to an elaborate courtyard on the other.

‘Don’t worry too much about Mr Watts,’ I heard her say softly. She was still facing ahead, as if what she was saying wasn’t quite by the book.

With the threat of tears welling in my eyes, I didn’t look her way. I focused on her shoes instead: Gucci loafers that clipped on the polished wood.

‘I think he might have been . . . shall we say, a disgruntled class mate of your father’s,’ Mrs Pearce went on.

I looked up at her then, frowning.

She smiled, her kind eyes crinkling. ‘He had quite a reputation here, your dad. On a sunny day it’s still possible to make out where he wrote his name in weedkiller on the cricket pitch on the last day of term. An interesting choice, wouldn’t you say? Writing one’s own name rather gives the culprit away.’ Mrs Pearce seemed to have the measure of my dad in an instant. ‘A loveable fool’ my mum always called him. ‘A bloody idiot’ seemed to be the kindest name currently on people’s lips.

As we walked beside walls lined with oil paintings of past masters and gold-leafed boards listing the well-known names of old alumni, I tried to imagine Dad as a boy walking these same corridors, but it was too hard to visualise. Instead I thought about him sitting on the bench in the patch of scrubland we’d called a garden, next to our old mooring, dressed in his jeans and favourite shirt with hair swept to one side, an image of his usual self – except for his eyes, which that day weren’t smiling.

‘Come and sit down, Nellie Norah.’ He’d patted the seat next to him. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about.’

My immediate fear was that someone had died. That was the expression on his face. But no one had died. Except as he spoke, it felt like a death. A death of us, of what we had, of the life I knew and thought I would always know.

‘The thing is, Norah,’ he’d said, rubbing his chin, awkward, nervous, not quite able to look me in the eye. ‘The thing is . . . I’ve made a little mistake. Well, actually, quite a big mistake.’ He’d paused, glancing down at the weeds around our bench. ‘The film company. All the financing. It was a scam, Norah. The McGinty brothers are not quite as honest as they seemed.’

I frowned, not understanding. ‘It can’t be a scam,’ I said. ‘We made a film. Everyone on the island invested in us.’

I remembered the party we’d held when we reached the financing target. My dad, grinning from ear to ear, thwacking Jess’s dad on the back. ‘We’re gonna double your money, Keith, you just wait and see. ‘And Jess’s dad holding up his crossed fingers with a nervous smile. ‘It’s everything I’ve got, Bill. Look after it.’ As we sat on the bench, I saw the lines and wrinkles of my dad’s downcast face.

‘They’re going to give the money back, right?’ I said.

He didn’t reply. Just sat up and stretched his arms along the back of the bench, as if he hadn’t heard the question.

We sat side by side in silence. I kicked a dandelion with my foot. There are moments, I’ve realised, when you know your life is about to change, when everything around you gets much brighter, bigger, clearer. Right then I could see each individual petal of the dandelion, dazzling yellow, as big as a sunflower.

Mrs Pearce stopped at a polished wooden door. She seemed to steel herself for a second before pushing it open. Inside we were met with a wall of noise and laughter.

I stood, dumbfounded. If the entrance to Chelsea High was Victorian Gothic, then this was the Apple Store. The classroom was a gleaming cube of white, stripped back to stark white walls and achingly contemporary art. The pale grey floor gleamed like an ice rink. The light fittings were huge translucent orbs, and the windows had automatic blinds that responded to sunlight. People were everywhere, like ants. Phones were being passed around, music thumped, girls sniggered and swished their gleaming hair, boys lolled, kicking their feet against the expensive furniture. There was no compass-carved graffiti on manky old desks here, or hockey balls being chucked millimetres from the swanky art.

‘Here we are,’ Mrs Pearce said, ushering me into the mêlée. She clapped her hands together and shouted, ‘OK, everyone, settle down. Settle down! Music off, phones away!’

Chairs scraped and bashed and huddles dispersed with lazy insouciance.

I looked around for a place to sit, but my eyes were distracted. All I could see was wealth – the labels on the bags, the top-of-the-range phones and iPads chucked on every smart white table, even the diamond studs in earlobes and the flawless make-up – sparking in me a shameful, envious insecurity. And then I noticed the people looking at me, the assessing glances. My cheeks began to pink.

Mrs Pearce was unwrapping her own iPad from a turquoise-leather pouch. ‘OK, everyone, this is Norah,’ she said, glancing from her emails to the class to me. ‘She is joining us this year, so I hope you will all be your delightful selves and make her feel welcome. Freddie, feet off the desk, for Christ’s sake. You’re not in kindergarten.’

I stared at the scrutinising, disinterested faces in front of me. Aware of my hair, my skin, my bag, my shoes. Wishing I had put more thought into every item I was wearing. But of course my thoughts had been elsewhere.

‘There’s a spare seat at the back, Norah.’ Mrs Pearce gestured vaguely to where the glossy brunette I’d seen earlier was leaning against the window sill, watching my progress. Her fingers thrummed on the table that belonged to Freddie, the boy with jaw-length black hair who’d had his feet on the desk.

I willed my feet not to trip as I walked across the shiny floor, trying to ignore the stares. As I put my bag down on the empty table, I reminded myself that this was temporary. Once the lawyer had sorted it all out, we’d be turning our boat round and chugging back to Mulberry Island. These people, this place was just a blip on my life’s horizon. I could probably get through this without even having to talk to anyone.

The brunette was still watching me with narrowed eyes.

Then suddenly I was forgotten, as the door was thrown open and Coco Summers stalked into the room.

‘Sorry I’m late, Mrs Pearce!’ she called, breezing across the classroom in a cloud of blonde with her eyes glued to something on her phone. Without even pausing to register the fact I was standing by the desk getting my stuff out, she sat down in my seat.

I stood, not quite knowing what to do. My diary and biro were out on the table already. Coco had chucked her phone into her silver rucksack on the floor, her legs stretched out in front of her. It was only as she ruffled fingers through her blunt fringe and gave the room a cursory glance that she acknowledged me.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘I was . . .’ I glanced at my things on the table, then to the front. Mrs Pearce was typing on her iPad, words appearing on the whiteboard screen behind her. I swallowed, pointing to the seat, wishing this wasn’t happening. ‘I was told to sit here.’ Coco shook her head with a dismissive frown. ‘I sit here.’

Mrs Pearce looked up. ‘Oh, Coco,’ she sighed, hands on her hips.

Coco looked bemused. ‘I always sit here. You know that, Mrs Pearce.’

Mrs Pearce rubbed her forehead, then gave a half-smile. Coco grinned, wide and confident.

‘Norah, if you could just find somewhere else for the moment, that would be great,’ said Mrs Pearce. She peered around the room. ‘There’s one over there.’

In the corner was a spare double desk.

‘I’m sorry, you’ll be on your own,’ Mrs Pearce said.

‘It’s fine,’ I muttered, scooping up my things, wishing that had been where I’d sat in the first place. Anything not to have drawn attention to myself.

Mrs Pearce watched me until I sat down and got myself ready. I didn’t have an iPad. I had a notepad and an old chewed biro. I didn’t even have a phone. My mum had confiscated it after reading a message thread over my shoulder. Surely these girls have something better to do! she’d said, as the messages laid into me and my family, full of vitriol about the damage my dad had done and the shame I should feel.

The worst part had been when my friends had joined in. People I’d always assumed would give us the benefit of the doubt. My mum hadn’t wanted me infected by the news stories either. Like the time she threw away the bathroom scales – better not to know, she’d said. But I’d seen enough already. The camera crews, the so-called friends of my dad who had sold stories to the paper. I told myself they were just doing it for the money. When you’ve lost everything, sometimes your principles have to go too.

‘First day of term, kids,’ Mrs Pearce said. ‘This is an important year for you, so no messing. Yes?’

No one really replied.

‘Miss?’

‘Yes, Emmeline.’ There was a resigned tone in Mrs Pearce’s voice as she looked at a girl with long black hair, huge eyes and a tiny stubby nose. The stuff on her table all neatly stacked in size order: MacBook, paperback, phone, neatly wound headphones.

‘I think it’s really demoralising to call us kids,’ said Emmeline. ‘I think it encourages immaturity because it expects immaturity.’

‘You think so, Emmeline?’ Mrs Pearce raised a brow while scrolling through the register.

‘I do, Miss.’ Emmeline flicked her smooth curtain of hair.

‘And you don’t think that perhaps I’m acknowledging the immaturity I see in the room and challenging you all to step up and overtake it?’ Mrs Pearce mirrored the register to the screen behind her as she spoke. ‘Rex Andrews?’

A guy at the front said, ‘Here.’

‘No, Miss.’ Emmeline’s hair swung as she shook her head. ‘I think you should see us and treat us with the respect we deserve. We are adults.’

‘Well, I think someone might have forgotten to tell Freddie and Rollo,’ said Mrs Pearce.

The whole class looked at the two guys by the window who were silently cracking up at something on Freddie’s phone, zooming in close.

Rollo, the mega-tanned redhead from earlier, glanced up when he realised he was being watched.

‘Care to share, boys?’ Mrs Pearce asked, leaning forward with her elbows on the table.

Freddie immediately put his phone away, unable to quite wipe the smile from his face. ‘No, Miss.’

Mrs Pearce glanced back to Emmeline. ‘Perhaps if you could get your brother up to speed, your cause would be more fruitful, Emmeline.’

Emmeline rolled her eyes and pulled her paperback out of the stack on her desk to start reading.

‘Book away.’

She closed it with a sigh.

Mrs Pearce glanced back to her register. ‘Verity Benítez?’

‘Yeah.’ The glossy brunette raised a dismissive finger a centimetre to signify her presence.

Someone’s phone beeped. There was a scuffle of movement as people went to check their bags.

‘Phones away,’ Mrs Pearce said without looking up from the register. ‘Frederick Chang?’

Freddie saluted. ‘Present and correct.’ Mrs Pearce sighed. ‘I’ve had enough of you already.’

‘Ah, Miss, come on, you love me,’ he said. ‘I brighten up your day.’

‘That’s debatable, Freddie. Emmeline Chang?’

‘Yes, I’m here.’

I watched as Coco read a message on her phone under her table and passed it to Verity.

‘Rollo Cooper-Quinn?’

‘Yes.’

Verity passed Rollo the phone. Rollo was big like a rugby player, effortlessly pleased with himself. He sat with the casual confidence of someone who knows they’re chocolate-box handsome, chewing gum, eyes smiling.

‘Coco Summers?’

‘Here.’

Freddie grabbed for the phone but Rollo held it just out of reach, laughing.

Mrs Pearce clicked her fingers without glancing their way. She had some crazy surround vision. ‘Phone,’ she said. Coco swore. ‘No swearing, Coco,’ she added as Rollo gave Freddie the phone to take up to the table at the front.

Mrs Pearce took a moment to study the customised cover of the slick new iPhone. Hot pink Perspex with the word Coco scrawled in gold glitter. ‘You can have it back at the end of the day.’

‘You can’t take my phone, Miss; it’s my business,’ Coco said with big serious eyes.

‘Do you want it back tomorrow instead?’ Coco slumped back, fuming. Then a few seconds later bent down to check that her other, equally sleek rose-gold iPhone with a rabbit-ear jacket was still nestled in the pocket of her bag.

‘Norah Whittaker?’ Mrs Pearce looked straight at me at the back of the class. ‘Whittaker?’ Verity murmured.

She leaned over and whispered something to Coco, who laughed. Rollo leaned forward, keen to get in on the joke. I blushed. They knew, of course they knew. The whole world knew. It had been plastered over every newspaper in the country. ‘Three arrested in alleged £15m film investment scheme’. It had been like watching it all happen to someone else’s life. And as the headlines soon switched to ‘Earl of Wesley’s movie-fraudster son!’ it did feel like someone else’s life. These people were talking about my dad, who wore holey green jumpers, played banjo in the Mulberry Island band and ate carrots he’d pulled straight from the ground. Suddenly he was an earl’s son.

There’s a statue on a hill in Cornwall of a Roman temple. It rests high off the ground on a wooden frame, Underneath you can see each column tethered by a counterweight so when the wind blows the whole structure tips precariously to the left or right, yawing like a ship in a storm. That’s how my life felt when I thought too much about it all.

Mrs Pearce looked from me to Coco et al and back again with an expression of pity.Then she looked back at her register and, with a slight frown, said, ‘Ezra Montgomery?’

Everyone in the room looked up at the name. Mine was forgotten.

Mrs Pearce glanced around. ‘Coco, do you know if Ezra’s in today?’

Coco gave the slightest shake of her head. A gesture that seemed to surprise most people.

‘Rollo?’ Mrs Pearce asked. ‘Have you seen him?’

Rollo shook his head too, suddenly a little less self-assured than he had been a moment ago. ‘I only flew in last night, Miss,’ he said.

I leaned forward, resting my chin on my hand, intrigued by the change in the room. The imperceptible tensing of Coco and her gang. Mrs Pearce was scrolling through emails, trying to find something on the unaccounted for Ezra. In the end she gave up and went back to the rest of her register.

‘Rufus? Emir? Portia? Alejandro?’

Even the names here were different.

My mind wandered as Mrs Pearce read out the day’s notices. A comment from the headmaster mocking the results of the previous year. CHELSEA HIGH BREEDS WINNERS came up in huge capitals on the screen. If you’re not an A student, you’re not a Chelsea student. My focus however was less on grades and more on how I was going to fit in around here. Or at least go unnoticed.

I would have to do something about my dress. Everyone else’s was shorter, tighter, better fitting. Mine was like a giant boat in comparison. And my shoes. Why had I believed the information pack, why did I think that people would be wearing the regulation black lace-ups? Because I had foolishly assumed that at somewhere so grand, everyone would follow the rules. Not like at Mulberry Island Academy, where white shirt meant anything white and clean. Where my friends and I wore our tracksuits all day if we had PE in the afternoon.

There had been a melting pot of friendships at Mulberry Island Academy. Jess, for example, was my best friend, but she also had her canoeing friends while I had my drama friends. But we all knew each other and each other’s siblings, regardless of style or interest. Here, you could tell from one cursory glance that the classroom was divided into hierarchical cliques. And Coco reigned supreme.

I was just watching Emmeline as she leaned over to whisper something to Coco, wondering how she got her hair so glossy–immediately annoyed at myself because I had never cared about glossy hair before – when the door opened. Everything around me went still, like the room was holding its breath. I saw Coco completely ignore whatever Emmeline was saying, her sparkling pink lips opening slightly and her eyes wide. She shifted in her seat, shrugging off Rollo’s attention. A tiny crease developed between Rollo’s brows.

I’ve spent my whole life studying the greatest actors and actresses in the world. It’s all I want to be. So I understand facial expressions. I have whiled away many hours in front of the mirror perfecting the smallest quirk of a brow. If I make it to Broadway, I will die happy.

Maybe this was something I could focus on in the hours I spent here, friendless, before normality resumed. I could use these people and their expressions as part of my studies. Watching and learning, impassive, neutral.

But then I turned back and I saw him.

I know that my lips parted like Coco’s, just less pink and less frosted, as he slunk over to Mrs Pearce’s desk. Thick dark hair, olive skin, face all angular, body tall and sinewy. This had to be the elusive Ezra Montgomery.

‘Sorry, I’m late,’ he half mumbled.

‘That’s fine, Ezra.’ Mrs Pearce smiled, all kind eyes. ‘There’s a seat at the back.’

She pointed to the only seat left in the room. The seat next to me.

I shut my mouth. I could feel myself start to blush for no reason other than the fact he was getting closer. Tall loping strides, nonchalant half-closed eyes, hand raking back messy hair. He took his time, walking down the aisle between the tables.

Coco was smiling. It was the softest I’d seen her since I’d arrived. She half stood up from her chair and called, ‘Ezra, over here! We can squeeze up.’

He took in the lack of spare seats by Coco and his brow creased, like he was confused. That was enough for me to like him immediately.

‘Over there’s fine,’ he said, pointing at the spare chair beside me, half smiling. ‘Thanks.’

It was possible Coco blushed.

Freddie bounded out of his seat to give Ezra a natty little handshake. Rollo stretched across to follow suit – but their hands didn’t touch because Mrs Pearce called out, ‘Sit down, everyone!’

And then Ezra was chucking his black bag to the floor and kicking the spare chair out with his foot to slide effortlessly down in the seat next to me.

Coco seemed unable to tear her eyes away.

But, to be honest, so was I.

He was so close I could smell him. All shower fresh and fabric softener. Lashes like blackbird wings.

I saw a muscle in Rollo’s jaw tense.

I sat rigid. Cheeks hot. Never in my life had I been so overwhelmingly aware of the presence of another human.

I tried to concentrate on my notebook, absently doodling round where I’d written Chelsea breeds winners, but my eyes kept darting to the side. His top button was undone, his tie in his pocket. He wore a ribbed white T-shirt underneath his shirt. His black trousers were jeans. His black shoes were Nikes. His watch was cracked. I couldn’t see his face again without tucking my hair behind my ears (which I did), but all my movements felt wooden and rehearsed. Perhaps I didn’t have what it took to be an actress after all. I cast furtive glances across at the sharp contours of his cheeks, the line of his nose, the sullen dip of the corners of his mouth.

The room gradually settled back to normal.

Emmeline turned right round in her seat. ‘Hello, darling Ezra,’ she said, putting her hand gently on his. When she smiled, her whole face lit up with unexpected kindness.

I watched Ezra’s mouth quirk up just slightly on one corner and his eyes spark. He put his other hand briefly over hers. ‘Alright, Em,’ he said. Emmeline turned back round, hair sloshing like paint down her back.

Coco was mouthing his name, trying to catch his attention. Ezra lifted a finger in a sort of wave. I watched him look around the room, his knee jiggling under the table like he was wired, excited, maybe nervous. He pushed his hair back from his face. Then, as Mrs Pearce was making us take notes about timetable changes and all I could hear was the gentle tap of twenty iPads, he turned to me and said, ‘Can I borrow some paper?’

Caught staring at him, my flustered cheeks still prickling with heat, I found myself saying, ‘What? Oh. Yes, sorry,’ and ripping off a sheet of notepaper so quickly it tore diagonally across the top. ‘Don’t have that one,’ I mumbled, laying it on the desk next to me. It fluttered to the floor as I tore off another sheet.

He looked amused as I handed him the new piece and scrabbled to get the one that had escaped.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

I nodded, blowing my fringe out of my eyes, unsure how I’d made something so simple into such a trial.

‘Any chance you’ve got a pen?’ he added ruefully.

And I couldn’t help but laugh, at his expression and the fact the ordeal was not yet over. I had one spare biro – I don’t know where they all go; I think my mum takes them – and it was shameful. The end was chewed into jagged points and there was barely any ink left. Reluctantly I passed it over. ‘Only this one,’ I said, cringing as he took it.

‘Thanks,’ he said, then looked at it properly and laughed. ‘That’s a hell of a pen.’

I did a sort of apologetic shrug, and that was the end of our interaction. He turned away to scrawl down everything that was on the board while I replayed the incident over and over in my mind. My senses still tingled with awareness, at the smell of him, the closeness of his arm as he wrote, the two tiny moles on his cheek.

Then the bell went.

Everyone jumped out their seats. Scooping up her bag, Coco shot over to hug Ezra tight. Her face pressed close to his neck, she whispered, ‘Hey, Ez,’ as her presence filled the corner of the room with a rich, sweet-smelling cloud of coconut suntan lotion and Chanel.

Ezra put his hand lightly on her back. But where her eyes were shut tight, he kept his open, staring straight ahead. Then suddenly Rollo was there, splitting the hug apart with a quick punch on Ezra’s arm, and next Freddie was laughing as Ezra caught him in a playful headlock while Verity leaned over the desk to deliver the kind of kiss on each cheek that was predominantly about keeping her make-up intact. If the girl had an emotion in her body, it wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

The whole thing lasted hardly more than five seconds. And then they were gone, Ezra strolling out of the door with my half-chewed biro, me waiting, hopeful, for a backward glance. But he didn’t look back.

CHAPTER THREE

The day didn’t get better. I got lost in the maze that led from the original Gothic quarters of the school to a gleaming new glass extension, where the roof had a triangular-panelled dome like a giant observatory, the view reaching up to the wide blue sky and the gentle fluttering of plane-tree leaves, teasing in their freedom. But no matter the opulence, I would have swapped it in a second to be back at my old school, sitting in my old Drama class, the back doors open on to the wilderness pond, or sketching outside in the meadow for Art. The corridors here smelt box-fresh, the poured concrete floors glistened, giant art installations loomed down from the stark white walls like a fancy museum. In the corner was a coffee bar with low tables and lounge chairs, but the kiosk was bigger and more impressive than the whole of the Mulberry Island café. This part of the school was three storeys high, designed with a corridor running round the edge of the atrium, and open so anyone up above had a clear view down.

‘Late, Ms Whittaker!’

I heard a familiar voice echo round the dome and looked up to see Mr Watts peering over the uppermost balcony.

‘Sorry, Sir,’ I called, rushing to find the stairs. Where they were, I had no idea. So when I finally made it to the classroom, panicked and breathless, Mr Watts made a point of glancing

at the wall clock. As punishment for disrupting his class, he made me stand behind my white table and recite my thirteen times table backwards, which of course I couldn’t do. Could anyone? My cheeks flamed like popping candy, my voice catching with nerves. Then when my humiliation was too much to bear and Mr Watts had proved his point, a skinny guy with thick brown quiffed hair and square glasses recited it number-perfect. The diagrams in my textbook blurred as I fought the press of hot, embarrassed tears.

*

Lunch was another minefield. No snaking queue and grumpy dinner ladies dishing out wet green beans and undefinable meat, no warm chocolate sponge pudding, no scuffed plastic water jugs and fake wood tables. Lunch here was like the food court at Wholefoods. There were various stations round the edge of the room and huge circular tables in the middle, all the different colours of the rainbow. In one corner there was a guy sizzling steak for burritos next to a Japanese woman rolling sushi. There was a shopping cart stacked up with baguettes, a sourdough pizza oven, a salad bar, and even a stall of fresh chopped fruit where you could make your own smoothies. I felt like Charlie walking into Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory all wide-eyed in awe, while everyone else took it for granted, picking at their baguettes and texting as their pizzas cooked. It was hard to believe this would ever feel like the norm.

As I walked around the various food stands, I looked for a list of prices, not quite sure what I could afford. I had hardly any cash on me. I hadn’t dared ask my mum because our money had been poured into the bogus film company and what was left had been frozen by the police. I paused by the baguette stand to ask the lady serving which was the cheapest.

She frowned. ‘You don’t have to pay, dear. You just swipe your card here.’ And she held out a black card reader.

‘It’s free?’

‘Well, not free,’ she scoffed. ‘It goes on your parents’ bill. But that’s for them to worry about, isn’t it?’

People were piling their plates high. My unknown grandparents were paying my school fees. The thought of them poring over the itemised school bill, raising their brows at my expensive sushi lunch, was more than I could handle. So I went for the most basic cheese and tomato sandwich I could find and sat at the empty half of a giant blue table. The three girls on the other side didn’t even look up from where they were huddled around their phones.

Instinct made me reach into my pocket for mine, for something to do. But I only found the replacement pager, given to me by Mum when she’d confiscated my phone after finding me in my room, deep in a wormhole of messaging, my unblinking eyes welling up. She made me delete all my accounts after one glance at the screen. A girl in my year called Becky Brown, who I sat next to in History and whose dad owned the Mulberry Island pub, had written If ur dad doesnt die in jail, my dad says hes gonna kill him.

Naively, I’d tried to defend him. But when I did, more people joined in to side with Becky. I couldn’t believe that people who I had known all my life could turn on us so quickly. They said that my dad had stabbed their parents in the back and now we were running away, rich cowards who’d lost nothing.

I felt sick. These had been my friends. Friends, with families my dad had helped in the past. He’d organised the river raft race to raise money for the leaking pub roof. He’d set up the Theatre Club when we’d all moaned about having nothing to do. There were always people sobbing on our boat about various issues, my dad listening with a Scotch and some words of wisdom. Yet suddenly there was no benefit of the doubt, no belief that he would sort this, that together we could make this situation better.

I’d screenshot the messages and sent them to Jess, who said it was just emotions running high. People were understandably upset. I knew that, but it didn’t take away the sting. I just had to sit tight and wait for justice to win out, she said. But it was so hard. I’d nodded, watery-eyed at the screen, her words like a lifeline back to normality. When Mum looked at me wiping at my eyes with my cuffs, she walked out of the room with my phone. So now I just have my dad’s old pager, from when he joined the lifeboats, to use for emergencies.

After wolfing down my sandwich, I wandered the grounds, pretending to get my bearings when really it was for something to do other than sit alone.

I walked the periphery, past a glass-walled indoor swimming pool and steaming outdoor one. I passed six tennis courts: two hard court, two clay, two grass, as if this was an international training ground rather than just school PE facilities.

The Mulberry Island tennis court was cracked diagonally from one side to the other like an earthquake had hit. The ball got wedged in it so often that any semblance of a game was laughable.

At Chelsea High the tennis courts ran half the length of the tree-lined back wall. Next to them were cricket nets and a gleaming pavilion. There was a path through the trees into a walled garden, partitioned with box hedges like a low maze and full of intricate topiary. Around the edge were benches where people sat soaking up the sun. I walked through to a large green space marked with an athletics track. To the left was a small grandstand and an L-shape of wooden buildings.

I quite like athletics. I’m good at running. I wondered what my version of good would be in comparison to here.

The sun was scorchingly bright and the air smelt so strongly of fresh-cut grass and a hint of river (I presumed the Thames ran along the back of the playing field) that I had to stop for a second and shut my eyes. The smell was so much a comforting reminder of home, the watery tang like an old friend or a warm blanket of safety.

Then suddenly all I could hear was the frantic sound of a whistle. I opened my eyes to see a black pony cantering straight at me.

It was so fast, bearing down, closer and closer, yet I was frozen to the spot. My hands lifted to cover my face. The hooves thundered. The whistle kept blowing.

I think I screamed out.

But no impact came.

I moved my hands to find myself face to face with the panting, frothing mouth of the pony. Its eyes were as black as its hair.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Coco yanked her helmet off, white hair flowing. ‘Are you blind? I could have killed you. You could have killed us. Who takes a stroll on a polo field?’

‘Sorry,’ I stammered, the hot breath of the pony in my face. ‘I didn’t realise.’

‘There are eight ponies on this field. How could you not realise?’ Coco gestured to all the other ponies on the track. It did seem crazy that I hadn’t seen them. But I wasn’t looking. Who expected ponies at a school?

Verity appeared on a spotty grey and white one, hair plaited, skin-tight white jodhpurs and a tiny pale pink polo shirt with a polo stick lying across her saddle. ‘Do you know how much Coco’s pony cost?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

Verity leaned forward. ‘Probably about as much as your grubby little daddy stole,’ she said, voice as smooth as silk.

I felt like she’d whacked me with her stick.

Emmeline trotted over on a white pony with eyes like a Disney princess. ‘Give her a break, Vee. She’s new.’

Coco was still glowering at me. ‘She’s an idiot,’ she said, and with one quick dismissive flick of the reins she was gone, black pony cantering back into play. Verity followed with a smirk.

The sun was so hot. The sweat trickled down my back as I stalked off the pitch. Adrenaline made my hands shake. Too late, a thousand witty clever comebacks shot through my head. If Jess had been here, she would have taken Coco down. They would have squared off and battled it out. Jess had never been afraid of anyone. It was only now that I saw how much I had depended on her. How lost I was on my own.

‘Are you crying?’ a voice said, more out of interest than sympathy.

I turned to see the times-table guy from Maths. Tall and skinny with his quiff and horn-rims. Hands in the pockets of his grey trousers, tie loose and top button undone, striped grey and blue braces, he came to stand next to me on the edge of the polo field.

‘What?’ I said, shaking my head. ‘No, I’m not crying.’

‘Good. I’m really terrible with tears. Though to be fair, I’d probably be crying right now if I was you.’ He paused. ‘Don’t you hate people who say: though to be fair?’

I frowned, caught off guard by the conversation segue. It paused my desire to get as far away from the pitch as possible. ‘Now you come to mention it, yeah, maybe,’ I said, immediately liking the way his mind worked. This was the kind of nothing that we might have discussed staring up at the sun in the Mulberry Island meadow.

‘“Yeah, maybe”?’ he repeated. ‘Case in point. My grandmother always says that one should be more succinct. Decisive. Get to the point. No “to be honest”s or “basically”s or “you know what I mean”s. I’m trying to wean myself unsuccessfully off them. Sloppy semantics, she calls it.’ He took his glasses off and gave them a clean. ‘I’m Daniel.’

‘Norah,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘With the dad embroiled in the Ponzi scheme.’

My delight immediately ebbed.

He went on, adjusting his glasses. ‘It’s a shame, because I actually quite liked the film. I saw it at the cinema. You weren’t bad in it. And you know . . .’ He paused. ‘See? “And you know” is completely unnecessary in the sentence. It was the first time I’d ever been the only person in the cinema.’

I bit my lip, embarrassed, and unsure whether to take what he was saying as a slight or compliment.

The image of that first screening of my dad’s film popped into my head. They erected a huge screen by the river, and everyone on the island sat out on fold-out chairs and picnic rugs. There was a bar in the corner serving hot dogs, fresh lemonade and beer. The film was a low-budget comedy-drama. It showed at a couple of the festivals to positive acclaim and had a limited cinema release; a trial run for the bigger, higher- budget films in the pipeline, but exciting nonetheless. I had a very small part in it, and had relished every last second of the filming, even the hours spent in make-up and the night shoots in the dark and wet, standing around for hours in big puffy coats so we didn’t get cold. At the island screening there was a curtain call, and as part of the cast I was up at the front taking a bow. My dad gave a speech, beaming at the thunderous applause. It was a time when everyone still thought he was a hero.

But I also remembered four months later having to Google the words ‘Ponzi scheme’. Discovering the two men who’d set up the production company – the McGinty brothers – had taken investment money off one load of people and then paid them back with money from another load of people, all to line their own pockets. My dad was the sucker the McGintys had picked to add credence to their fancy presentations, a guy these people clearly trusted with their lives as well as their life-savings. In retrospect, he was the obvious choice. His persuasive charm and popularity emanated as strongly as his unfulfilled, starry-eyed ambition to be a film-maker. Now it was apparent the big films were never going to be made, and the production company was just a sham. Borrow, borrow, borrow until there’s no one left to borrow from: that was how the scheme worked. Until all the people on the little island idyll had no more money left to give.

To Daniel, I found myself saying, ‘My dad had nothing to do with it.’

He gave me a look. ‘I never said he did.’

Behind us was the noise of the ponies’ hooves and the crack of the polo stick on the ball. The pervading smell was still of cut grass and sunshine. Daniel started to stroll along the edge of the field and beckoned for me to follow.

‘In my dad’s eyes, those films were bona fide,’ I said as I walked, one hand shielding my eyes from the sun. My instinctive need to defend him had become so automatic, I had started to pre-empt any accusations. There had been nothing more devastating than seeing the unrelenting optimism drain from my dad, replaced with a sad, greying fear. ‘He had nothing to do with the money side of things. He was as devastated as everyone else when, you know –’

But my lovely dad’s innocence clearly bored Daniel, who just held out his hands and said, ‘No need for a “you know” there. Do you see? Wasted words.’

Suddenly, we heard a scream from the polo field. Daniel stopped.

‘Oh god, what’s happened over there?’ he said.

I looked across the field, quite relieved at the change of subject, to where the noise of stick cracking ball had been replaced by high-pitched shouting.

‘Jesus, Coco! You’re insane!’ Emmeline was covering her eye with her hand.

‘That was so not my fault.’ Coco scowled. ‘You cut right across me.’

Emmeline swore, her expression contorted in pain. ‘My face, Coco. How could you smack me in the face and it not be your fault?’

The teacher blew her whistle and motioned for a halt in play. She shouted something to Coco, which was greeted with a slit-eyed pout, while gesturing for Emmeline to leave the field as she corralled the others.

Daniel jogged over. ‘Jesus Christ, look at your face,’ he said as he helped Emmeline slide down from her pony and took the reins. She had tentatively withdrawn her hand from the injury. As one of the grooms came over to take the pony and Daniel led Emmeline to the clubhouse chairs, he shouted back to where I was standing: ‘Norah, do you reckon you could get some ice?’

‘Erm, OK,’ I said, head filled with questions that clearly weren’t appropriate to ask as Emmeline winced through pain and tears. Like, did he mean from the kitchens? Would they wait here or were they going to follow me? As I half jogged back to the main building I found myself quite pleased to be assisting. There was a flutter of pleasure at having some useful connection to the water-haired Emmeline, especially in defiance of Coco.

But by the time I’d located the kitchens in the maze of corridors, battled with a reluctant dinner lady for a bag of ice and then navigated my way back to the field, out of breath, the whole polo landscape had changed. I stopped up short, panting to get my breath back. It was like nothing had happened, and the drama was over. Grooms were walking the ponies off the pitch, the girls were sitting on benches out the front of the clubhouse, pulling off their boots, raking back sweaty hair, chatting, laughing.

Rollo and Ezra had appeared along with their grinning sidekick Freddie, all of them mud-splattered from rugby. Ezra leaned against the wall, hunched over his phone. Rollo sat on the bench beside Daniel, long legs splayed out in front of him, lazily throwing and catching a rugby ball with Freddie who didn’t seem like the kind of person ever able to sit still. The ice dripped through the holes in the bottom of the plastic bag as I watched, frozen, too intimidated by the presence of the whole gang to step forward.

Coco was inspecting the bruise, lifting Emmeline’s chin to the light with her finger so she could get a better view of the purpling creation blossoming over Emmeline’s right eye. ‘I think you should be thanking me,’ she drawled. ‘It looks amazing. And your mum’s going to hate it.’

Emmeline pulled her head out of Coco’s grasp. ‘It really bloody hurts.’

‘Don’t be a baby,’ Coco said with a laugh.

The boys sniggered.

The icy water dripped to the concrete floor. I’d expected to return to Emmeline and Daniel alone, and for the injury to be more serious, more in need of ice. But right now that wasn’t the case at all, making a mockery of my keenness and effort.

I was on the verge of quietly tiptoeing away when Daniel saw me. ‘Emmeline, your ice,’ he said, gesturing in my direction.

I blushed as everyone turned to look.

Emmeline frowned, clearly surprised. ‘Thanks,’ she said, walking over and taking the bag. ‘That’s really kind.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, wanting the moment over, feeling in their eyes like a lackey or a desperate hanger-on.

Emmeline reached into the plastic bag and took a couple of pieces of ice out, rubbing the cubes straight on to her face with a wince.

‘Jesus, Em, not like that.’ Coco stalked over and snatched the bag. She nudged Emmeline on to the bench and, tipping some water from Rollo’s water bottle on to a spare T-shirt, she heaped a handful of ice on to the cloth and wrapped it up to make a compress. They had their backs to me. ‘It smells like Ezra,’ said Emmeline.

Ezra glanced up from his phone. ‘Hey that’s my T-shirt.’

Coco said something that made Emmeline giggle. Ezra held his hands wide, aghast at the audacity of his T-shirt being used in such a way. Verity sashayed over to laugh at how silly Emmeline looked with the T-shirt on her face, while Daniel grinned as he sucked on an unused cube.

I was dismissed simply by their lack of acknowledgement. I had never felt so firmly at the bottom of the pecking order.

As I passed the stables and the grooms working on the polo ponies’ gleaming coats, I had to laugh. Not only did I come from a school where the idea of playing polo was laughable, I came from a school where the social structure was flat. There was no hierarchy; we all just sort of got on. Everyone was kind of friends with everyone because we had to be. We knew each other too well, each other’s families too well. We might not have been crazy about monosyllabic Amy Snyder and her weird boyfriend Jez who built robots in his basement, but we still said hi to them and their friends if they were in the Mulberry café because sometimes they were pretty funny to be around, and at the end of term Amy could be counted on to host a party on the wasteland at the back of her dad’s used-car dealership. It wasn’t the most glamorous of settings, but it was isolated and backed on to the river. They’d tied a rope swing to the remains of a broken bridge where you could plunge right out almost to the centre of the freezing water. Jez had built a barbecue out of an old oil drum and Amy’s dad turned a blind eye to the bike jumps we built, the bonfires and the music. We just all existed, together.

I could hear the sound of Coco’s laughter as I walked back through the little manicured courtyard, and had to fight the urge to turn round and watch them all strolling back to the main building. As a gang, they had a magnetism that made the other people furtively glance up or outright stare, jog over with a beaming grin or just be happy to follow in their wake.

My dad’s words from the previous evening, as our boat had spluttered down the Thames to its new fancy mooring, were playing like a mantra in my head. ‘Don’t worry, this won’t be forever.’ I had stood next to him as he steered the boat down river. Ahead of us lay a string of bridges: Barnes, Hammersmith, Putney. We ticked them off one by one. The water was darker there, meaner. Tidal. Ready to sweep us out to sea if we weren’t careful. Before that day our boat had never moved. It had lived quite happily in the silt and sludge on the banks of Mulberry Island, by a patch of weeds we called a garden with terracotta pots spilling with gnarled geraniums and dandelions. In among the flowers we put all the old knickknacks we fished out of the river, anything from dolls’ heads to dinosaurs, flashing roadwork lights, plastic pug dogs and round red floats. Once we’d even scooped up an urn of someone’s ashes, but we threw it straight back in again. But now there were no more willow trees and bramble-covered verges, just building after building blocking out the sky. Wandsworth, Battersea Bridge, Albert Bridge. The river banks were traffic now, cranes, adverts, restaurants, penthouses with wraparound views, and lights. Everywhere there were lights. And wealth. My dad had slung his arm over my shoulder as I stared back from where we had come and whispered with a crinkly-eyed smile, ‘Before you know it, Norah, we’ll be turning round and going back the other way. Fingers crossed the old boat can make it.’

As I walked back into the overbearing ornateness of the Chelsea High building, I wanted to go back right now. It was hard being invisible. It was hard being always on the defensive and trying to act like you didn’t care. It was hard having no phone, no contact with the outside world. And however much I pretended it wasn’t, it was hard suddenly finding yourself on the lowest rung on the ladder, hating yourself for wondering desperately what the view was like right up there at the top.

CHAPTER FOUR

When I got home to the boat my dad was hovering by the front door, clearly waiting for me to arrive. Odd. He was usually far too engrossed in something else to realise it was that time of day already. He jogged out on deck to greet me, still in his yellow shirt but now wearing his jeans, taking the weight of my bike as I hauled it up the gangplank steps. He seemed a bit jittery. Maybe excited that I was home. After all, it had been a day of lawyers and trial preparation.

‘Good day?’ he asked, arm outstretched to give me a hug. Grinning and without pausing for an answer he added, ‘Bet it was great, wasn’t it? Bet you really enjoyed it.’

‘It was OK,’ I said, slightly wary of his enthusiasm. I wondered if he was being deliberately upbeat.

‘Good, good,’ he said, brushing a bit of lint off my shoulder and tucking my hair behind my ear. ‘Good stuff.’

I flicked my hair back to exactly where it was. ‘What are you doing?’ I said.

‘Nothing, nothing. Can’t have you looking less than perfect, that’s all.’

I frowned. I always looked less than perfect. My dad had moved on to neatening up the pots of geraniums on our deck, dead-heading as he waited for me to lock my bike to the guardrail. I remembered what I had been meaning to ask him since my run-in with Mr Watts that morning. ‘Dad, did you know someone called Watts when you went to school?’

‘Sorry?’ He seemed more focused on ushering me inside than listening.

‘Watts?’ I repeated.

‘What?’

‘No, a person. Watts!’ I laughed, bashing him on the shoulder.

He sniggered at his own mistake, then ran his hand through his hair, thinking. ‘Oh, Wattsy. Oh god, we had some fun with Wattsy,’ he said, then made a guilty face. ‘Maybe too much fun. Not my finest hour. Probably a bit brutal. Don’t tell me he’s there?’

I raised a brow. ‘He teaches me Maths.’

My dad made a face. ‘Sorry, kid.’ He held the door wide for me and then, with his previous nervy distraction, said, ‘Come on, in we go.’

As you walk down the steps into our boat you can see straight through into the kitchen with its log furnace and island unit of colourful tiles. Pots and pans hang from a rack on the ceiling along with a big plait of garlic. The lounge area is in front of the kitchen, but shielded from the front door by a bookcase to make it cosy.

My mum was standing by the kitchen counter, watching from a distance as I came down the narrow entrance corridor. The moment I saw her, I knew something wasn’t right. She had changed her clothes. She looked stark in a black sweater and skinny jeans. She had simple black sandals on and her make-up was flawless. I’d never seen my mum without bright red lips unless it was very early in the morning, and even then she was usually up and ready before me. But she didn’t usually look quite as painted as she did right now, with flicks of blue eyeliner and perfectly blended sweeps of blush. I frowned. It was like she was armoured up.

I chucked my bag into the little cupboard by the door where we kept our shoes. There was a different smell on the boat. Heavy and thick. It was hard to tell if it was nice or not, like walking into a florist.

‘Norah, honey, guess who’s here to see us?’ My dad said, hand on my shoulder, steering me round the bookcase. He was sweating slightly; I could see the beads on his brow.

As I walked into the lounge, two people stood up from the sofa. Two beige people. Like two butter toffees.

‘It’s Granny and Grandpa!’ my dad said, as if we holidayed with them every year.

My eyes widened, not quite sure what to do. All I’d wanted was to collapse in front of the TV with a bowl of Honey Monster Puffs. I swallowed, forcing my mouth into a semblance of a smile.

‘Hi,’ I said.

Now one of the toffees was hugging me in her overpowering flower-smell hug, her powdery cheek up against mine.

‘Oh, my darling,’ she said, almost breathless.

The other toffee had his hand out for me to shake. Rough and cool and deep-grooved. ‘Norah,’ he said, as if he wasn’t quite sure of my name. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘You too, Sir,’ I said, a hangover from school.

The old man laughed, adjusting his chequered tie. ‘No need for sir.’

They looked so out of place among our things. Their neatness made our comfy old sofa with its patterned throws knitted by my mum seem painfully shabby.

My dad laughed, awkward and on edge. ‘Tea?’ he said. ‘Let’s have tea.’

I sat down on the arm of the comfy chair in the corner by the sofa, watching as my dad nervously shuffled about in the kitchen. This wasn’t the dad I knew. The one who sang in the Mulberry Island band while strumming his banjo. Who jumped up on the open-mic comedy nights and brought the house down with his off-the-cuff one-man show. Who once lazed on a frayed sunlounger and recounted the story of the time he almost made it big in the movies. ‘I was this close, Norah, this close to getting the main part,’ he had said, his fingers a millimetre apart, staring up at the clouds. ‘The movie was going to be the next Laurel and Hardy; it was going to be massive. It had big studio backing. Big buzz. Big everything. Name-in-lights stuff. I would have been a star, Norah. It was the dream. It was my bloody dream. Course then the director walked and the whole thing collapsed like a stack of cards. It was all over like that.’ He had swiped his finger across his neck. ‘One minute I was gonna be as famous as – who’s the most famous person you know?’ He had lain clicking his fingers, thinking, and when I didn’t answer quick enough he’d said, ‘More famous than that person. I was going to be the most famous actor in the world and the next minute I was flat in the dirt.’ Then, as if the memory of that lost chance of stardom was too painful, he had jumped up and slipped straight into a character and we had played the double-act game we always played. We were Daddy Warbucks and Annie. ET and Elliott. Marvelling at our own theatrical skill.

I know you’re not meant to have a favourite parent. And I don’t, not really. But if I had to be stuck on a desert island with one of them, it would be my dad every time.

‘And we’re hoping we might see you a little more regularly,’ my grandfather was saying, reaching forward for a gingernut that my dad had put on a plate. Never in my life had I seen a biscuit on a plate on this boat. More often they were demolished straight from the pack as soon as they were opened.

Everyone was looking at me. I was flitting in and out of paying attention.

‘Yes,’ I said, which seemed to appease most people, except my mother who pursed her red lips together where she stood glued to the edge of the kitchen counter, wiping down the surface that was clearly already clean.

‘We thought –’ My grandmother was looking at my grandfather, her white hair swept back in flouncy waves, her eyes darting uncertainly behind pale pink wire spectacles. ‘Every Sunday.’

‘Don’t do this,’ Mum said, chucking the cleaning cloth into the sink.

My dad shifted on the spindly wooden chair he’d brought over from the kitchen table to perch on, proffering the biscuits as a distraction.

‘Do what exactly, Lois?’ my grandfather said.

My mum screwed up the top of the gingernut packet my dad had left on the counter and put it in the biscuit tin, clearly annoyed. ‘Regiment everything.’

My grandfather scoffed.

I focused on the biscuit I was nibbling as awkwardness radiated through the air.

‘You can spend time together,’ my mum went on, as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘But don’t timetable it. That’s not how we work.’

The old man raised his bushy grey brows and sat back. The sofa was squashier and deeper than it appeared, and he flopped further into it that he was expecting.

Some grumbling ensued while my grandmother propped his back up with more cushions, and I tried really hard not to snigger. My dad was making big eyes at my mum to make her say something conciliatory. She shook her head and carried on tidying up the kitchen.

After a few seconds of awkward mutterings all round, my mum finally said, ‘OK, we can try for Sundays.’ She put the milk back in the fridge. ‘Just let’s not set it in stone.’

My dad clapped his hands as if that was that sorted. The toffees looked at each other, dubious as to whether they’d had a defeat or victory. But my grandfather nodded, pulling the sleeves of his shirt down so the cuffs edged neatly out of his jacket, making up for the momentary lack of order.

My grandmother edged forward on her seat and, smiling at me like I was five, said, ‘And how was school, Norah? We’re so delighted that you’re following in the family footsteps at Chelsea High. You know, not a single generation has missed out since it was founded in the seventeenth century.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ I said, trying to mirror her enthusiasm.

‘Did you enjoy your first day?’ she asked, her hands clasped together so I could see all the diamonds dazzling on her long, thin fingers.

My mouth stretched into a polite smile as I pondered the question. How was school? Mean. Rich. Unreal. I thought of the polo and evil Mr Watts. Then I remembered the look on Ezra’s face at my ugly, chewed biro and laughed slightly when I said, ‘It was fine.’

My grandparents shared a look.

‘Did something funny happen?’ my grandmother said, leaning in, keen for the joke, but also unsure.

‘No,’ I said. Looking her straight in the wrinkly eye. Like hell they would be included by me. They weren’t having that as well as my Sundays, my dad’s weak acquiescence and my mum’s bad temper. ‘Nothing at all.’

*

My bedroom has always been my favourite room on the boat. It’s on the second floor, along from my parents’ bedroom, and it’s tiny – the exact size of a single bed – but magical. Like living in a cocoon. All the walls are wood-clad and bare except for a couple of shelves cluttered with my favourite knickknacks. My clothes are all folded in a cupboard under the bed. But the best thing is the giant window at the head of my bed that stretches across the entire wall, so as I’m falling to sleep I can stare out at the water and the stars. My parents’ room is much bigger, but I wouldn’t swap mine for the world.

In bed that night, however, I wasn’t looking out at anything. Instead, I was sitting at the other end of my bed with my head pressed up against the wall, listening to my parents rowing under their breath.

‘They’re paying all that money, Lois. For the lawyers, the school, this mooring. It’s fair enough that they expect something in return,’ said my dad, voice hushed and emphatic.

I thought of my grandmother’s strained smile as she sipped her tea, her pearls and her neat gold-buckled shoes, and I thought: This is your fault. Both of you, I added, throwing in the grandfather as well: his beige jacket, his brown striped shirt and navy-checked tie with the crest of some club or other embroidered in the centre. They were the reason we’d had to up-sticks and re-moor. They had paid for this new berth, among the best in London apparently, but what good was that when out of my bedroom window, where once I had seen nothing but blue sky, the view was now of a sleek minimalist grey barge where a woman in a bright pink polo shirt was always vacuuming? It was their money paying for the flashy lawyer that we didn’t really need, but they’d put their collective foot down. The family name had been dragged through the mud enough. I had heard my dad mimic my grandfather when he thought I wasn’t listening, ‘By god, son, I sit in the House of Lords.’ And now they were responsible for my parents – who never argued – arguing.

My mum sighed softly. ‘I don’t want them having Norah. I don’t want their influence in her life.’

‘I know, I know. But what other choice do we have. Your parents?’ Dad said, tone almost mocking.

My mum made a noise somewhere between a scoff and sigh. I’d Googled her family, after everything had come out about my dad. Under normal circumstances I’d have asked her outright, but everyone was too distracted, too brittle and wound up. She’d always said she’d never got on that well with them, that they lived in Australia and called once in a blue moon – always when I was at school. They weren’t big on family, she’d said. According to Google, however, their last address was a super-yacht in Cannes. There was a grainy newspaper shot of a woman who looked remarkably like my mum, just fractionally older: face taut, lips plumped, lounging on deck in a gold swimsuit. She had a cocktail in one hand and with her other was snapping an angry reciprocal photo of the paparazzi stalking her. I had just glimpsed the headline, ‘Camilla Wentworth celebrates fifth divorce in style!’ when the whole messaging debacle kicked off and my mum confiscated my phone. Further investigation was on my mental to-do list for the future. I wasn’t sure I needed any more surprises about my extended family at the moment.

Through my bedroom wall on the boat, I heard my mum sit up and take a sip of water then put the glass back down. ‘I just hate being in debt to them, Bill. I hate it. I wish I’d never let you say yes to those films. I think about it, lying here, all the time. Why didn’t I read the contract?’

‘And what would you have done?’ my dad said, his voice a little lighter, laced with humour suddenly. ‘What would you have spotted?’

‘Nothing,’ she said after a moment, admitting defeat.

I listened, chewing my lip. It was unfair to blame my grandparents. Without them we would have nothing right now. It was just my mum and dad were so endearingly kind and trusting that I didn’t want them to have to go through any of this. I didn’t want to see weakness in what I had always seen as their greatest strength.

‘We’re useless. The pair of us,’ my mum sighed.

‘Useless, but I love you,’ my dad replied with a laugh.

There was a pause, I held my breath. Then I heard her laugh too, and allowed myself to exhale. To relax. I snuggled into my blanket, safe in the knowledge that barring any boat- related emergencies (which weren’t out of the question in houseboat living), if they were laughing, then for the next nine hours everything would be OK.

CHAPTER FIVE

By Friday I had a handle on the route to Chelsea High at least, which in retrospect was achingly simple. I’d even found a bike rack that always had a space, tucked away down a side street just before the main school entrance next to a tiny café called Sorrentos, the type of place that’s so old-fashioned it’s a surprise it hasn’t shut down. The outside wall was all crazy paving with the name Sorrentos written in white calligraphy on the window. A neon sign jutted out with the word restaurant written in green above a striped awning smattered with pigeon poo.

For the first time, today I was early for school. To my surprise I saw Coco and everyone clustered together with cups of tea in Sorrentos’ window. I’d have expected to see them somewhere flashier, like La Serre on the corner with its Art Deco train station lights, white tablecloths and snooty waiters. But, as a tribe, they were hard to predict. Obviously this was them slumming it, ironically huddled into ripped green and white lino booths with fake flowers on the table, Freddie munching on a grilled-cheese sandwich with strings of mozzarella falling from his lips. Coco was holding court, fingernails tapping on a can of Diet Coke as she recounted some story. Verity was doing an asymmetric French plait in her hair as she listened. Emmeline and Daniel were squeezed an adjacent booth with a few other people I vaguely recognised.

Overnight, the bruise over Emmeline’s eye had morphed into a giant purple swirl, a filigree tattoo that she seemed pretty proud of, hair tied back tight to show it off in its grotesque majesty. Daniel was sitting on the end of the bench seat, elbows on his knees, catching up with Ezra while Rollo stood behind them, really laughing at something someone was saying on the phone. Emmeline was reading, but shut the book to listen and smirk at something Coco was shushing the group to say.

I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help it. I’d never locked up my bike so slowly. Coco was toxic, but her jokes were still funny. I couldn’t help wanting in.

It was lonely at the moment being me. I’d never been lonely before. There had always been something fun to do, someone to talk to. Bands playing at The Mulberry pub where my dad played banjo and I was roped in on the drums when Old Percy couldn’t make it. Sometimes my mum would sing some cool jazz with her wafty skirt and flowing hair, me and Jess and the others watching on the deep leather sofas with Diet Cokes. In the early summer we all pitched in to help with the mulberry picking, the big purple fruits staining our fingers and lips. There was always a massive party after the harvest, when lovely Mrs Jackson would make mulberry and coconut pies that we ate that evening by the river with festooned lights twinkling between the branches. Summer days were spent fishing, rowing, canoeing. The river raft race had become an annual event, and everyone competed in teams on their badly botched-together rafts. There was a charity bingo night (funnier than it sounds), and Theatre Club every Wednesday run by my dad and Wilmot Heath an old daytime soap actor. They were a hilarious double-act. Wilmot had me and all my drama friends in hysterics with his stories of soap-opera life, but he gave amazing lessons in the craft, as did my dad. We hung off their every word. I really missed those evenings, in the shabby room above the pub with plastic chandeliers, everyone messing about, practising, improvising, working till long after the session was meant to end. Wilmot had invested a lot of money with my dad, and he’d had a part in our first film. I wouldn’t be welcome in his class any more.

I missed my old school with my actual friends – people who, even if I’d had a phone, I was too nervous to contact. I’d been burned once and I couldn’t face it again. I missed cooking with my mum. TV with my dad. Building things, fixing things. My dad always on to the next surefire way to make money. The schemes: the coffee van, getting up at five a.m. to stand outside the station in the rain; the boat-building business; the window cleaning. The new app. Somehow everyone on the island got addicted to this dreadful game that he’d paid a Computer Science undergrad to create, everyone online competing with each other, all supporting. I missed my home.

I glanced at them all in Sorrentos again, thinking how my old friends would be doing this very thing in the Mulberry café, but instead of grilled cheese they’d be eating salt- smattered pretzels and cinnamon buns made by the old German owner, Hans. Or, as the weather was still good, they might be walking as they ate, to sit by the river. Jess would be out in her canoe. I wondered who remembered to buy her a raspberry cinnamon bun now that I wasn’t there.

I wouldn’t know. I had zero access. My dad’s phone had been taken by the police and my mum didn’t believe in them. I’d tried to log on to Instagram in the school library to discover social media was banned from the entire network, so I’d sent Jess a quick email instead – except when it came to writing it, everything seemed either too important or too banal to ask about over email, so I’d ended up just telling her a couple of stupid things about life at Chelsea High. As I was about to log off, I’d Googled the trial, then shut it down immediately. The words in black and white were making it all too real, too terrifying.

The court case was due to start on Monday. I’d asked my dad what he thought of the lawyer as we ate fruit and cereal that morning from the unusually well-stocked fridge. I assumed the grandparents had left some money.

‘Eye-wateringly dull,’ my dad had said between mouthfuls. ‘Exactly what a good lawyer should be. And to Granny and Grandpa’s delight, he’s ex-Chelsea High stock.’

‘I bet he is,’ my mum said, stabbing viciously at the green flesh of the kiwi fruit she was scooping out with a teaspoon. ‘Norah, I don’t want you becoming a lawyer, do you understand?’

‘I thought parents were meant to push their children to become lawyers and doctors and things like that,’ I said.

My mum shuddered. ‘You can only be a lawyer if it’s for human rights or women, or something similar. Understand? At that school, they’ll try and tell you it’s the only way, but it’s not.’

There was a moment where I knew we were all silently taking in the flash mooring, the lawyer, the school, the fruit, all paid for by my dad’s estranged father. Who himself was a lawyer. It made our way look distinctly like the failed way.

*

All week I’d been looking forward to Friday. Not just because it marked the glorious freedom of the weekend, but because my entire morning’s timetable was Theatre Studies.

At Chelsea High there wasn’t a drama department, there was a whole theatre. One kitted out with a bar and a huge backstage area, a snazzy wireless intercom system, dressing rooms with mirrors with lights, an orchestra pit, full lighting rig, rehearsal rooms – everything.

The theatre on Mulberry Island was Grade-Two listed, our shows sold out, there were write-ups in the paper about us, but we didn’t have a patch on this.

I sat on one of the flipdown seats in the rehearsal room waiting for Chelsea High’s Theatre Studies teacher Mr Benson to arrive. I was aware of Coco and everyone along the row from me, whispering and giggling about something. Mr Benson scurried in five minutes late with a Thermos of coffee. He was a big man with a brown beard and matching thick brown glasses, plus the same black cape and bow tie as Mr Watts and the other masters but with the addition of a green fleece gilet. His demeanour was of someone always trying to catch up, permanently harassed.

He put his coffee down and flipped through some notes. ‘Right,’ he said, scanning what was written down. ‘Who can tell me the first rule of improvisation?’

I knew but I didn’t answer.

He glanced up over his glasses. ‘Anyone?’

There was a shuffling silence.

‘The first rule of improvisation is: Always agree!’ It was my dad’s rule for life.

Mr Benson went on, ‘So you say yes to any question and see where it gets you. Better than that, you say, “Yes, and . . .”’

We were put into groups of three and each group was given a black bag. Inside the bags were different fictional scenarios written on pieces of paper. The objective was to see how long you could sustain a viable improv, saying yes to everything in order to keep the scene rolling.

‘You need to be open, free, engaged and willing,’ Mr Benson called out.

I saw Coco roll her eyes and Verity giggle. I turned my head so I couldn’t see her. I didn’t want her to find it stupid; I didn’t want the experience undercut. This was pretty much what I lived for.

To begin with, I was partnered with Daniel and a girl called Tabitha from my English class, who had Pre-Raphaelite amber curls and peaches-and-cream skin and was so posh I could barely understand a word she said. But she was funny. I liked her. She wrote an ode to Shredded Wheat during our class on Keats’ poetry. Coco barely tolerated her but she was still part of that circle, if only a peripheral member. Tabitha was funny in Improv too, happy to make a fool of herself, to get fully into character, limping across the stage as an old witch with a stick one minute, swaggering back as a surfer dude the next. Daniel, on the other hand, was dreadful. His movements were all wooden, his cheeks flushing red with every word.

‘God, I hate this,’ he said, tipping his head back to the high concrete ceiling.

The room was industrial and dark, like the National Theatre. All modern and brutalist. Not to everyone’s taste, but I loved it. You could smell the coldness of the concrete in the air, the freedom, like an echoing warehouse. You could scream and shout and sling a can of paint around this room and it felt like no one would care.

‘Why do you do it then?’ I asked.

‘Oh, he has to,’ said Tabitha.

‘Why?’ Daniel was standing with his shoulders slumped. He sighed and rolled his eyes my way. ‘Because my mother is Helena Rhys.’

‘The Helena Rhys? Oh my god.’ My hand went to cover my mouth. ‘I had a picture of her on my wall growing up. Manhattan Rooftops is one of my all-time favourite films.’

‘Yes,’ Daniel replied with a theatrical sigh. ‘I’m doomed to a lifetime of drama, in both senses of the word.’

As the improv went on, Mr Benson perused the groups, hands behind his back, pausing to listen, occasionally to laugh. When he got to us he watched silently for a while, then swapped Daniel for Freddie. I rolled my eyes as Freddie jumped into our space, all jazz hands and look-at-me attention- seeking. But the moment Mr Benson gave us a scenario, the goofing around stopped and Freddie got into character in an instant. When Freddie acted, he was nuanced, funny and unexpected, and his face was weirdly elastic. I’d never seen anything like it. He could pull any expression out of the bag. The three of us worked amazingly together.

Then suddenly Mr Benson pulled in Ezra.

My body tensed, my senses on high alert to the fresh washing-powder smell, the frayed cuffs of his sleeves where his hands were in his pockets, the laces of his Nikes, the fade of his black jeans. I couldn’t concentrate with him there, let alone act, too aware of my movements and overly self- conscious. But Ezra and Freddie worked off one another like they’d been doing this a lifetime.

Ezra’s style was cool and confident but reserved, like he was holding back, surveying. That made him funny. As he moved his body visibly relaxed, as if he, like me, was happier in character. It was that which made me loosen up enough to go with it, to slip outside of myself; the realisation that it was irrelevant at that moment who I was in the everyday. This was what I was good at, and there was a space for me to fill.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught Coco trying to see what was going on as Mr Benson stood by us, chuckling. At one point he paused the class to make them watch our intrepid-explorers-in-a-booby-trapped-cave scene. Even Coco and Verity’s sneers couldn’t detract because everyone else was laughing. I loved it. Every second. Every moment I was me but not me.

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