And then another time, when she was a little older, she did exactly what her mother was so scared she would: pretended she was going around to Majabeen’s house to study, whereupon the two of them slipped out to “the library” and rushed down to the common, pooling their money, which was just enough to share candy floss and have one ride. The scrawny boy on the waltzers had a tooth missing, but to them he just looked even more exotic, like a pirate. He came and hung off the back of their car as they screamed their heads off. The evening was dark and the music was incredibly loud, and as she spun around and around, her neck hurting from the pressure, she couldn’t remember feeling more alive, more naughty.

Of course one of the girls from school saw them, and even though she was friendly enough, word got around and someone’s mum ran into her mum at Sainsbury’s and the worst came to the worst and she was grounded for a solid month.

It had been so worth it.

JAKE WAS STANDING there, wearing an open-necked blue shirt that suited his hair. He’d had it trimmed, Lissa noticed, for the occasion. It looked ridiculously sharp and contoured and gelled and she wasn’t crazy about it (fearing retributive ear cutting, Jake had gone into the nearest town, forty miles away, and gotten it done by somebody who hadn’t known him his entire life).

He grinned at her nervously. She looked lovely, her curls bouncing behind her and the smile he never normally saw in the daytime.

They awkwardly attempted a social kiss, which went a little wrong, and Jake would normally have taken her hand but, suddenly shy, he didn’t. Instead, he gallantly offered her his arm, and she took it rather tentatively.

“Okay,” he said. “So what do you want to do first? What’s your favorite thing?”

“I don’t know,” said Lissa. “I’ve never been to a fair before. Except the waltzers. I like the waltzers.”

“You’ve never been?!” He was incredulous. “Were you brought up in a cupboard under the stairs?”

“No,” said Lissa.

He stopped himself suddenly. “Sorry, is it . . . like, a culture thing?”

Lissa gave him a sideways glance. “How would that work, then?”

“I don’t know!” said Jake, lifting his hands in horror in case he’d said the wrong thing.

“No,” said Lissa slowly. “We have fairs in London. My mum just didn’t really approve.”

“Because . . . ?”

Lissa thought about it. “Oh . . . I suppose she was a bit of a snob.”

This was such an out-of-character thing to say that Lissa lifted her hand to her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I can’t believe I just said that about my mum. She’s amazing, a really inspirational character, very . . . all of that.”