A member of staff approaches her and Mum’s eyes focus again. ‘No thank you,’ she says when the woman asks if she needs any help. ‘I’m just waiting for my daughter and her friend.’ Then she comments on how lovely the woman’s earrings are and her face lights up as she tells Mum that she made them herself. Soon enough they’re in a full-blown conversation about jewellery-making, even though Mum knows nothing about it.

Mum’s good at talking to people, being a lawyer. She knows exactly what to say at all times. I’m different. I only know how to express myself in video games. Instead of words, I use spells and incantations.

Once the woman leaves, Mum’s face falls into a frown. She checks her watch and glances anxiously across the foyer, just as Elle taps me on the shoulder. Then Mum sees us. Except she sees Elle before me, because she stands out way more than I do, with her bright red mane like a beacon of light.

‘There you are!’ Mum says, relieved, but I can hear the annoyance in her voice too.

I check the time. Five minutes until the convention tickets are released.

‘I’m just going to the toilet!’ I say. ‘Be back in a second.’

Mum lets out a noise that sounds like a monster is living inside her. She hands me my ticket, barely looking at me now. ‘You’ll have to find your seat alone,’ she warns, like I’m five years old, and not thirteen.

Once Mum and Elle have disappeared inside the hall I run back outside the theatre and into the coffee shop again, where they have Wi-Fi. I log in to my account and watch the countdown.

Two minutes.

‘Did you want a drink?’ the person behind the counter asks.

I stare at him blankly.

‘You’re not really supposed to be in here without a drink,’ he clarifies, a little more sternly.

I hate being told off.

My eyes dart between the coffee-shop guy and the countdown on my phone, and I panic, frozen. I try to open my mouth but it’s like it’s glued shut. I am not good under pressure with strangers. So I just shake my head and run back out on to the street.

Stupid, Saff, I think, feeling embarrassed. If Mum or Elle were here they would have been able to talk to him and say, ‘Yes, just an orange juice please,’ and buy the tickets to the gaming convention, and everything would be fine.

Instead I stand on the street for fifteen minutes, where the Wi-Fi doesn’t work, and there’s hardly any signal. I try to load the page over and over, until all the tickets have sold out and the page shows a big sad smiley face with a pop-up bubble that says ‘Maybe next year’.