“Don’t be a dickhead,” Vuyo said when the ball collided with him. I think a look must have passed between them, because suddenly Vuyo looked over at me and waved.

“Sorry!” he yelled.

The day grew progressively worse after the ball incident. Just when I was starting to think the people at BWH weren’t as bad as I’d initially thought, Amber proved me wrong. She’d teased me as I’d walked past her and a group of her friends, Well, I guess she needed bread to go with that soup.

They’d all laughed and I hadn’t understood why until I’d gone to the bathroom and realized my sandwich had smudged across my shirt. Clearly, I’d fallen on top of it when the ball had hit me.

So when the last bell finally rang, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. When I was safely in my car again, I looked back at the school. Strange really, that this brightly colored building with its sunshine-yellow walls and sky-blue roof could be such a dark place. In the 1500s an artist called Hieronymus Bosch painted these disturbingly dark images of hell, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he shouldn’t have included Amber and BWH in his famous oil paintings.

The drive to my brother’s school was a quick one, and very unlike my walk back from school in Joburg. Everything here was so clean. Pristine. Even the streets looked shiny and manicured, like all the people and cars that inhabited them. There was a neatness and orderliness to this place that Joburg didn’t have, and it felt suffocating. But it also felt made up in some way, like a stage set that had been meticulously designed and then professionally lit, just waiting for gorgeous actors to start whatever scene was next. Everything about this place felt like a performance, nothing was out of place, except me.

I pulled up to a traffic light and then choked on an intake of breath when I came face-to-face with my mother staring down at me from a streetlight. Her arms were folded, her hair was shiny and overstyled, and her smile was so big it reminded me of the Cheshire Cat. Another performance.

Palm Luxury Realty. Your luxury specialist.

I pulled off as soon as the light turned green, but it wasn’t long before I saw her again. This time she was standing in front of a massive house. Arms open wide, porcelain-veneered Cheshire smile.

Welcome to your new luxury home.