Until her father was posted to England, until Mina began attending the Cheltenham Academy, until Cassandra became her friend, Mina had for the most part accepted her mother’s fussing: she loved her mother and could see the protectiveness was well meant. Then, a few weeks before, during the Christmas holidays, when she and her mother were alone in their house, Mina had picked up the telephone extension in her room, intending to call Cassandra. She had interrupted a conversation between her mother and an Englishman whose voice she did not recognize. She was about to replace the receiver, then stopped.

“Darling,” Mina heard her mother say urgently, “darling, I’m desperate to see you too. But I can’t. Mina’s here—we’ll have to wait until next week.”

Mina felt herself go very cold, then very hot; the blood rushed into her neck. She stood there, unable to move, still clutching the receiver. She heard it all, the whispered questions, the reassurances of love, the details that spelled out lies and adultery. Then she replaced the receiver very quietly, went into her bathroom, and was sick. Lies, lies, lies, she thought to herself: the lies made her miserable and furious, and her thoughts tangled and hot. After that she was much more prepared to listen to Cassandra, and much more prepared to emulate her: so what if it involved lying to her mother? Lying didn’t matter now that Mina knew her mother was a cheat.

In the last of the opulent bedrooms, Mina stopped. She had caught sight of her own reflection in a cheval glass; she looked herself up and down with a cold and critical eye: a small, thin girl in a drab school uniform skirt and sweater. How she hated her red hair, her pale complexion, her freckles, her flat chest. I look twelve, Mina thought, and wished for the thousandth time that she resembled Cassandra, who was tall, golden-haired, careless, and daring, Cassandra, whom God had blessed with breasts.

It was still not too late to change her mind, she told herself. It was possible her mother didn’t really have a lover, and the conversation she had overheard was innocent. It was possible that this whole painful past month was some horrible mistake.

But Mina knew that it was not. She felt the tears well behind her eyes, and blinked them back. She let the anger swell and rip. Anger was preferable to tears, because it gave her courage. She thought: I will go, and serve her right. Then she turned and ran back downstairs to the kitchen. There Cassandra was staring with disgust into an empty refrigerator.

“Can you believe that?” she said on an indignant note. “I mean you’d think she’d have left some food. There’s a few tins of baked beans, some bread, and that’s it…” She slammed the door, then, recovering her temper, gave Mina a quick smile.

“Look what I bought,” she said, reaching for a tote bag and tipping its contents onto the table. “Hair gel, makeup, some of those water-transfer tattoos—check them out, Mina, aren’t they great?”