‘Get out to the States, get your visa, then bag a part in a film. Dazzle him. He can take you places.’

They wanted an English nanny because the mother, Abby, had family from London. Probably they imagined big baby carriages and strict schedules, not me in my vest top with my copy of More! magazine, borderline addicted to Sunny Delight. But still. One of the many things Jenna had taught me was that people buy what you sell them, if you sell it hard enough. They were American. They wouldn’t know that my version of Englishness was working class, from Watford way.

Jenna had not come to the airport with me, because she claimed the Tube made her too nervous. She’d seen me off at the station in Watford, sucking on one of her habitual fags. ‘Well, that’s you away then.’

‘Yeah.’ I waited for any words of advice, from a mother waving her only child goodbye for six months in a foreign country.

Jenna took another drag. It was August, but she was huddled in her moth-eaten leopard-print coat. Bone-thin, she was always cold. It was seven in the morning, but she’d put on her eyelashes, her hair extensions, her fake nails. Always on. ‘This is your chance, Case. Find a way to stay there. Get a foothold, yeah?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Come here, then.’ She pulled me to her in a brusque hug, and I breathed in her smell of cigarettes and Charlie Silver. My mother. I’d lugged my case across London by myself, found my way to the terminal alone. It had always been just me and Jenna – she was vague about who my dad was – and sometimes it felt more like just me.

An announcement came on over the endless sucking sound of the air on the plane. Unfamiliar American vowels. We were landing. What if no one was there to meet me? What if they didn’t let me into the country? There were horror stories on the nanny geosites I’d surfed at the library, people being turned away at customs for the wrong paperwork. I felt around me for my things – Blistex lip balm, pink hoody, copies of More! and Bliss magazine, their covers plastered with the contestants from Big Brother, a new TV show my friends had suddenly become addicted to. I would not be able to keep up in America, and the sense of distance swept through me, leaving me suddenly desolate. But there was no way back now. I put away my brand-new Nokia, which I wasn’t even sure would work in America. I brushed crumbs off myself and blinked open my gummy eyes. I was here.