‘Vegas Local is a well-known site,’ Sofia said. ‘Don’t sweat – baby brother’s jealous is all.’

As Sofia drove, Harry checked the thirty-second edit of his video on YouTube. It had clocked 3,000 hits in less than an hour and Vegas Local had put the full version up, together with an article on its home page.

ROCK SPRINGS HIGH EXPLOSION

EXCLUSIVE FULL VIDEO: HORRIBLY
BURNT QUARTERBACK DROPPED OFF
STRETCHER BY BUNGLING MEDICS!

Harry pressed play. A compulsory fifteen-second ad for whitening toothpaste made the site seem tacky and the comparison with his dead mum’s award-winning journalism less favourable. And Aunt Kirsten wouldn’t be impressed when she found out that he’d risked arrest, expulsion and the prospect of a shooter, or secondary explosion, just to make a gory clickbait video for a third-rate news site.

‘Have a good one, Harry Potter,’ Rie said cheerfully as he got out of the Audi.

‘Cheers for the ride, Sofia,’ Harry said, then to Matt, ‘Wanna go for a run this evening, when it cools down?’

Matt shook his head. ‘Sorry, pal. Seeing a film with Ciara tonight.’

The Sinatra Executive Apartments was a five-storey complex, made of two horseshoe-shaped blocks with a sun deck and pool in the space between. The woman on reception realised Harry was out of school early, but didn’t care enough to ask why as he walked past and tapped a plastic fob to access the elevator.

Aunt Kirsten jested about the moody teenager Harry had turned into, but the reality of that hit as he opened the apartment door. Fifteen minutes earlier, Harry had been happy about making eight hundred bucks, with a hot chicken taco and the girls heaping praise. Now he felt like dirt.

He worried that Vegas Local was a sleazy website that would never pay the eight hundred bucks. He had mounds of homework and imagined himself spending the night at his desk, while Matt got frisky with Ciara at the Summerlin Regal.

Harry shouted, ‘Anyone home?’

He expected no response and didn’t get one.

Harry’s aunt, Kirsten Channing, had moved to Vegas to open a swanky restaurant inside the newly built Algarve Casino. The food critics had been kind and tables were booked weeks in advance. This meant Kirsten was crushing sales targets and earning big bonuses, but had little time for her nephew and even less for house hunting.

Eight months after emigrating, they were still in a short-stay corporate apartment. It was twice the size of their old place in London. It had floor-to-ceiling windows with electrochromic dimming glass, a jet tub with sixteen modes and a fridge you could fit a car inside.

But it was a place to live, not a home. Harry loathed the bland abstract art and the smell of the cleaning spray used by the housekeeping service. He couldn’t paint his bedroom or put up posters, and the building manager buzzed the intercom when he played music too loud.