‘Let me think about it. Maybe talk to Mia. In the meantime, you could always see if your new billionaire boss fancies throwing a few thousand our way.’

‘As soon as he’s my actual boss, I’ll demand he open his wallet.’

‘Perfect.’ When my brother spoke again, his voice was softer. ‘Seriously, sis, I hope you smash it. We are really proud of you, you know?’

I sighed. ‘I don’t, especially. But thank you for saying it.’

8

‘Why the change in career?’ I asked, once we were safely on the motorway.

‘Mine?’ Henry said.

‘Well, unless there’s someone hiding on the back seat who’s also recently ditched a high-flying job to work for my parents.’

‘My job wasn’t high-flying.’

‘By that do you mean you didn’t fly in an actual aeroplane? Because you won’t be able to afford a car like this on a teacher’s salary.’

Henry glanced over, and I caught the hint of a smile. Maybe the robot had a sense of humour in there after all.

‘It paid reasonably well, but money isn’t everything.’

‘How about having people respect your work, rather than throwing things about and swearing in your face when you try to help them?’

According to the Fairfax-Armstrong grapevine, Henry had received multiple accolades for his work investigating supermassive black holes.

‘I got bored.’

‘You got bored? Of physics?’

There was that tiny smile again.

‘I was in a meeting listening to my supervisor babbling on about gravitational waves and binary systems, and I suddenly thought, I don’t care. I could spend every day of my life slaving away, trying to find information that might help us come up with a theory about a tiny fragment of time at the start of the universe, and for what? What difference will it make to anyone’s actual life now? So, I decided to start doing something that might help someone. I don’t know anyone who’s made more of a genuine difference than your parents.’

‘Wow.’

‘I know it won’t be easy. It won’t be a case of waltzing in with my noble intentions and seeing all these young people’s lives turned around by the end of term.’

‘I can guarantee it won’t be that.’

‘But there might be one, or two, every now and then, who… I don’t know, realise they can do something they didn’t think they could. Or start to believe they aren’t a hopeless case after all. Or manage to learn that e equals m c squared.’

‘Or master the correct use of apostrophes. Nothing worse than an incorrect use of “you’re” on a toilet wall.’

Henry jerked his head in surprise. ‘How did you know about that?’

I laughed. ‘Everybody knew about your graffiti editing.’

His forehead wrinkled. ‘And I used to wonder why I didn’t have many friends.’

‘That wasn’t the main reason.’