‘Come on, Woody.’ Bella starts walking away. ‘I want a cheese croissant and they always run out.’

Ed starts to follow her, then turns back. ‘One other thing,’ he says. ‘You’ve got a bit of mud –’ he points at my cheek ‘– kind of there.’

I rub at my face. ‘Gone?’

He shakes his head. ‘You need to look in a mirror.’

‘It’s a massive splat!’ Bella shouts. ‘Come on, Woody!’

TWENTY-TWO

When I arrive at the Biscuit Club, Mr Curtis has already made our cups of tea and Annie and Jackson are arguing over the biscuits. ‘Mr Curtis actually broke up some Party Rings and put them in the box,’ explains Annie, ‘but I found one that wasn’t broken.’

‘I saw it first,’ says Jackson, trying to snatch it out of her hand. ‘You just moved faster than me.’

‘Seriously?’ says Mr Curtis, staring at them. ‘OK, I say Annie gets the Party Ring, but Jackson, you can have these two really rather large bits of Ginger Nut.’

‘Yes!’ says Annie grinning and sticking her finger up at Jackson. Rose looks aghast and Mr Curtis pretends not to have noticed.

Jackson doesn’t care. He’s already sucking tea out of a Ginger Nut. He shrugs. ‘Actually, they’re all right.’

Today, for some inexplicable reason, Mr Curtis wants us to make origami animals. Jackson and Rose get stuck straight into it and soon cats, giraffes and frogs appear on Jackson’s beanbag.

‘I’m not doing it,’ Annie says to me. ‘It’s pointless … And before you start feeling sorry for me, this has nothing to do with my cerebral palsy.’ She wiggles her fingers in my face. ‘See? These puppies are fine.’

I shrug. ‘It’s better than assembly.’ I pick up a piece of white paper and start making a crane.

Annie watches what I’m doing and can’t resist pointing out the tiny mistakes I make. ‘Fold backwards not forward … That’s a beak, Meg, not a tail!’ When I finish the crane she takes it from me and examines it. ‘Not bad. If you fail in your attempt to become an astronaut, you could make paper animals for a living.’ She takes a piece of brown paper. ‘I suppose I’ll do a bear.’

‘I’m doing a penguin,’ I say. I fold a black square in half, and then in half again. ‘I’m not deluded,’ I say. ‘I know the odds of becoming an astronaut aren’t good – I’ve got more chance of being struck by lightning than becoming an astronaut – but every day I’m improving on those odds.’

She glances up. ‘How do you mean?’

‘If I do some work today that helps me get an A* in maths, then that’s bringing me a tiny bit closer to going to a good university and closer to becoming an astronaut.’

‘And making an origami penguin helps how?’

I press out a miniscule wing. ‘I’m improving my fine motor skills. One day I’ll be on a spacewalk, spinning round the Earth at seventeen thousand miles an hour and trying to tighten a bolt, and I’ll think back to this moment. This penguin –’ I hold the finished model up ‘– is definitely helping me to get to space.’