Jasmine’s father pushed her bed so that it faced the feature wall. It was papered with a mural of a tropical beach at sunset. She would have preferred something a little simpler, more grown up, but didn’t want to say anything because her parents were so pleased. Jasmine’s mother Lisa helped her make the bed with brilliant white bedding and the Kantha quilt that she had coveted for years. It had been given to the Burgess family by the women from a village in Bangladesh they had visited a few years ago, and Lisa had given it to her daughter to mark her sixteenth birthday. It depicted vibrant parrots on a deep green background, with yellow stitching running all the way through the quilt.

‘Doesn’t this look perfect in here? I hope you look after it, Jazz. This is a one of a kind,’ Lisa said.

‘If you don’t trust me with it then keep it,’ Jasmine said, gripping the edge of the quilt, ready to hold on in case her mother changed her mind and decided to put it back in the cupboard.

‘Of course I trust you,’ Lisa said.

‘Is that everything then?’ Frank asked, tilting his head and looking at the curtain pole over the window, checking it was straight.

‘Yes. Everything is brilliant, now let me get settled please,’ Jasmine said impatiently, desperate for some time alone in her new room.

Her dad came over to ruffle her hair as though she were a child, and she shrugged him off instinctively.

‘Fine. Call if you need us,’ Lisa said as she reluctantly left the room.

Her parents went down the hall to finish their own unpacking.

The house was bigger than their old one, where Jasmine’s room had been a third the size of this one, and they’d had a courtyard rather than a garden. Jasmine had the feeling she was betraying her old self by living on this road, where the snobby kids lived, so she was determined not to become like them.

Jasmine’s bedroom window looked out over the overgrown garden, to where a small, painted brick, chalet-type guest house was tucked into the corner. Frank and Lisa planned to rent it out to fund their trips abroad.

She went down to the kitchen and grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl. They hadn’t had a chance to do a proper shop yet. As Jasmine made her way back to her room, she heard a knock on the front door. She looked in the mirror. She wasn’t properly dressed or showered, and her hair looked a little bedraggled, but no one else was coming down to answer.