Birthday parties became even more difficult affairs after Everleigh came and went, as everyone seemed intent on pretending that Kuki was the only child the Sedgwicks had ever had. And as Kuki entered adolescence, the difficulties of her birthday parties took another turn. She had been a pretty enough child, but whatever beauty she possessed had escaped by her twelfth year, leaving behind an awkward, gangly girl with pimples. Even with these devastating changes, the birthday parade of Kuki in itchy lace still took place, with the guests finding fewer and fewer pleasant things to say in their generous hearts.

Happily for Kuki, her adolescence also brought with it Beatrice Beit-Beauford. On their first day at Eveline High School, Matron Pulvey had singled both girls out for having dirt under their fingernails, and while the other girls had gone to breakfast, she had ordered Kuki and Beatrice Beit-Beauford to remain behind for ten minutes so that they could feel mortified at their lack of cleanliness. The truth was, there was not much dirt under the girls’ fingernails, but Matron Pulvey made it a point at the beginning of every year to single out the two girls who came from the most prominent families. This was her diplomatic way of bringing those girls down a peg or two and creating some equality with the rest of the students. Kuki could not possibly have known any of this as she scrutinised her nails. Never having defied authority, she had done exactly as she was instructed, shivering with embarrassment under her straw hat, her face shamed into the colour of beetroot.

However, Beatrice Beit-Beauford seemed to have other ways of being. She looked at her fingernails and left whatever dirt she found intact before she took Kuki’s hands in hers and examined her fingernails. ‘I don’t know, I think it gives us character. Dirt under the fingernails means we have been up to something … something unexpected … something perhaps even a little shameful – our hands have not been idle. I like that about us. What does Stinkerbockers know, anyway?’ Kuki laughed at the nickname Stinkerbockers. It was a genuine laugh, perhaps the first she had shared with one of her peers. The laughter was definitely her first transgression, and she revelled in it. Beatrice Beit-Beauford smiled at her, her eyes sparkling with delicious mischief, and with that smile transformed into B: B, Kuki’s first and lasting friend. B, her constant companion.

There had been other cherished companions after that, namely Emil Coetzee, who was anything but constant, but who did an exceptionally good job of looking devastatingly handsome in a tuxedo that she had chosen for him, and saying all the right things whenever they went out to parties and events. He could charm when he wanted to, that one, and he did it all in a halting, self-deprecating manner that made you love him all the more.