Father wants answers – where have I applied? Am I working hard enough? You won’t embarrass me with your failure, will you, Helen? There is no question that I will fail in some way. His attention comes in short, sharp bursts, usually at the Sunday lunch table before he disappears back to London, my mother nibbling silently on the olive in her martini, a cigarette burning to ash between her thin fingers. I’m usually pleased to hear the door slam as he leaves for the week, a break in the atmosphere for a few days. I preferred it last year when he was oblivious to my presence in the house.

I don’t have any answers for him. Well, not the ones he wants to hear. A corporate life fills me with dread. I want to get away from Hamblemere and the confines of Seahaven School, the faces I have known for most of my life, maybe see the world, live a life most ordinary. But that won’t do for our family. We have standards to maintain, a reputation to honour, an inheritance to protect.

The bus rumbles up the sweeping driveway. Bags are grabbed; bodies wrestle into position. Eloise pushes past a group of Year 7s, cuts off their mumbled complaints with one withering glare. We follow, her underlings in tow, as she weaves to the back of the bus and takes up residence in the last row. Steph goes to sit next to her, but she puts a hand on the seat and says, “I don’t think so, Steph. Hels, sit here.”

Steph looks like her feet have been swept out from under her, but moves along as instructed. I sit heavily, already thinking about the revision I have planned for the evening. I have that new Stephen King book waiting for me too.

“What are you doing tonight, Hels?” Eloise asks, pulling a pack of gum from her bag.

Sometimes I think there is witch blood in her, the way she can tell that I’m thinking about something that she would find easy to diminish with the casual toss of a snide comment. Her eyes are piercing blue and she has made an art form out of seeing straight into you and finding that one weak spot that would unravel you like a tangled piece of string if she pulls hard enough.

“Nothing. We have that geography test next week, but I can’t be bothered to revise. Easing myself in gently. Maybe I’ll just watch TV, run a bath and use that new face mask.” I look over my shoulder, out of the window, away from her eyes.

“Ugh, I know what you mean. I’m thinking a face mask tonight too. I can feel a pimple coming and it will be a disaster if it flares up tomorrow,” she says, chewing like a cow.

“There’s that girl, look,” Steph says.