I half expect her to put her hand out and say, ‘How do you do?’ but she doesn’t. She reaches across me for a slice of quiche and I get a whiff of her personal smell: laundry detergent and apples. Her straight black hair falls in a kind of curtain over the side of her face and she hooks it back over her ear. I can’t help noticing that her fingernails are exceptionally neat and clean.

I say nothing, but I follow her to a far table, wondering what people will think. Girls like her and boys like me don’t usually mix, not in our school, anyway. Either she hasn’t noticed or more likely she doesn’t know anyone else. She sits down and arranges her plate and glass and cutlery neatly in front of her and then looks at it all for a couple of seconds as if she’s going to say a little prayer, but she doesn’t. Instead, she fixes me with her piercing dark eyes and says, ‘If you can do that, Malcolm, it is a very special thing. Very special indeed.’

She talks as though every word she says is important and she expects you to listen.

‘Is it …?’ I realise I don’t really know the best way to ask this. ‘Is it a Chinese thing?’

She screws her eyes up. ‘A Chinese thing?’

‘It … it’s just, you know, you look … I thought … maybe your family, you know …’ Have I offended her? It’s difficult to tell. Susan relaxes her eyes and smiles.

‘No. Not Chinese, Malcolm. Tibetan. Although my mummy is Chinese, my daddy is from Tibet. And so is Mola, whom you met. That is a Tibetan word for grandmother.’

I nod wisely, as though I had even heard of Tibet, and at the same time I’m thinking mummy and daddy? Who says that? She’s going to have to lose that if she’s to survive in Marden Middle School.

‘Do you know Tibet?’ asks Susan, as though she’s making adult ‘small talk’. She takes a tiny bite of quiche.

‘What? Oh! Ah, Tibet? Aye, of course. It’s over, erm … near, you know, that place …’

Susan lets me fumble for words, deliberately I think. Then she says, ‘It is all right. Lots of people do not know it.’

I nod and frown like I’m taking all this in. ‘Pretty small, is it?’

‘About five times the size of the UK.’ She lets this sink in. ‘It lies between Nepal and China. You have probably heard of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain. Half of it is in Tibet.’

‘Half of it?’

‘Yes. The border between Nepal and Tibet runs across the summit of Everest, although we call it Chomolungma – the Mother Goddess of the World. Tibet is part of China now, but it did not use to be. My daddy thinks … oh, never mind.’