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  ‘I liked it better at Jenner Street Primary, Mum.’

  ‘I know, love, but your dad set his heart on you going to Lady Mary Mountbank. It is a really good school. You’ll go on to the Seniors, swan off to university, get a brilliant degree, have a fantastic career, whatever. I don’t want you to end up like me. I’ve never had a proper job. I was just a receptionist at Happy Homes – and I wasn’t even a good receptionist. I was too shy to speak up properly and I kept getting muddled using the telephone switchboard. Your dad called me into his office all set to fire me only I was wearing some silly skimpy top and he got distracted and asked me out on a date instead.’

  ‘Maybe if you weren’t so pretty you’d have simply got the sack. You’d have found some other job and some other man, someone the complete opposite of Dad.’ I tried to imagine him. I saw Sam, as if I had a tiny television set inside each eye. ‘Someone gentle, who listens and lets you do what you want. Someone who never ever shouts. Someone who’s always always always in a good mood.’

  Mum lay still, holding her breath as if I was telling her a fairy story. Then she gave a long sigh.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she said sadly. Then she tickled me under the chin. ‘No, wrong. If I hadn’t married your dad I wouldn’t have had you, babe.’

  ‘But you’d have had another girl. You could have met a dead handsome guy and then I’d maybe be a real beauty.’

  ‘You’re my Beauty now – and we’re going to make you even more beautiful at the hairdresser’s.’

  Mum was trying hard to sound positive. I hoped the hairdresser’s would be totally booked up, maybe with a bride and her mum and six bridesmaids and a flower girl – but they were depressingly empty when we went in the door. They could fit us in with ease.

  My hairdresser was called Becky. She was very blonde and very slim and very pretty, almost as pretty as Skye. I was worried she’d act like Skye too, sniggering and making faces in the mirror to her colleagues as she shampooed my straggly hair and then twisted it into spiral curls, lock by lock. But she was really sweet to me, chatting away as if we were friends. She spent ages on my hair. When she’d finally finished dabbing at it with her styling comb she stood back, smiling.

  ‘There! Don’t you look lovely!’ she said.

  I didn’t look lovely at all. My hair twizzled this way and that in odd thin ringlets. My ears stuck out comically in between the curls. I wanted to hide my head in her wastepaper basket and weep, but she’d tried so hard to please me I politely pretended to be delighted with my new-look corkscrew head.

  Mum had a similar hairstyle but it really did look lovely on her. Her little pale heart-shaped face was framed with a halo of pale gold curls. Skye’s mother was actually right – she really did look like my big sister. When we went round the town shopping lots of men stared at her and a gang of boys all wolf-whistled.

  ‘No one would laugh if you were called Beauty, Mum,’ I said. ‘Hey, let’s swap names. You be Beauty and I’ll be Dilly.’

  ‘Dilly’s a duff name too. Dilys! I suppose my mum thought it was posh. Let’s choose different names. I’ll be . . . mm, what shall I be called? Something dignified and grown up and sensible.’ Mum giggled. ‘All the things I’m not.’ She saw the sign on the front of a shop. ‘How about Claire?’

  ‘OK. I’ll be Sara, after Sara Crewe. Let’s be best friends, Claire.’

  ‘Are we the same age then?’ said Mum.

  ‘No, I’m a couple of years older than you,’ I said firmly. ‘So I get to sort things out for both of us.’

  Mum laughed. ‘Yep, I think you’ll be good at that,’ she said.

  We played the Claire-and-Sara game as we went round the shopping centre looking for a good birthday present for Rhona. She was our friend, but only our second-best friend. We were best friends, and now we’d left college we shared a flat together and we both had fabulous jobs. Claire was a television presenter and Sara was a children’s book illustrator.

  ‘Maybe you’ll work in the same studio as the Rabbit Hutch show and you’ll get to meet Sam and Lily, Claire,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I know Sam already,’ said Mum, acting Claire. ‘Don’t tell, but we’re actually dating.’ She looked at me a little anxiously. ‘Is that OK, Sara, or do you want Sam as your boyfriend?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  ‘Well, perhaps we’ll have to share him,’ said Mum, giggling. ‘I’ll go out with him one week and you can go out with him the next.’

  ‘And I’m going to draw Lily. Yeah, I’m going to make a picture book all about her.’

  ‘Do you think Rhona would like a book as a birthday present?’ said Mum, swapping back to herself.

  ‘I’m not sure what sort of books she likes,’ I said. I thought about it. ‘Do you think she’d like A Little Princess? It’s my absolute favourite book.’

  ‘Then I’m sure she’d like it too.’

  So we bought her a copy in W H Smith’s, and then we went into the actual Claire shop and bought her three slim silver bangles and then we went to New Look and bought her a pink T-shirt with Princess written in silver lettering on the front.

  ‘There, it all goes beautifully together,’ said Mum. ‘She’ll love her presents, Beauty.’

  ‘Do you really think so? They’re more interesting than a stuffed teddy bear, aren’t they? That’s what Lulu and Poo-poo are giving her.’

  ‘She’ll like your presents best, Beauty,’ said Mum. ‘Just you wait and see.’

  Six

  ‘There, you look lovely, Beauty,’ said Mum, giving me little strokes, as if I was Lily.

  ‘No I don’t,’ I said.

  ‘Yes you do, darling, honestly,’ said Mum.

  I dodged round her to get to the long mirror in her bedroom. I knew she was simply saying that to make me feel good – but I still wondered whether somehow she could be right. I looked in the mirror, hoping for a miracle.

  It hadn’t happened. I stared back, a podgy, awkward girl with corkscrew curls, a frilly blue blouse and a white skirt way too tight. I looked at myself until I blurred, because my eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I look a total berk, Mum,’ I said flatly. I stuck out my tongue at my image and waddled about in my black patent shoes, turning myself into a clown.

  ‘Stop it, darling. You look great. Well, maybe the shoes aren’t quite right. They do look a bit clumpy,’ said Mum. ‘We should have got you some lighter party shoes. White, or maybe silver?’

  She suddenly darted to her wardrobe and rummaged at the bottom among her own shoes. She produced a pair of silver dance shoes and waved them triumphantly in the air.

  I stared at her as if she’d gone mad.

  ‘I can’t wear them, Mum. They’re yours! They’ll be much too big.’

  But when I sat down and put them on they very nearly fitted me. I was alarmed at the thought I had feet as big as my mum’s already. They’d be totally enormous by the time I was grown up. I’d have to wear real clown’s boots, those long ones as big as baguettes.

  ‘They look great on you!’ said Mum.

  ‘But they’ve got high heels!’

  ‘They’re not that high. Anyway, it’ll make all the other girls jealous if you’re wearing proper heels,’ said Mum.

  I considered this. ‘OK. So how do you walk in them?’ I said, wobbling to my feet. I took one uncertain step and nearly fell over. ‘The answer is, with great difficulty!’ I said, clutching Mum.

  ‘You’ll be fine, Beauty. You just need to practise,’ said Mum.

  I staggered around the bedroom and out onto the landing. I toured my own bedroom, my bathroom, Mum and Dad’s bathroom, Mum’s dressing room and one of the spare bedrooms. I fell over once and twisted my ankle twice.

  ‘Maybe the heels aren’t such a good idea after all,’ said Mum.

  I begged to keep them on, knowing that none of the other girls had proper high heels, not even Skye.

  Wonderfully, Dad wasn’t back from his golf game when it was time to leave for the party,