Alias Read Free Page A

capital S. Or maybe I was. Mum and Dad had slotted straight back into the routine, clearly pleased to be home. I felt the opposite – as though I’d left something behind, which I had. Getting a date in the diary for Lamyah to come to England was all I could think about.
    ‘What about Christmas?’ I said to Dad at breakfast – thirty-six hours after touching down at Gatwick airport. ‘It might even snow!’
    ‘It’s not that simple, Samiya. She’d need a passport and a visa … someone to travel with …’
    ‘We can arrange that, can’t we?’
    Dad’s body language was less than enthusiastic. He disappeared off to work, muttering something about ‘next year’. He could mutter all he liked. If necessary, I’d sort it out myself.
    I got dressed and went to meet the twins, feeling slightly uneasy. Six weeks and three days without a text or a Snapchat was forever …
    For once, only Hugo turned up.
    ‘No Juliette?’
    ‘She’s gone to Oxford Street with Mum. They’re Luddites – I tried to explain that you can buy things on the in-ter-net but …’ He shrugged.
    It was a treat to have him to myself. We sat on the bridge at the bottom of Meadow Walk eating 99s, and I told him all about my trip.
    ‘It’s like going back in time … They have nothing, except fields and cows and —’
    ‘What? No Wi-Fi?’ he said. ‘Inhuman.’
    ‘There’s no such thing as grabbing a snack, like beans on toast. Seriously, we made every meal from scratch and ate in groups of ten or —’
    ‘Sounds like feeding time at the zoo.’
    ‘They do everything by hand.’
    As his comments got more barbed – ‘It sounds very primitive, Samiya’ – my monologue trailed off …
    ‘It’s not a crime to live in a poor country, Hugo.’
    ‘No, but it’s a bore.’ He stood up and chucked the remains of his cone at an unsuspecting duck. ‘Do you want to come to the house?’
    Despite him being so dismissive of the whole finding-my-roots story, I was still keen to see where he lived.
    ‘OK.’
    ‘We’ll get a taxi,’ he said, scrolling down his contacts to T.
    The driver dropped us in front of a modern house, all glass and wood. There was a Range Rover in the drive.
    ‘Is your dad here?’
    ‘No. He’s hardly ever here.’
    The hall had a mirror on one wall that was way taller than either of us. I stopped in front of it. Hugo was wearing skinny jeans, pointed black boots and a stripy T-shirt – sort of French-looking. My outfit was more Primark.
    He winked at me in the mirror and then turned his face and kissed me. It was totally unexpected, and a hundred per cent deliriously brilliant.
    He took my hand and led me upstairs to ‘watch a movie’.
    Hugo’s bedroom had a black squishy sofa, two computers on a glass desk and a bed bigger than my mum and dad’s. He pulled me onto it.
    Close up, he was alarmingly hairless. I looked positively furry in comparison.
    My dad always said boys were only after one thing, never contemplating the idea that girls might be after the same thing. What happened next was down to the both of us.
     
    We were sharing a pillow, mid-chat, when Hugo reached across to get his iPad and held it above our two heads to take a selfie.
    I put my hand in the way – photos always reminded me of how brown I was compared to my lily-white friends – but I was too late.
    ‘We look good,’ he said, showing me. ‘Like a chocolate éclair.’
    He was right – we did look good.
    I went into his en-suite bathroom and tidied myself up. When I came out he was sitting at his desk.
    ‘Mum’ll be home soon,’ he said, swivelling round. ‘Might be better if you’re not here. We have trust issues.’
    I made a quizzical face.
    ‘One of the many downsides of being expelled from school.’
    ‘What did you do?’
    ‘We had a sort of rave …’
    ‘Tell me.’
    He sighed.
    ‘Dad was away and Mum couldn’t be bothered to come and get us, so Juliette and I had to stay in the boarding house for the weekend,