Beverley

            I don't like this bit. I tell them all the time but no-one listens. I don't like the long walk down the white corridor with the grey wrinkled roof that flaps in the breeze. I like it even less when I get onto the plane. I feel like I can't breathe. Like I want to run out of there but I'm trapped between the bodies of shuffling adults and I have to keep moving until one of the air hostesses sits me in my seat. It's a bit better then. I get to travel in first class and it feels like there's more air in there than in economy. I can just about remember what it was like in economy. Before Mum met Dad.

            The air hostess is kind of orange from the neck up and her arms don't match. Her legs don't match either. I think she has tights that make them look darker. I'd like to hold her hand but I'm too old for that now so I just squeeze my bag tightly and picture Mum's face. I  hope she comes this time. Last time they sent the maid.

            The man in front of me is tutting loudly and then he sits down in the seat next to me. I look down at his arms. They are white and speckled with freckles. They remind me of the plucked goose we used to have at Christmas when we lived in London.

            I want to put on my headphones but the goose man starts talking.

            "Are you going home?" he asks.

            "Kind of."

            I'm not really sure where home is any more. Kuala Lumpur used to be home. When Dad was there. When we all were there and I didn't have to go backwards and forwards on these planes all the time.

            "Where do you live then?" he asks.

            "Penang," I say. "But I go to school in Surrey."

            He says what everyone says.

            "Penang's beautiful. I've had a lot of holidays there with my wife and children. My kids love the beaches."

            "Yeah. It's a good place a holiday, " I say.

            I'm not lying. It would be a good place for a holiday - for his white freckled children from the UK. His children would be allowed to play on the sand and in the sea. Not like me.

            "We don't go on the beach much."

            That shut him up. I kind of want him to ask. but he changes the subject.

            "My kids are at boarding school too," he says. "They love it. At least my eldest does. He loves the sport: cricket, rugby, swimming.

            He hasn't got the hint, about the swimming. Still talking about beaches. I can picture his son. He'll be like Geoff Baldwin, our year captain, Geoff who calls me "four eyes" and "snake skin", who shoved me in the shower with my clothes on.

            "They do lots of sport at my school," I say. And now I do put my headphones on.