Oh, not you too?’

Next morning in school, Edie notices the grey shadows under my eyes.

‘Lear,’ I say ominously. ‘And I don’t mean the jets.’

Luckily, she believes me. Shakespeare has been known to make me look tragic.

Jenny, on the other hand, is perky. Jenny is wondering where exactly in SoHo Isabelle’s flat might be, and what the movies will be on the plane to New York. Jenny is humming two of the latest songs she’s been learning for the workshop. Jenny is looking like a girl who slept well last night and slightly ODd on the Coco Pops at breakfast.

She gives me another hug.

‘Mum said yes, no problem with me going if Isabelle will be there. Nonie, you’re a total star.’

I smile modestly. If being almost related to people with multiple mega-homes makes me a star, I’m happy to help.

Edie looks across at us and notices what we’re wearing.

‘Oh God. Keep your head down Friday?’ she asks sympathetically.

We nod. We don’t have a uniform at our school, so normally I’d be in some magic, knitted number of Crow’s, my tartan tights and a pair of silver glitter Doc Martens or customised wellies, like Crow’s. Jenny’s developed a nice line in prom dresses and little cardigans, which I cheer up for her with felt flowers and an ever-expanding brooch collection. But today she’s in jeans and a baggy navy-blue jumper, and I’m in a pleated grey skirt, white shirt, black tights and chequerboard Converse, which is about as conservative as I can physically get.

It all started in September, and it’s got gradually worse ever since.

Jenny and I picked French for AS level this year. Then our headmistress had the genius idea of combining with a local state school, Wetherby, for French, so they can use our old teacher, Madame Stanley, who’s a bit of an institution, and we can use their new language labs, which are bristling with the latest kit. Even when the genius idea was announced, we thought it sounded OK. A chance to meet some people our age. Now we’d have more people to go to the movies with, share essay crises with and generally hang out with. Including boys our age. Interesting. Fantastic if you go to an all-girls’ school and have done since you were eleven.

But we didn’t reckon on the Belles.

Annabelle Knechtli arrived at our school at the beginning of the year. At first, she was really excited to have a girl in the class – Jenny – who’d been in a movie and a West End play. Annabelle wants to go into TV when she leaves school and she was keen to hang out with Jenny, find out all about ‘the business’, be her BFF and totally monopolise her on Facebook. But Jenny already had two best friends – me and Edie – so things didn’t really work out. Instead, Annabelle made friends with Maybelle, a girl from Wetherby, in French class and they formed the Belles. The Belles have two missions in life. To be really, really popular, especially with the boys. And to keep Jenny and me ‘in our place’.

I’m still not exactly sure where ‘our place’ is, but I know it involves sitting at the back of the class and trying to avoid joining in conversations or plans, because we’ll get frozen out. Lines like, ‘Shouldn’t you be at a premiere right now?’ and ‘I thought it was fashion week in Rio, DAH-LING,’ tend to do it. To our faces, the Belles are always sort-of polite. But things tend to go wrong in class. Stuff gets lost, or knocked over, or scribbled on, or broken. Our bags often disappear. We try and stay out of things as much as possible, so they’ll forget we’re even there.

I could really do without Keep your head down Friday right now, but I don’t have much choice. We join the other girls doing French and lug our books and files down the road to Wetherby’s state-of-the-art Language Pod.

Jenny and I make our way to the back seats as usual. Jenny immediately gets out a map of New York, hides it in her text book and starts working out how to get to her top three sights, which are the Empire State Building, 42nd Street and Times Square. I do my usual thing, which is staring at the back of the boys’ heads and working out, in order, which ones I’d like to go out with if only I could get close enough to talk to any of them.

At least four of them are delectable. I don’t know what it is about this school, but it breeds gorgeous boys. Gorgeous, unattainable, fascinating boys. All of whom in this class, by definition, speak at least a bit of French. And there’s nothing sexier than listening to a London boy struggle to do a decent French accent. I do find this class distracting. It’s lucky my dad’s French, or this would be yet another subject I’d be scraping through by the skin of my teeth.

I’m just in the process of ranking Ashley (blond hair, dirty jeans and a cheeky way with French vowels) above Liam (black curls, aquamarine eyes, hint of an Irish accent, permanent half-amused smile), when I notice more activity than usual around the Belles. Madame Stanley has, typically, forgotten something and needs to phone someone to bring it over. Meanwhile, the Belles are looking at something on their desk – a magazine, I think – and have got some of the nearest class members to cluster round. There is giggling from the girls and sniggering from the boys. There is also furtive glancing in our direction.

‘Ignore them,’ Jenny mutters under her breath.

I try.

A thought has occurred to me. A truly terrible, horrible thought. I push it to the back of my mind.

Madame Stanley dashes back in, looking stressed.

‘Everyone back to your desks,’ she says briskly. ‘Headphones on.’

As they slowly disperse I catch sight of the magazine. It’s open on a group photo. I recognise the group, even from several desks away. Annabelle catches my eye and grins delightedly.

I only catch one word as they settle back down. It’s almost drowned by sniggering.

‘Kimono.’

‘Ignore them,’ Jenny says more fiercely.

But I can’t. It’s my own fault. I knew it was a mistake at the time. I was just having a floral Japanese moment. Now it’s in a weekly magazine, with commentary by the style queens with the sharpest tongues in the country.

A few faces look round, pityingly. This is the worst bit. One of them is Liam’s. The boy with the black curls and blue, blue eyes. But no half-amused expression this time. In fact, he looks perplexed. Presumably he’s wondering how any girl can wear a kimono in public outside Tokyo. As, at the moment, am I.

I shrug my shoulders back at him and try to imagine impressing him instead, by leaping off a relative’s yacht. But to be honest, I think it would have the same effect. I am destined to perplex boys I like and attract weird and unreliable ones, like Alexander last year – the ballet dancer with the lowest kissing ability in London. Thank God Harry’s getting married, because this is the nearest Mum’s ever going to get to planning a wedding in our family.