The rest of the morning has been taken up with Harris doing his best to find out as much as he can about next door without actually leaping over into their garden and inviting himself in to help them unpack.

OK, so I have been snooping too. In fact, I have been watching out of the bathroom window for . . . let’s just say ‘a while’, as my brother bounces on the trampoline to get a view over the fence. I should really have gone out ages ago and told him that it’s easier to see from up here but I can’t be bothered. From my higher vantage-point, I can see everything. Not that it has been that riveting. I have watched as the new neighbours (a man and a boy) told the removal men where to put their garden furniture, and I have seen them bring in two bikes, some tools and a lawnmower. So far, so yawn-making.

I wonder if there is a mum as well. If there is, there’s been no sign of her.

The man looks nice enough. He laughs a lot as he chats to the removal men. He is tall, has very short brown hair and is wearing dark jeans and a checked shirt. He has a beard – not one of those dirty great bushy ones, thank goodness. I wonder what it would be like to have a dad with a beard. Would it tickle or scratch when he kissed you goodnight? (Why does my brain come up with such weird thoughts?)

I have to lean close to the window to get a really good view. The glass kept clouding with my breath to start with, so I had to wipe it with my sleeve. The boy is almost as tall as his dad. They carried a ping-pong table in just now. They certainly have a lot of stuff. Our garden has the trampoline and a shed full of junk, that’s all. We don’t even have a table and chairs.

I haven’t seen the boy’s face properly yet because his straight, black hair falls into his eyes. I wonder how old he is. Well, that has put an end to Mum thinking I would be making a new friend, anyway. There is no way I am making friends with a boy.

Wait a minute: Harris has jumped down from the trampoline and is running inside with an excited grin on his face. I can hear his feet drumming on the stairs. He is probably charging up them two at a time as usual.

I’m going to have to stop: he will tell Mum I was writing in the bathroom and then she will find out about this journal and might even read it. NO!

The door crashes open just as I shove my journal under a pile of towels.

‘Hey, watch it!’ I cry, as my little brother barges past me to the loo. He starts using it with no consideration of the fact that I am still in the room. ‘What are you doing?’

Harris looks at me. ‘Having a wee,’ he says.

‘Well next time, don’t do it in front of me!’ I shout. At least he hasn’t asked me what I am doing in here.

Harris pulls a face. Then he says, ‘Guess what? I have been spying on the neighbours. There is a dad and a boy!’

‘I know that,’ I say.

‘Oh.’ He looks disappointed.

I watch him go to the sink to wash his hands and the expression on his face makes me feel a tiny bit sorry that I have stolen his thunder. ‘So. What exactly have you discovered, Midget Spy 003½ ?’ I say, wiggling my eyebrows.

Harris looks up and giggles as he dries his hands. ‘One of them plays the drums,’ he says. ‘I heard them talking about which room they should put them in.’

‘And this is good news how, exactly?’ I ask, as I follow him out of the bathroom and down the stairs.

‘It’s COOL!’ he says, pounding the air with pretend drumsticks.

‘What’s all the noise?’ says Mum, coming out of the kitchen.

‘Harris is excited cos next door have drums,’ I say. ‘As if that is something to celebrate.’

‘Oh, lovely,’ Mum coos. ‘Someone with a bit of creativity – that will liven up the street.’

‘You won’t be saying that when you can’t sleep because they’re playing the drums all night,’ I say.

‘Well, I think it’s fab,’ says Mum.

I cringe. Why does she have to use words like that?

‘Yeah!’ says Harris, punching the air. ‘Maybe they are rock stars.’ He starts jumping up and down, holding his arms as though he’s got a guitar and begins violently strumming the air.

Mum grabs a hairbrush from the shelf by the stairs. ‘Cos we all just wanna be big rock stars!’ she bellows.

‘Give me strength,’ I say.

‘Well, you had better get used to me dressing up in sequins and sashaying along to groovy tunes,’ Mum says. She puts the hairbrush back and gives a twirl in the jumble-sale (sorry, vintage) satin skirt she showed me the other day.

I stare at her. ‘What?’

Mum beams. ‘While you have been spying on the neighbours, I have been Surfing The Net,’ she says.

Uh-oh. I scrutinize Mum’s face for hints of what to expect next. She is grinning and looking pleased with herself. This does not bode well.

‘Have you been shopping online?’ Harris asks. ‘Oh yay! Have you bought us a new TV?’

Mum ruffles his hair. ‘Sorry, little bean,’ she says. ‘I still haven’t won the lottery, so the answer to that will have to be a big fat no.’ She makes the kind of noise they play on quiz shows to indicate that a contestant has lost: ‘Eeeh-uuuhhh!’

Harris whines. ‘Aaaawwwwooo.’

‘What then?’ I ask. ‘Mu-um! Please don’t tell me you’ve been “liking” Aubrey’s posts again?’

Mum shakes her head and says, ‘No, come into the kitchen and I’ll show you . . .’

‘Oh my goodness!’ I cry. ‘You haven’t gone and posted another embarrassing photo of me as a baby so that all my friends can see? Why do you keep doing these things?’ I drop my head into my hands.

It should be illegal for parents to follow their kids online. Mum is always stalking me and posting stupid comments like, ‘What are you doing on here? Thought you were doing your homework? ’ When is she going to learn that she is too old for this kind of thing? I can’t stand it when she uses ‘winky face’. ‘Wrinkly face’ would be more appropriate.

‘You are ruining my life,’ I groan.

‘I hate to break it to you, Skye,’ says Mum. ‘I haven’t done any of those things, because – it’s a funny thing, I know – but my life doesn’t revolve one hundred and ten per cent around you. In fact,’ she says, her eyes glinting, ‘for one night a week from now on, it is going to revolve around me. Which is what I was about to explain until you got all stressy on me.’

I groan. ‘Don’t say “stressy”. No one says “stressy”.’

Mum ignores me. ‘Come on, I want to show you the website,’ she says, beckoning me and Harris into the kitchen.

‘But I want to go back outside and spy on the neighbours,’ says Harris.

‘You won’t have to spy on them for long,’ Mum says over her shoulder. ‘I’m going to invite them round once they’ve had a chance to settle in.’

‘And once you’ve had a chance to change your clothes, I hope,’ I mutter.

If Mum hears me, she doesn’t react. ‘So . . .’ She goes over to the kitchen table where her laptop is open. ‘I have been thinking for a while about getting a new hobby. I was having a look at evening classes—’

‘Not this again!’ I say. ‘The last time you did this we had to listen to you practising Italian all hours of the day and night. And you set the satnav to Italian – you nearly crashed the car when you went straight on instead of turning right and ended up on the pavement outside the cinema.’

Mum laughs. ‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten about that. Che scherzo!’ she adds in a sing-song accent.

‘Well I haven’t forgotten,’ I say. ‘Livvy and Izzy were waiting outside and you almost mowed them down. They have never let me forget it.’

Livvy and Izzy are twins in my year and they are the most evil people I have ever met. Their surname is Vorderman, so Aubrey and I call them the Voldemort Twins, or the VTs for short. They take great delight in the misfortune of others. Particularly in mine.

Mum is rolling her eyes. ‘You need to chillax a bit more, Skye,’ she says.

‘How can I “chillax” and “stop being stressy” when you insist on saying things like “chillax” and “stop being stressy”?’ I say. ‘Don’t forget the time you joined that drawing class and our house was covered in sketches of ugly naked people.’

‘That was Art,’ Mum says. ‘It was a serious life-drawing class where I learned important skills.’

‘All those bottoms were very funny,’ says Harris, snorting with laughter. He wiggles his own (thankfully not naked) bottom to make a point.

‘ANYWAY,’ I cut in, before Mum starts going on about the natural beauty of the human body. ‘Are you going to tell us what crazy idea you have had for a hobby this time?’

Mum smiles. ‘It was this lovely new outfit that gave me the idea,’ she said, twirling around.

‘Why do you keep doing that?’ I ask.

‘Because,’ she says, curtsying, ‘I am going to join a ballroom-dancing class.’ She flings her arm out and gestures to the laptop with a flourish.

There on the screen is a site for a class in the town hall. I read it out loud.

‘“Tuesday evenings, seven till nine. Learn to dance together. HAVE FUN! BE STYLISH! GET FIT! Follow in the footsteps of our professionals and you’ll soon be tangoing your toes off and waltzing your way to weight-loss!” ’

Oh. My. Actual. Life.

Mum has grabbed Harris by the hand and is holding his arm high, spinning him round as though he is a ballerina.

‘This is fun. Can I come dancing with you?’ Harris says, his eyes shining.

‘No, sausage. It’s an evening class for grown-ups,’ Mum says. She lets Harris go and he makes a big deal out of feeling dizzy, staggering around the kitchen and ending up on top of Pongo, who is snoozing in his basket in a patch of sunlight. (Harris likes joining Pongo in his basket. He does it a lot. That’s how weird he is.) Pongo takes this intrusion as a cue for a game: soon the two of them are chasing each other and running rings around the table, knocking the chairs flying as they rocket past.

I feel my stomach go cold as I realize what day it is. ‘Tuesday? Did it say Tuesday?’ I turn my back on Harris and Pongo and confront Mum. ‘It’s Tuesday today. You’re not going tonight, are you? You can’t.’

‘Why not?’ she says.

‘Er, well . . .’ I grasp at the first reason that comes to mind. ‘School starts tomorrow,’ I say.

‘Not for me!’ says Mum.

‘OK, but you should be here for us the night before school starts!’ I say.

Mum’s face falls. She looks a bit like Pongo when he’s been told off for chewing something he shouldn’t have. ‘I guess so,’ she says. ‘But I won’t be late. I can’t miss the first class, Skye.’

For one tiny second I feel my heart go melty at Mum’s wounded-puppy face, but then my brain is flooded with images of her doing the foxtrot in spandex and the rumba in sequins – all with other people her age, who no doubt also love spandex and sequins – and all my meltiness hardens into a hot knot of rage.

‘You so can miss the first class,’ I say. ‘In fact, you can miss the second and the third and every single one after that!’

Mum looks shocked. ‘What has got into you, Skye? What earthly reason have you got for demanding that I give up on this idea? How does it affect you in any way?’

‘I’ll tell you how,’ I say. ‘Number one, because it is hideously embarrassing, and number two, because it is the last night of the holidays and there is no way I am putting up with Milly Bad-Breath Brockweed coming round and “babysitting” and telling me I can’t watch what I want on TV and that I have to go to bed early.’

‘I think ballroom dancing sounds amazing, Mum,’ Harris pipes up, pulling his head out from under Pongo. ‘On that show we like watching they are always saying that dancing keeps the elastic bits in your body all elasticky and means you can do awesome stuff like the splits. I can already do the splits,’ he adds. He then proceeds to demonstrate while sitting on top of Pongo. ‘SEVEN!’ he shouts, copying one of the TV show judges. He flings his arms wide in a triumphant gesture.

The dog wriggles with delight and sniffs Harris’s bottom.

‘Thank you, Harris,’ says Mum with feeling. ‘At least someone believes in me.’ She makes a point of looking at me, her mouth twisting in that way she has when she is trying not to get cross. ‘I can see that you don’t like being left with Milly, and I am sorry about that, but I don’t have anyone else to ask and it will only be once a week. What I can’t understand is how you think I will be embarrassing you, Skye? I am hardly going to cha-cha-cha down the High Street in front of everyone we know.’

‘You say that now,’ I warn her, ‘but one whiff of a Latin beat and you will not be able to stop your hips from swinging. That’s what they say on that dancing show Harris was going on about. I only watched it once with you and it gave me nightmares. Lots of old, wobbling bodies prancing around to what you call “groovy tunes” while their partners try to heave them up into lifts and spin them around—’

‘What a lovely image, Skye,’ Mum snaps. ‘Anyway, I don’t really care what you think – or anyone else, for that matter. I am going to do it. So there.’ Her jaw is set at a very stubborn angle. ‘In any case,’ she adds, ‘I need to meet people my own age.’

I gawp at her like a goldfish who has lost all thirty seconds of its memory. ‘Meet people?’

What does she mean by meet people? She already knows people. She goes to work in an office with ‘people of her own age’. Why does she need to meet any more?

‘Yes,’ says Mum. ‘Meet people. As in “make friends”.’ Her cheeks flush pink as she says this.

Why is she blushing?

Then a huge penny the size of a dinner plate drops into the slot machine of my mind.

Oh no. Oh nononononono. When she says ‘people’, she doesn’t mean male ‘people’, does she? As in men? As in boyfriends?

I cannot bring myself to ask her this.

I really don’t think I want to know the answer.

There is only one person who can help me deal with this.

‘I’m calling Aubrey,’ I say.