We didn’t need to leave for drama until six thirty so I put the phone on the shelf, went out of the bathroom, and joined Mum on the sofa. She was watching some long boring court case on the news. I tried not to tell her about Vanna. I swallowed hard and tried to keep the secret pushed down. I even put my finger on my lips to keep them locked.

“Good,” Mum said. “He deserves it.”

I had no idea who deserved what, but I nodded.

“I’m making tea. Do you want something to drink?” she asked, turning off the TV.

I murmured, “No, thanks,” through the sides of my mouth, leaving my finger on the middle bit.

“Hot chocolate, maybe?”

I took my finger off. “Why? What’s going on?” (No one offers you hot chocolate unless you’re being rewarded for good schoolwork or something’s going on. And I wasn’t being rewarded for good schoolwork.)

“I want to talk to you.” Mum’s eyes drilled holes in me in that deep I-have-something-to-tell-you way.

Knew it. I did my best Oh-man-this-is-going-to-be-heavy-and-I-wish-I’d-never-sat-here face, but I still said, “Yes, please,” because, let’s face it, hot chocolate is hot chocolate.

“I’ll be back in two minutes. Don’t go anywhere. And don’t turn the TV on.”

Ugh. I was just about to turn the TV on. Instead, I took the magazine from the weekend paper off the coffee table (still there on a Wednesday because they never have time to read it) and flicked through it. When I saw the photos of the models in there, I closed it again grumpily. No one in there looked like me. OK, most Cambodians aren’t tall enough to be runway models but didn’t the world need short models too? Or face models? Or eye models? Or elbow models? Or something?

I threw the magazine on the table. Why did Vanna have to ruin my life by bringing up Cambodia when I was trying my hardest to pretend all that stuff never happened? Until now, I’d been doing a great job of convincing myself that I looked like Liberty Lee. All that Cambodia adoption stuff was so feelingy. I wanted to forget all that, make movies, and live in Hollywood. Easy.

When Mum came back holding my hot chocolate and her tea, she said, “I want to tell you Mrs. Heang’s idea. She’s the lady from the Cambodian restauran—”

I couldn’t help it. Soon as she said that, it just pshewwwwed out of my mouth. “Vanna’s going to Cambodia.”

“She’s what?”

My eyes shot to a bushes outside the window. It was suddenly so interesting I couldn’t take my eyes off it, but I’d done it now. Mum was staring at me. I had to explain.

I tore my eyes from the bushes, and with my head down, I told Mum what Vanna had said on the trampoline, and that she was going next Thursday with her parents, who’d offered to take me too. I quickly added that I didn’t want to go but Vanna was my friend and I felt like I should.

I couldn’t look at my mum. I was sure she was either freaking out or crying. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Mum’s hand reached out for mine. I looked up to see if she was OK. She wasn’t freaking out or crying, which was a major relief.

“Dara,” she said, “it’s only natural that you want to know about your biological parents and where you’re from. If not now, then when you’re teenagers or adults. That pull will probably get stronger and stronger, and you might well do something about it. You might not, of course—it’s different for everyone. But this is part of who you are. Don’t be sorry.”

I looked at the ceiling and stretched my eyes so I wouldn’t cry. (Didn’t work this time.) It must have been hard for her to say those things. Matt and Sarah Palmer were the only parents I’d ever known. They’d traveled thousands of miles to give me a new life. They loved me and they took care of me every single day, and here I was, wondering about the parents I never knew.

“If you want to go to Cambodia with Vanna, that’s a big thing,” Mum continued. “I’ll come with you—I wouldn’t let you go through that alone. We’ll go together—or Dad can go with you, if you’d rather. We couldn’t let the Percys pay for you.”

I wiped my eyes. “But we can’t afford it—”

“Dara,” Mum said, staring at me like she was trying to hypnotize me. “If you want to go, we’ll find the money. I can tutor in the evenings and we’ll cancel the vacation in Wales. It always rains anyway. You wouldn’t be able to go to drama group as well though. It has to be one or the other.”

A lump of guilt stuck in my throat. I took a sip of hot chocolate to push it down. I hated rainy vacations but everyone else in my family loved them—I couldn’t deprive them of that. As much as I wanted to. They loved hiking in raincoats and canoeing in hailstorms and, in the evenings, playing cards as the rain thundered on the roof (while I sat there, wishing I could watch TV and that we were in Hollywood instead, where the sun shone and warm beaches were down the road).

I mumbled, “I don’t want you to do all of that for me. It’s not fair to Felix and Georgia. She already hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you. And there are plenty more vacations ahead. Do you want to go to Cambodia? I’m serious—I’ll go with you.”

I squirmed. “Mum?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you doing all this for me?”

Her head tilted. “What do you mean?”

“Offering to buy plane tickets we can’t afford, paying for drama group—”

Mum frowned. “You’re my daughter, Dara,” she said, matter-of-factly. Like I was asking her what day it was.

Yeah, I wanted to say, but I’m not really. Not really, really, really, deep down in the blooood.

She pulled her cardigan tighter and drank some tea. “I hope you’re not insinuating that because you’re not our biological child, you’re not as important to us. You’re not implying that, are you?”

I didn’t know. Maybe that was what I was feeling. Like they did so much for me and I wasn’t even theirs.

“I sincerely hope you’re not. You know, when we first got married, even before we had Felix, Dad and I wanted to adopt a child. We just knew a member of our family was out there and we wanted to find you. It’s a miracle, really, that we did. You’re one of us—I can’t even explain how strongly we feel that. You might not share the same DNA as us, but that’s irrelevant. You’re part of our souls, Dara. Family isn’t just who you’re related to. Blood is only part of the story.”

My throat was stuck together but I managed to swallow. “What about Georgia?”

“Well, after we found you, we realized we could give another child a home. We had hoped it was Samnang but,” she sighed, “for reasons beyond our control, that didn’t work out. Then we found Georgia. And it was as though all those obstacles were meant to happen so Georgia could come into our lives.”

She blinked an extra-long blink, the way she always did before she cried. “We love both of you so much. But we also know you had a life before you met us and if you want to find out about that, we’re right behind you.”

I blew the air out of my lungs in a slow phhwwwww.

There are times when the words people say are bigger than just words—they’re full of something so intense, you can’t even breathe. Right then, my chest caved in with all the feeling there was in what my mum had just said. Some feelings are so feelingy, they can hardly fit into your body.

Mum put her arm around me and said, “What do you want, Dara?”

I looked down and squeezed my fingertips at the sides of my nails to help me think. Did I want to go to Cambodia? I mean, after talking to Vanna, I sort of did. But it seemed like a rush. I wasn’t sure I was ready. So I said, “If it’s a choice between going to Cambodia and going to drama group, then I want to get better at acting because that’s what I love.”

“OK. If you’re sure.”

“I am, but…” I paused. “I don’t know if there’s any point. I mean, my face is all wrong but it’s more serious than that. I think I’m really bad at acting.”

She laughed. “You? You’re a natural. But if you want to do something well, you need to learn and practice. One of the reasons we adopted you and Georgia was to give you a good life. If this is what you love, Dara, then go for it.”

I smiled. “That’s what I think too.”

“Good.” She rubbed my arm. “You’ve got chocolate around your mouth. Looks like brown lipstick.”

“Brown lipstick is in. I just saw it in that magazine over there that has no Cambodians in it.”

Mum grinned. “They don’t know what they’re missing. Sure you don’t want to go with Vanna?”

I took a huge breath to try and push all the feeling out before it crushed me. “Not yet. One day. But not right now. I want to learn to act. I want to be really good at it. I want a lead role in a play and I’m not going to give up until I get one.”

“That’s my girl,” Mum said, smiling. “You see? Blood is only part of the story. You’re a Palmer through and through. Change out of your uniform; we’re leaving for drama in half an hour.”

I grinned and got up.

Just then, the phone rang but it sounded really quiet. Mum hunted for it everywhere. “Can someone please tell me,” she shouted from upstairs when she finally found it, “what the phone is doing in the bathroom?”