When Dinu and I came into the cafeteria on the first day back at school after the summer holidays, the whole place fell silent again. But just for a moment: then chairs scraped and feet pounded as a bunch of kids rushed towards us. I saw a kind of hunger in their eyes, as if they hoped some of our popularity would rub off on them.
It reminded me of the way the crowds had looked when Alcibiades drove past in his chariot. Or when Socrates did his pelican walk through the forum. I now knew those were the same people who had later urged the death penalty for both men. Hoi polloi. The masses.
I braced myself for fake smiles and demands for selfies, but to my surprise the masses swarmed right on past.
Dinu and I turned to see them mobbing a red-headed girl named Britney in our year.
‘What the chickens?’ Dinu muttered, reaching for a tray.
I shrugged as I grabbed one too. ‘No idea.’
Crina came up to us. She already had the cauliflower-and-broccoli cheese bake on her plate. Our two families had spent most of July in a five-star hotel near my aunt’s small apartment in Vouliagmeni, courtesy of Solomon Daisy and Mannasoft Games. Crina’s sun-lightened hair was almost blonde. She had kept it short and bought a new pair of glasses with gold rims that matched her Greek suntan.
She also had a new pin on the lapel of her blazer: a tiny white enamel butterfly. I had bought it for her on the last day of our hols.
‘What’s going on there?’ I tipped my head towards the mass of admirers.
Crina rolled her eyes. ‘Britney’s older brother was on Love Island. And now everyone wants to know more about him and the girl he hooked up with. I’m afraid you and Dinu are old news.’
I got into the queue for food behind Dinu and said, ‘Looks like our fifteen minutes of fame are over, dude.’
‘Thank God.’
Once the dinner ladies had given me and Dinu beef lasagne and garlic bread, we took our trays and looked for somewhere to sit.
The Mean Girls’ table was full and they were too busy discussing Britney’s brother to notice us. I saw my former girlfriend Kiana sitting next to a Polish boy named Filip, star of the school’s top football team. Their heads were close together and she didn’t even see me go past.
I felt a small pang, but consoled myself with the thought that we didn’t really have that much in common.
Also, she’d only liked me because I was ‘popular’.
Relieved to no longer be the object of everyone’s attention, Dinu and I headed for the back of the cafeteria, looking for a free table.
We chose one by a window.
‘So are you and your gran going to use your millions to get a new flat?’ Dinu put down his tray and pulled out a chair.
‘Probably not.’ I sat across from him. ‘We donated half of it to a charity and Gran put the rest in a trust fund that can only be accessed when I go to university. She won’t even give me an allowance. She says I need to get an after-school job.’
A girl sat down beside me. It was Crina.
‘What’s this?’ I raised an eyebrow in mock surprise. ‘A Year Eight girl sitting with Year Nine geeks?’
‘Why not? We don’t care what people think, do we?’ She reached across me for the shaker of Parmesan cheese. ‘So did Dinu tell you what he did with his millions?’
‘No!’ I looked at my best friend.
Dinu had changed since we got back from Greece. He was starting to get spots and also some fuzz on his upper lip, so he wasn’t quite as pretty as he had been half a year ago.
But there was something else different about him.
Although he didn’t joke as much as he used to, he seemed happier somehow.
He now had a kind of Zen calm.
You might even call it eudaimonia.
‘So, Mr Moneybags,’ I asked him, ‘what did you do with your fortune? Give it away to charity?’
Dinu gave a half-smile. ‘I bought a workshop for my father.’
‘You bought a workshop? What kind of workshop?’
‘Carpentry. When we lived in Romania, he used to make furniture as a hobby. But he never had much time for it. Last week we found a good workshop across the river in Chelsea. Our offer was accepted yesterday.’
‘Papa is a brilliant carpenter.’ Crina was tapping the bottom of the Parmesan, trying to get the cheese to loosen up. ‘He’s going to make bespoke furniture and our mother will do cushions and things. They’ll sell their stuff online, or people can come into the workshop. It’s really nice and bright with a big skylight.’
‘Did the workshop cost the whole ten mil?’ I asked Dinu.
‘Course not. We’re using the rest to buy a nice flat by the river.’
Suddenly I wasn’t hungry any more.