‘This whole story is farcical,’ said Eliot.

  ‘What could his motive possibly be?’ said Dr Msamati.

  Friday looked at Eliot, trying to figure this out for herself. ‘Motive is always the hardest part of any crime to understand. Sometimes it’s clear what the motive is, but it’s unfathomable why they have that motive. You can, however, piece it together step-by-step with deductive reasoning.’

  Eliot looked at his watch. ‘Is this going to cut into my session time? I had to miss third period geography.’

  ‘Really? How interesting,’ said Friday. ‘Let’s set that aside for a moment though.’ She turned to Dr Msamati. ‘Let’s ask ourselves – what do we know? One, Eliot has been behaving badly. Two, he was sent to you to address this. Three, students are sent to counsellors to see if there is a medical or emotional reason for their behaviour. So why would Eliot want to avoid this process?’ She turned and looked at Eliot. ‘Because there is no medical or emotional reason for his behaviour. He doesn’t have a learning disability, he isn’t going through difficulties at home that he needs to talk through, he is just a horrible person. It goes against human nature to believe that a person can be horrible right through to the core. But some people are. Eliot doesn’t want to be psycho-analysed and found out. He doesn’t want help. He doesn’t want to behave better. He’d rather go to geography.’

  ‘You can’t prove any of this,’ said Eliot. ‘It’s an outlandish accusation.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Friday. ‘Certainly not given Dr Msamati’s irrational aversion to urine. But maybe I don’t need to. Really, this can all be resolved by Dr Msamati sticking to yoghurt and cereal for breakfast and brewing her own coffee in her room.’

  The school bell rang. They were all reminded of the time.

  ‘Our hour is up,’ observed Friday, making her way to the door.

  ‘We’ll have to reschedule as we spent barely any time discussing your problems,’ said Dr Msamati.

  ‘It’s not my fault if you slept through that part,’ said Friday. ‘I’ve got to get back to my work. I’ve got a passage describing the Trojan Horse that’s not going to translate itself. Well, actually, it probably would with Google translate. But it’s not going to put itself into rhyming verse.’

  Friday was sitting on her bed, watching Melanie pack. It wasn’t a very involved process. Melanie simply opened her suitcase and emptied her dresser drawers into it. But it felt forlorn anyway. It was symbolic of the separation to come. Fortunately, it wasn’t a long process either, after ninety seconds of activity, Melanie sat down to rest.

  ‘You know, I don’t think I want to go to Italy,’ said Melanie. ‘Sure, it’s incredibly beautiful, the food is amazing and there are architectural and artistic masterpieces at every turn. But I think it would be better if I stayed here with you.’

  ‘You’re not staying because of me,’ said Friday. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘But you’re so lonely,’ said Melanie. ‘You look lonely when you’re in a room full of people, so I can’t imagine how lonely you’ll look when you’re actually alone.’

  ‘It’s like a tree falling in the forest,’ said Friday. ‘Does it make a sound if there is no-one to hear it? Perhaps I won’t be lonely if there is no-one here to see it.’

  ‘Of course a tree makes a sound when it falls, regardless of who’s listening,’ said Melanie. ‘Sometimes these philosophers oversimplify things so much it passes through wisdom into silliness and becomes complicated again.’

  ‘I’m not going to be lonely,’ said Friday. ‘I’m going to enjoy the peace and quiet, and privacy. I haven’t had any of that in a long time. It will be good.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Melanie. ‘I know what you’re saying is reasonable. But I also know it’s not true.’

  Melanie had an uncanny ability to tell when someone was lying. It had to do with her not actually listening to what people said. She processed body language first and filled in the blanks with what words she could remember.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Friday. ‘I want you to enjoy your trip. The schedule sounds amazing. Take lots of photos at the Galileo Museum for me. Particularly of the mathematical instruments. And his telescope lens.’

  ‘I’ll buy you a fridge magnet,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Friday. ‘Normally I find souvenirs to be banal and trivial, but magnets have so many practical uses they are excellent gifts. Galileo would approve.’

  BAM BAM BAM.

  The girls flinched at the pounding on their door. Friday stood up to open it, but whoever was on the other side threw it open first. It was a year 7 boy and he was panting heavily, he had obviously run at great speed to get there.

  ‘Barnes,’ panted the boy. He really was having a hard time getting enough oxygen into his lungs to speak.

  Friday and Melanie waited patiently.

  ‘The headmaster,’ gasped the boy.

  ‘Has a problem only Friday can solve?’ guessed Melanie.

  The boys shook his head. ‘No, there’s a phone call.’

  ‘I’m not being arrested again, am I?’ asked Friday.

  ‘I don’t think so, it’s your uncle,’ said the boy. ‘He needs you.’

  Friday and Melanie jogged over to the administration building. Well, Friday jogged with the messenger boy. He couldn’t run any faster because he had a terrible stitch in his side. And Melanie absolutely refused to run for anything.

  When Friday arrived at the headmaster’s office, Dr Belcredi was standing in the doorway holding a cordless phone. She handed it to Friday.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ asked Friday, speaking into the receiver.

  ‘Friday? Is that you?’ asked Bernie.

  ‘Of course it’s me,’ said Friday. ‘Who else would it be?’

  ‘I don’t know, your headmaster sounds too young to be a headmaster,’ said Uncle Bernie. ‘It’s 4 o’clock in the morning here. I’m used to talking to everyone in Italian these days. Excuse me if I can’t recognise your voice right away.’

  ‘Calm down, Uncle Bernie,’ said Friday. ‘You’re sounding very agitated.’

  ‘I am very agitated,’ said Uncle Bernie.

  ‘About what?’ asked Friday.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Are you there?’ asked Friday. She checked the handset to see if she had accidentally hung up.

  ‘I’m here,’ said Bernie. ‘But I can’t talk about it over the phone.’

  ‘Well, you can’t mime your problems to me,’ said Friday. ‘I can’t see you.’

  ‘I need your help,’ said Uncle Bernie.

  ‘With what?’ asked Friday. Her thoughts went to Ian, her ex . . . she wasn’t sure what. ‘Boyfriend’ didn’t seem the right word. Neither did ‘nemesis’. He was something somewhere in between. ‘Ex-boyfrenemy’ perhaps? Either way, Ian was definitely Bernie’s stepson. Perhaps he was in trouble again. He had a talent for getting in incredibly creative forms of trouble.

  ‘It’s work,’ said Uncle Bernie. He lowered his voice, as if someone who had the ability to tap a phone call wouldn’t also have the ability to turn up the volume. ‘I heard about your school’s trip. I’ve bought you a plane ticket. You can join their group and no-one will suspect a thing.’

  ‘Suspect what?’ asked Friday. ‘I haven’t done anything suspicious. I’m not allowed to. It’s in the terms of my parole.’

  ‘I’ll meet you at the airport,’ said Bernie. ‘I’ll be able to explain it then.’

  ‘I can’t fly to Italy,’ said Friday.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Bernie. ‘Do you have an inner-ear infection?’

  ‘No,’ said Friday. ‘But I just can’t.’

  ‘Friday, I need you,’ said Bernie. ‘Please.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Friday, now she was whispering. ‘I can’t get on a plane. I can’t bear being shut in a small space anymore.’

  Suddenly the telephone was snatched right out of Friday’s hand. It was Melanie.

  ‘Uncle Bernie, Melly Pelly here,’ said Melanie, although Bernie wasn’t in any way her uncle. He was, however, so uncle-ish it seemed normal for anyone to address him that way. ‘Friday would be delighted to come to Italy and see you. She’s particularly looking forward to cuddling baby Bella. We’ll see you in thirty-six hours.’

  Friday could hear the tinny sound of her uncle’s voice through the receiver. ‘Thanks, Mel.’ Then he hung up.

  ‘What did you just do?’ asked Friday.

  ‘I pushed you,’ said Melanie. ‘It’s like when someone is standing on a ten-metre diving board and they’re too afraid to jump, so you have to push them.’

  ‘I would never push someone standing on a ten-metre diving board, and neither would you,’ said Friday.

  ‘I know,’ said Melanie. ‘I’m much crueller in metaphors than I am in real life.’

  The next day, Friday found herself standing in line at the airport. It was hard to believe that just two weeks ago she’d been sitting in a cell awaiting trial. Now she was about to fly to one of the most beautiful, historical and scientifically significant cities on earth. It didn’t feel real.

  Things were not very well organised at the airport. The teachers acting as chaperone on this trip were not really up to the task. Mr Maclean was a narcissistic geography teacher with a very lax grip of his subject. Mr Nestor was an earnest and academically gifted young teacher, who had very little ability to control a group of teenagers. And finally, everyone’s favourite, Mrs Cannon. She was an English teacher so devoted to laziness that she had raised the pursuit of idleness to an art form. Shepherding thirty students through an airline check-in queue would never be an easy feat, even for a teacher with laser-like focus and discipline. So, the whole process descended into chaos when Mrs Cannon flirted with the man who drove the mobility golf cart and had herself driven off to the gate, leaving Mr Maclean in charge.

  Friday and Melanie hung at the back. Melanie because she was naturally apathetic, and Friday because she was already getting anxious about getting on the plane and she hadn’t even passed through the security check yet. She was concentrating very hard on trying to keep her breathing even but not too slow.

  It was not working.

  Friday still felt like running away screaming at the thought of being trapped in a steel tube with three hundred other passengers and hurtling through the sky at nine hundred kilometres per hour. She was glad it took forty-five minutes to get to the front of the queue. She wished it would take longer, preferably so long that they missed the plane.

  ‘Next,’ called the attendant at the counter. The woman was smiling. But the smile was not reaching her eyes. It was barely reaching her lips. Dealing with airline passengers must be emotionally exhausting at the best of times, but dealing with super-rich, super-entitled children had to be particularly galling.

  ‘That’s us,’ said Melanie, happily. She grabbed Friday’s hand and led her up to the counter. ‘Hello.’

  The attendant did not match Melanie’s brightness of spirit. She replied a perfunctory, ‘hello’, took Friday’s passport and began entering details in her computer.

  Friday kept taking steady breaths, trying to calm her rising panic.

  ‘I love flying,’ said Melanie. ‘My favourite thing about it is the food.’

  ‘Really?’ said Friday. This was a distracting piece of information. ‘Most people regard airline food as atrocious.’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ said Melanie. ‘That’s what I like about it.’

  ‘Okay, that doesn’t make sense, even for you,’ said Friday.

  ‘Well, at school, Mrs Marigold makes beautiful food,’ said Melanie. ‘And I’d feel terrible about missing a meal, so I always have to make sure I’m awake and remember to go. But on an airplane the food is dreadful, so I can sleep through every meal quite happily without feeling like I’ve missed anything.’

  ‘Passport,’ said the attendant, holding out her hand to Melanie.

  ‘Here you go,’ said Melanie, before turning back to Friday. ‘If you time it right, you can miss all the main meals entirely, but wake up in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep and they’ve opened up the secret snack cupboard at the back of the plane.’

  ‘What?’ said Friday.

  ‘There’s always a secret snack cupboard at the back of the plane,’ said Melanie. ‘It’s full of chocolate biscuits and muesli bars and fruit. It’s so people leave the flight attendants alone and they can spend a couple of hours desperately regretting their career choices.’

  ‘Excuse me, miss. Is your name Melanie Pelly?’ asked the attendant. She was staring at Melanie’s open passport and glancing back and forth at her computer screen.

  ‘Yes,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Are you related to Dirk Pelly?’ asked the attendant.

  ‘Daddy?’ said Melanie. ‘Yes, I’m related to Daddy.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said the attendant. ‘I didn’t realise who you were. We weren’t notified that you would be flying with us today.’

  ‘Well, I’m flying with my school group,’ said Melanie. ‘I didn’t want to cause a fuss.’

  ‘I’ll arrange an upgrade for you and your friend,’ said the attendant. ‘I do apologise this wasn’t arranged earlier.’

  ‘What’s this?’ snapped Mr Maclean, as he came forward to investigate the hold up. ‘This is a school trip. Students can’t get upgrades. If there are any upgrades going, they should be given to a teacher.’

  ‘Sir, that isn’t possible,’ said the attendant. ‘As a chaperone, you must stay in the same section of the cabin as your students. That is the airline policy under which you were allowed to make your group booking.’

  ‘But you can’t upgrade a student!’ protested Mr Maclean.

  ‘Sir, I can’t not upgrade Miss Pelly,’ said the attendant. ‘Her father owns this airline.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ said Melanie, glancing up at the signage. ‘So he does! It’s hard keeping track of all the things Daddy owns.’

  ‘Please make yourselves comfortable in the first class lounge while you wait to board,’ said the attendant, handing them both leather-bound lounge passes.

  ‘But they’ll be unchaperoned there!’ argued Mr Maclean.

  ‘Sir,’ said the attendant, sharply. ‘Every employee of this airline will do everything in their power to care for Miss Pelly and her friend.’ She turned to Melanie with a gracious smile. ‘I’ll let the lounge concierge know that you are on your way.’ She picked up a telephone. ‘Would you like a cappuccino to be ready for you when you get there? Or are you too young? Would you prefer hot chocolate?’

  ‘Thank you, two hot chocolates, please,’ said Melanie. ‘That’s really lovely. I will tell Daddy how kind you’ve been.’

  Friday and Melanie enjoyed the first class lounge. There was an entire dessert buffet and a really good selection of magazines and periodicals. Friday was delighted to be able to catch up on her reading of the New Scientist. Reading about the latest advances in fourth-dimensional problem solving in mathematics almost took her mind off getting on a plane. Then, being first class passengers, an attendant came and personally escorted them to the gate. They were walked straight past all the other students from their group so they could board the plane first. Friday was halfway down the aerobridge before she remembered to panic.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ she said, clutching Melanie’s forearm.

  ‘Of course you can,’ said Melanie. ‘I know for a fact that you can do hundreds of things more terrifying than getting on a commercial airline flight. I’ve seen you leap out of boats, crawl into tunnels and tell Mrs Marigold what you really think of her steak and kidney pie. I know you feel scared right now because you’re out of practice at being brave. But I’m your best friend, so I know for a fact that you can do this because you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.’

  Now Friday felt like bursting into tears. It always made her uncomfortable when people were nice.

  ‘Darling, I love the hat!’ said the flight attendant waiting by the door of the plane.

  It took a moment for Friday to realise he was talking to her. She had forgotten she was wearing her trademark green pork-pie hat.

  ‘Very stylish,’ said the attendant. ‘It makes your eyes pop and sets off the irony of your brown cardigan.’

  ‘It does too!’ said Melanie, turning to look at Friday. ‘I’d never noticed that your cardigan was ironic before. You must be getting more stylish as you get older.’

  ‘Would you like me to find somewhere safe for your chapeau, my dear?’ said the attendant. ‘I’d hate to see it crushed or go rolling down the aisle when you nod off to sleep.’

  Friday handed him the hat. ‘Thank you.’

  Melanie showed him their tickets.

  ‘Oooh!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re in my section. My name is Vance and I’m going to spoil you rotten.’

  Once they were sitting in their seats, Friday’s anxiety started to rise again. She tried to use logic to convince her brain that she wasn’t about to die from the walls on the plane crushing in on her. But her brain chose to be irrational and respond to the adrenalin surging through her body instead. So, Friday attempted to distract herself by watching the other passengers board.

  There weren’t many people in first class. There were only three rows, with two pairs of seats on either side of the aisle. Just twelve passengers altogether. The rows were about four times further apart than they were back in economy and Friday could only really see the passengers sitting immediately around them. There were some businessmen in suits who clearly thought they were too important to make eye contact. They had their laptops open and were working straightaway. Not a moment to spare for them. There were also some wealthy leisure travellers. You could tell they were extremely rich because their leisure wear was perfectly ironed, most probably dry cleaned. No-one who did their own laundry wore cashmere. Then there was one lady who got on wearing enormous sunglasses and a full-length fur coat.

  Friday frowned.

  ‘Something wrong?’ asked Melanie.