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history book she’d been pretending to read for the last ten minutes.
    She didn’t need to open the email to start smiling because she saw at once who had sent it: Andrei.
    Lana was always pleased to hear from Andrei. Even though they’d spilt up ages ago and he was now at university, she still sometimes felt as if he was the only person who really understood her. Lately, he had become the person who had the most time for her. Now that her entire family revolved around the twins and her best friend Suzie was going out with Jules and Greta was totallyobsessed with exams, no one in her immediate circle seemed to have time for all of Lana’s concerns the way Andrei did.
    The only anxiety on Lana’s part was that there was this girl, Sophie, whom Andrei mentioned often. Lana wondered if she was supposed to understand something about Sophie. Was she his girlfriend? Would Lana mind if Sophie was his girlfriend? She knew she shouldn’t, because after all she’d finished with Andrei so long ago … but she suspected that she would mind.
    So maybe that’s why Andrei wasn’t spelling it out, he just mentioned Sophie here and there, so as not to hide her, but not to shove her down Lana’s throat … so to speak.
How you [ Andrei’s email began ]? You weren’t v. happy yesterday. Did French class go OK? Did you get your essay mark? I bet it’s not that bad! Here, we get weeks and weeks to write something, but every single person, every single student I know, seems to leave it until the night before. Then total essay meltdown follows, you stay up till 3 a.m. and hand in something utterly rubbish the next day. How anyone is going to get a degree at all, I have no idea!! Spk soon, A xx
     
    Lana read through his note several times. She wondered when he was next going to be in London. It was ages since she’d seen him. The last time, he’d looked different, older. It was as if he’d gone away to uni and then been put into a time machine: gone for a term, but back looking two years older.
    She couldn’t decide exactly what it was; maybe the fact that she didn’t see him in school uniform any more, only in his studenty outfit of T-shirt and leather jacket. Plus he’d learned to drive and had this battered little car now.
    That seemed so grown up, so way cooler than all theother boys in her class. Lana was at the very top of the school now. She was going to sit her A-levels this summer. ‘This summer’ sounded as if she still had loads of time. In fact it was almost March and the exams began at the end of May.
    Clever Andrei had managed to get into Cambridge and Lana had a feeling that no matter how hard she studied, she was never going to be able to join him there … but still, there had to be hope. That was why she was spending a lot of time in her room trying to memorize entire textbooks. But it wasn’t exactly fun.
    Although Lana could hear Ed calling her name from downstairs, she began her reply to Andrei, tuning Ed out completely.
    She couldn’t believe how much Ed and her mother expected her to help out. They were the ones who’d decided to have those babies, weren’t they? Lana had definitely not been consulted. If she had, she’d have said what a completely ridiculous idea. Her mother was nearly forty, she was swamped by her TV career, what on earth did she need twin babies for?
    Anyone could see that Ed was a total novice to the whole thing. He went about checking his watch the whole time, wondering which end of which baby to attend to first.
    Lana found the babies an unbelievable inconvenience. And they woke her up in the middle of the night! Didn’t they realize she needed as much sleep as possible? She wanted to do amazingly well in her exams.
    She opened a new message and took a long time to think about her reply to Andrei.
    ‘Hi Andrei,’ Lana began finally.
French was OK. Essay mark was fine. So much boring studying still to do, so many boring exams to sit. I can’t waitfor it all to be over. I