The drummer waves at Raffy and she walks over to the side of the stage to chat with him.

“Who’s that?” Santangelo asks, offering me some chips.

“The arsonist from Clarence House,” I say with my mouth half full.

From the stage Ben catches my eye. “This is for them, Taylor,” he calls out as they begin to play. It’s a song by the Waterboys and, like each time I hear the music played by the boy in the tree in my dreams, I experience a bittersweet sense of nostalgia I have no right to own. When it’s time for Ben to play his solo—his eyes closed, his mind anywhere but here, his fingers so taut and precise that it almost looks painful—my eyes well with tears. Because you know from the look on Ben’s face that he’s somewhere you want to be. Somewhere the five would be each time they were together. The place goes off. I can feel Griggs’s shoulder against mine and I hear him mutter something under his breath.

“What?” I say, irritated. “He’s fantastic.”

There’s a look on his face that I don’t recognise and I don’t quite get it until Ben jumps off the stage, surrounded by Townie girls.

“Hey!” Griggs calls out to him. “Violin guy!”

Ben points to himself with that who me? look, walking towards us.

Griggs doesn’t say anything for a moment, but then he clears his throat. “If I had known…I wouldn’t have gone for your fingers that time.”

“You would have just chosen another body part?” Ben says.

“Probably. But not the fingers.”

Ben nods. “Cheers.” He looks pleased with himself. “I have numbers in this phone that I didn’t have at the beginning of the night,” he says, waving it around.

“No coverage,” Griggs reminds him.

“And mobile numbers are blocked on our land-lines,” I add.

“Thanks for the optimism.”

Ben sees Santangelo still staring at Raffy and the drummer and pats him on the back.

“Nothing to worry about. He set fire to her hair once in science and I think that killed the romance for her.”

“Why would I be worried?” Santangelo asks, irritated, as Raffy walks back towards us.

“You should be worried,” Ben says. “Because you’re going out with that chick and Raff will go out with some guy and you’ll spend the whole time with this ‘thing’ hovering between you and then you’ll get married to other people and one day when you’re middle-aged in your thirties, while both your kids are going to the same school, you’re going to have this affair because of all the pent-up attraction and ruin the lives of everyone in the P and F.”

“Your friends are freaks,” Santangelo tells Raffy when she re-joins us.

“Chaz, I’ve always had freaks for friends. You should know that.”

I look over at Richard, who is clearly dominating the chess game and I nudge Griggs. “Want me to teach you how to play speed chess?” I ask.

I spend the next half hour annihilating Richard and then we play doubles. The head nerd of the Cadets is my partner and when it’s over he asks me for my number. I’m very flattered and he looks a bit crestfallen when I say no.

“It’s because they don’t have coverage out here,” Griggs tells him.

“No,” I say, looking up at Griggs. “It’s actually because my heart belongs to someone else.” And if I could bottle the look on his face, I’d keep it by my bedside for the rest of my life.

Chapter 21

One day Tate was there, a ghost of Tate, sitting by the river where Webb had planned to build a house—a dead look in her eye, a thin grimace to her lips, a sick pallor to her skin that spoke of despair. The next day she was gone—bags packed, no note. And for Narnie, hours without them went by, and then days, and then weeks. And in between those seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks was the most acute sense of loneliness she’d ever experienced. Sometimes she knew that Fitz was watching her and she would call out, “Fitzee. Please! Don’t leave me!”

But no one came back.

Except Jude.

As predicted, the Club House is profitable and after three nights we split the money between the three factions and then we split it again between the Houses. The leaders have a meeting about what their Houses are going to do with the funds and I nod with great approval as everyone is united in their maturity and pragmatism.

Richard has made plans for a maths computer tutor for his house while Ben buys a guitar for his. Trini organises a year’s subscription with Greenpeace and I mumble about some books and DVDs for our library or maybe some software for the computer.

“Let’s get something we can have the bestest fun we’ve ever had with,” Jessa begs one night when we’re on washing-up duty.

“We’re not here to have fun,” I say.

“Who said?” one of the year tens asks me. I think about it for a moment and then shrug.

“I actually don’t know. It’s not that effective when you don’t know, is it?”

So we get a karaoke machine.

On the first night, the year tens stage a competition, insisting that every member of the House has to be involved, so we clear the year-seven and-eight dorms and wait for our turn. Raffy is on second and does an impressive job of “I Can’t Live, If Living Means Without You” but then one of the seniors points out to her that she’s chosen a dependency song and Raffy spends the whole night neuroticising about it.

“I just worked out that I don’t have ambition,” she says while one of the year eights sings tearfully, “Am I Not Pretty Enough?” I start compiling a list of all the kids I should be recommending to the school counsellor, based on their song choices.

“I think she’s reading a little too much into it, Raf.”

“No she isn’t. Because do you know what my second and third choices were? ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ and ‘I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself.’”

“Mary Grace chose ‘Brown-eyed Girl’ and she’s got blue eyes and Serina sang ‘It’s Raining Men’ and she’s a lesbian. You’re taking this way too seriously. Let it go.”

“What have you chosen?”

“I’m doing something with Jessa. Apparently her father was a Lenny Rogers fan.”

“Kenny,” she corrects. “‘Coward of the County’?”

I look at her suspiciously. “Why that one? Are you implying I’m a coward?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just one of his well-known ones.”

“Why didn’t you say ‘The Gambler’? That’s pretty well known, according to Jessa. I’d rather be a gambler than a coward.”

“It’s just a song,” she insists. But I’m not convinced.

I get up and sing “Islands in the Stream” with Jessa. As usual, she takes it all very seriously and she does these hands expressions as if she’s clutching her heart and then giving it out to the audience. I refuse to follow but I do enjoy it. We have knockout rounds throughout the week after dinner and it’s during this time that I truly get to know my House. Their choices make me laugh so much at times that I have tears running down my face and other times they are so poignant that they make me love them so much without even trying.

Raffy and I spend every other night in the Prayer Tree with Santangelo and Griggs. Each time we set out an agenda, which lists the Club House and the territory boundaries as items for discussion, but it never quite happens. We just end up talking about stuff, like the meaning of life or the importance of karaoke choices.

“Do you think they define you?” Raffy asks them.

“Hope not. I always end up singing some Michael Jackson song,” Santangelo says.

“What did you pick?” Griggs asks me.

“Kenny Rogers.”

“‘Coward of the County’?”

I sit back and don’t say a word. I am wounded. Griggs looks at me and then at Raffy. “I said the wrong thing, didn’t I?” he asks.

She doesn’t say anything out loud, but I know she’s mouthing something to him because next minute he says, “I meant ‘The Gambler.’”