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PROLOGUE Last winter a girl from my class went to India with her family to visit relatives. She never came back. Her name was Tara Tally and she was only fourteen. There was a bit of a fuss surrounding her disappearance. Her friends were questioned by the police, while the rest of us gathered and gossiped in noisy groups in the playground. Eventually it all died down. Everything went back to normal. But, of course, life never went back to normal for Tara. We never saw her again. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I think about Tara. I imagine her looking sad and tired, dressed in a sari and sweeping the floor in a small and dusty Indian village. My sister, Sofia, who’s far more romantic than I am, has a different view on what happened. She thinks Tara ran off to star in a Bollywood film and is convinced we’ll see her in a movie any day soon: ‘…looking stunning, starring opposite some utter hunk, singing, dancing and twirling in a silver spangled sari.’ I’m fifteen now and my crazy sister is ten. Sofia’s the opposite of me in every way except our looks; she’s loud, uninhibited and excitable. We can’t help but love her even when she’s driving us mad. Our Mum and Dad are called Jasmine and Shekhar. They’re pretty cool and liberal, especially for Asian parents. Even before they came to England, Dad was always very outspoken about politics and just about anything really. Sofia’s favourite saying is, ‘But it’s not fair.’ She says it so often, it’s become a family joke and we just smile in response. I’ve learned this past year that there’s a lot more that’s unfair in life than she could possibly imagine in her tiny, ten-year-old head. Before Tara went missing, just like Sofia, my idea of what wasn’t fair was not getting what I wanted from the shops or not being able to stay up late, but now I know differently. There’s a whole lot more unfair stuff going on in the world, and sometimes it happens to people we know. 17

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