I’ve been called a lot of things over the last fourteen years. When I was little, my dad used to call me Starfish. Mum would use my full name whenever I was in trouble –Alice Josephine Wright! Not that I was in trouble often or anything, but I knew to come running when I heard it.

At school my friends had tried shortening my name all sorts of ways – Allie, Al, Liss, that sort of thing.

My teachers called me a dream pupil, top of the class, even best in school. (Apart from the PE teacher, who called me a hopeless case. She wasn’t wrong.)

The counsellor I went to see after Mum died had some other names for me. An anxious child, that was the main one. Compulsive planner. Perfectionist. Afraid to disappoint. Avoids conflict.

But mostly, I was just Alice.

Today though, I’d gained a new name. One I really didn’t like.

Unaccompanied Minor.

Even the words are rubbish.

Unaccompanied. Alone. Abandoned.

Minor. Yes, technically it just meant under eighteen. But it also meant unimportant.

Abandoned and unimportant, that was me. And stuck in the Los Angeles airport waiting for a connecting flight home.

Normally I liked airports. They were exciting – full of people beginning and ending adventures. But today, I felt I’d much rather be at the beach, listening to the wind on the water and feeling the waves flow over my toes.

Before my mum died, we only used to go through airports for rare holidays abroad. But over the last four years I’d spent a lot more time in them, following my dad to wherever his latest research trip took him.

This summer he was working on his biggest project yet – helping out with marine biology research on the Great Barrier Reef. Flying out to Australia two weeks earlier, I hadn’t cared about any of the other travel stories going on around me. I’d been too excited about spending time with my dad in such an amazing location.

Flying back without him was a different matter altogether.

Mandy the airline representative had met me off my flight from Australia to Los Angeles (taking over from another woman called Fran) and was now in charge of me – and the other UMs, I supposed – until we boarded our next flight. As we walked away from the gate where I’d got off the plane, she gave me small smile. I got the feeling that she wanted to pat me on the head like a little kid.

“Are you nervous about flying alone?” She sniffed, like she was coming down with a cold.

“Not really.” What did she think I’d been doing between Australia and LA? Fran had checked in once or twice, but mostly it was just me and the snoring businessman beside me.

Many things in the world made me anxious or nervous, but I’d found it wasn’t usually the ones that other people thought I should be worried about.

“Well, our Unaccompanied Minors scheme is here to support all our young flyers,” Mandy went on, like she was reading aloud from her clipboard. “We’ve just got a little time before your flight to –” she checked – “London, so why don’t we take a seat with some other UMs in our special lounge? Maybe you can make some new friends.” There was no enthusiasm in her voice, but that was OK. I wasn’t feeling very enthusiastic about it either.

The ‘lounge’ was a tiny room near one of the gates, adjacent to one of the proper business lounges. There were three other kids there – a girl about my age watching something on a tablet and two younger boys who were probably brothers. There was a table in the middle set out with bottles of water, soft drinks and some cookies.

“Here we go!” Mandy gestured to the room like it was the Taj Mahal. I smiled dutifully. “You make yourself at home now.”

Then she sat down next to the door and pulled out her phone, jabbing the screen furiously. I guessed I was on my own again. Which, after hours of the snoring businessman, was actually kind of a relief.

I took a seat near the cookies and pulled a book out of my bag. But before I could get stuck into the story, there was an announcement over the tannoy. “Flight BA344 to London has been delayed.” I groaned.

“Hey.” The girl with the tablet pulled off her headphones – they were the big sort that go over your whole ears. “Was that the London flight?”

I nodded. “Delayed.”

“Maybe someone should go and find out more about that,” she said loudly, looking pointedly at Mandy.

Mandy didn’t notice. The girl rolled her eyesand shifted into the seat next to me. “You as bored as I am?”

“I just got here,” I said. “But give me a minute.”

She grinned. “I’m Willa,” she said, then just stared at me. It took me a moment to realize she was waiting for me to give her my name.

“Alice.”

“Hey, are you two twins?” the elder of the two boys asked, looking up at us across the table.

Willa and I exchanged a look, assessing each other’s appearance. We both had dark hair, but her eyes were golden brown not green like mine, and she was a little taller, too. Plus she definitely had a few more curves than me. I bet the boys at her school didn’t tease her like the ones at my school did me.

But we did look alike. I mean, surprisingly alike. Face shape, hair, even her smile looked a bit like mine. I couldn’t really blame the boy for asking.

Willa was less understanding.

“Obviously,” Willa said. “We’re totally twins. That’s why we arrived at different times and just introduced ourselves to each other.”

I hid a smile as the boy turned away, grumbling.

“So you’re going to London as well?” she asked, and I nodded. “On holiday?”

“Sort of,” I replied, waggling my head from side to side a little. “It’s complicated.”

“Tell me about it.” Willa gave an overly dramatic sigh and switched off her tablet. “I should be spending the summer here in LA with my mum, or in Edinburgh with my dad.”

“I was supposed to be staying with my dad in Australia for the summer, while he worked.”

“Working in Australia? That’s cool.”

I smiled. It was cool. It was his dream, in fact. “Yeah. He’s a Professor of Marine Biology.”

Willa’s eyes widened a little. Dad’s job title sounded a lot more impressive if you hadn’t met him.

“So what happened?” I asked. “Why are you heading to London?”

“I’m not,” Willa replied, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “London would be perfect. London was the original plan, before my parents messed it up. But London is just where I’m being collected by an aunt I’ve never met. Then she’s stealing me away to some farm in the middle of nowhere, Italy.”

An Italian farmhouse. My mind filled with memories of our last family holiday before Mum died – a little cottage on the Italian coast, where we hung out on the beach all day, Mum resting on a lounger. We spent our evenings eating huge bowls of pasta on the patio outside the cottage, stars twinkling overhead and Dad telling stories about them. Mum would doze off quite often, and then Dad would carry her to bed. But still, it was perfect.

Mum had wanted to tick the last item off her bucket list while we were there – visiting some waterfall near the coast that was supposed to have magical powers – but she hadn’t been well enough to go in the end.

If I ever got to visit Italy again, that was where I was going. To the waterfall Mum said could take away all of your worries.

“Is it by the sea?” I asked.

Willa gave me a look. The sort of look my friends give me when I say something weird. Usually about marine life.

“I think so, yeah,” she said. “I mean, I wasn’t really listening when my mum was going on and on about how great it would be, but I think she said something about a beach. Probably a stupid rocky one you can’t sunbathe on.”

“Sounds pretty great to me,” I admitted. “Although maybe that’s just because it’s anywhere but London.”

“Are you crazy?” Willa asked. “London is the best! It has theatres and shops and Harry Potter World and everything.I used to go there with my parents all the time before–” She cut herself off.

I didn’t ask ‘before what?’ I’d done the same often enough when I found myself almost talking about Mum. Whatever Willa’s beforewas, she didn’t want to talk about it. Just like I tended to tell people it was only me and Dad these days, if they asked, and not elaborate on where my mum was.

“It’s not London I don’t like,” I explained. “It’s who I have to stay with.”

“Worse than a random aunt?” Willa asked, eyebrows raised.

“Much. A random woman my dad used to work with who I’ve never met, know nothing about and who he hadn’t even mentioned until he needed to get rid of me for the rest of the summer.” And that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was how he’d told me about her.

Willa looked taken aback at my sudden outburst. “Whoa. I guess I’m not the only one with rubbish parents right now. Why does he need to get rid of you?”

I instantly felt guilty for ranting about my dad. He’d worked so hard to keep things stable and happy for me since Mum was gone, and it wasn’t like he could say, ‘actually, no, I don’t want to do my job any more but could you keep paying me please while I just hang out on the beach with my daughter?’

“It’s not really his fault. He’s got to go on some research vessel out on the reef for, like, three weeks or something stupid. And I wasn’t allowed to go with him.”

“Did you tell him how annoyed you were?” Willa asked.

“Not … exactly.” By which I meant no, not at all. In fact, I’d actually told him it was totally fine and I completely understood.

Except it wasn’t.

“Right,” Willa said, with the sort of look that meant she didn’t understand me. I was used to seeing that one. “So why the random woman? Was there literally no one else he could ask?”

“Usually, yes. But apparently everyone was away on holiday this time.” We had a whole network of people who were happy to have me stay a night or two.

But this time he’d chosen Mabel.

Willa’s eyes widened. She’d obviously been following the same train of thought as I had when Dad told me. “Oh! D’you reckon this woman’s his new girlfriend?”

Bingo. And that was the number one reason I didn’t want to spend my summer with her.

“I know she is,” I replied. “Because I asked him.”

He’d looked embarrassed at the question and started stuttering in a way that was nothing like my laid-back, articulate father.

Mabel and I … we’re old friends. And now we’re seeing if maybe, well, we think we might, actually, um, be something more.

So she’s your girlfriend? I’d asked. It had to have been going on for a while, yet I’d heard absolutely no mention of her until now.

That was the part that hurt.

I didn’t want to tell you until we were sure it was going somewhere. We’d planned to talk to you after the Australia trip, he’d said sheepishly. Introduce you properly, let you spend time together before… Well, anyway.

He’d cut himself off, but I knew what that ‘before’ had meant. It meant ‘before we get married’. Because I knew my dad better than anyone now Mum was gone. He’d been making noises about me needing more ‘womanly influences’ (as he put it) for months now. (Mostly I thought he was just terrified of having to give me the Talk on his own. You know, about periods and boys and stuff. Except Mum had already done that, before she died.)

Anyway. If he was sending me to stay with Mabel, she wasn’t just a girlfriend. She was a prospective new mother.

And I really didn’t need one of those, whatever Dad thought.

“Wow.” Willa studied me, and somehow I was sure she read every one of my concerns in my face. And even weirder, it felt like she understood. “I’m guessing you’re not keen on getting a new step-mum, huh? I know I wouldn’t be.”

“What’s so bad about the random Italian aunt then?” I said, changing the subject.

Wriggling a little in her seat, Willa rolled her eyes dramatically, then leaned forwards. “Trust me. If you want my sob story, we need pastries first. Come on.”