I am an expert in parent behaviour. After watching mine for the last fourteen years, I’ve learned all the tricks they use to control us. And overthe last six months, I think my mum and dad have tried all of them. (Fortunately, my expert status means I’m also excellent at counter-attack. I know all the best ways to exact revenge … like my recent shopping spree. With Mum’s credit card.)

The number one thing I’ve learned is: parents always say they’re doing what’s best for you, when really, they’re doing what’s best for them.

“I don’t know why you’re being so difficult about this.” Mum sighed. I risked a glance across at her, and saw her ‘I’m so misunderstood’ look had settledfirmly in place. Trick number twenty-seven – make your offspring feel sorry for you. “When I was your age I’d have loved to spend a summer in Italy. So romantic!”

“So remote,” I countered. She wasn’t getting any agreement from me this week. On anything.

Besides, I totally wasn’t buying her ‘Italy – land of romance’ line. She was just using trick forty-two: trying to make herself feel less guilty for sending me away by pretending that she’d love the chance to go.

I knew the truth. My summer wasn’t going to be like that movie Mum loved, with Audrey Hepburn. There’d be no whizzing around Rome on a Vespa or whatever.

Instead, my parents, in a shocking show of actual communication and co-operation with each other, had agreed to ship me off to some random relative. I’ll admit, I’d been too busy sulking to really listen to the details, but I’d definitely heard enough to be sure of the following:

1. The aunt lived on a farm.
2. The farm was in the middle of nowhere, Italy.
3. Italy wasn’t London, where I was supposed to be spending the summer.

I’d had it all planned. Mum had even agreed! Well, eventually, anyway.

We were supposed to be flying back from LA together at the beginning of August, once her guest role on this US TV show had finished filming. I’d been out there with her ever since my school broke up (at the start of July – perk of the private school Dad insisted I went to. The long holidays almost made up for the awful uniform.)

She was going to hand me over to Dad, and we were going to spend summer in the city together, as an adventure. It would be my first time seeing him since he and Mum split up, over a month ago, and Dad disappeared to London to appear in some theatre show while he was on sabbatical from the TV soap he stars in, Heatherside. We’d even arranged for me to attend a course at a London theatre, which was a huge deal. I’d been nagging them to let me follow them both into the business, ever since I turned eleven, three whole years ago. But they both said that show business was no place for theirchild.

I’d hoped, when they agreed to me taking the course, that they were finally accepting that I wasn’t a child any more. How wrong could I be?

I’d heard about the course from one of my dad’s co-stars on Heatherside. Apparently, it was the course to do if you were serious about getting into TV acting – especially since they always got a casting agent to come along to the final showcase. And since Mum and Dad insisted on me going to a boring private school instead of stage school, it was my best shot at getting into the industry. So I’d found the website, registered myself using my own email, got Mum to sign the parental consent form and sent it in.

But then the comedy show Dad had a part in down in London got picked as a last-minute replacement for some cancelled act at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Mum’s US TV series guest role got extended into a regular part with longer filming hours, and suddenly everything changed. London was totally off the cards – even though my parents knew how much I wanted to do my theatre course.

Clearly, Dad had other priorities now, besides his only daughter. He didn’t want me in Edinburgh with him – said he would be too busy to look after me. And Mum’s new role was more important to her than anything I wanted, too.

Even so, staying with Mum might have been OK. I mean, summer in California isn’t exactly a punishment, right? But it turned out I wouldn’t be in LA. Nor would I be with Dad in Edinburgh. And I certainly wouldn’t be in London attending the theatre course. Instead, I was being sent to Italy, to stay with the random aunt.

Honestly, it was enough to make me Google ‘how to divorce your parents’. (Which I had done. Several times. LA was clearly rubbing off on me.)

Even if I’d had to give up my plans for London, I’d had opportunities in LA – enough that the summer might not have been a total bust in terms of kick-starting my acting career. The TV show Mum worked on had a day off from filming, and all the young stars and crew had been heading to the beach. They’d even invited me to join them – my first real chance at networking.

But was I on the beach? No. I was in a car with the air conditioning turned up way too high, pulling up at Los Angeles airport, ready for my flight to nowhere.

“So I’m going to leave you with the UM person from the airline, OK?” Mum said, obviously trying to sound like the kind of mother who cared about her daughter’s wellbeing. Of course, if she actually cared, she wouldn’t be making me go to Italy. (I’d pointed that out a few times the night before and Mum said I was being overdramatic. Coming from an actress that seemed kind of hypocritical.)

“UM?” I asked.

“Willa, we’ve been over this! The Unaccompanied Minors person!”

Ah, now she sounded like the exasperated Mum I knew and tolerated.

“Makes me sound like one of those stupid classical music pieces Dad pretends to like,” I muttered. If anyone else was within earshot, Dad always had classical music playing. The rest of the time it was eighties pop all the way. Just hearing Wham! made me miss him.

Mum ignored me. As usual. “The UM person will look after you until your Aunt Sofia meets you in London. Then you’ll travel together to her place in Italy.”

Aunt Sofia. A woman I’d never met and knew next to nothing about, who was probably as annoyed about the arrangement as I was. Although apparently she had foster kids staying with her, so an extra person wouldn’t make much difference. (One was about my age, but I was guessing they were the oldest. I really hoped she wasn’t going to expect me to help out with the others. I’m not good with little kids.)

Still, it wasn’t Aunt Sofia’s fault I had to go stay with heron a farm miles away from any sort of entertainment or decent shopping, in a country where I didn’t speak the language. I was sure Aunt Sofia was a perfectly lovely person.

Unlike my parents.

“Right.” Grabbing my leather jacket from the seat beside me, I opened the car door and stepped out on to the baking hot pavement. I could feel the heat seeping through my flip-flops.

It wasn’t until Mum got out, though, that I saw the photographer.

“Sarra! Sarra!” he called out. “Over here, Sarra. How about a smile?”

Mum gave a polite smile for the camera, then put up her hand as a shield so he couldn’t get any photos of her pulling funny faces. The number of paparazzi trying to get her photo after the news broke about Dad, a month or so ago, had taught her that trick pretty quickly.

“Have you spoken to Scott, Sarra?” the photographer called out, and Mum and I both froze.

Scott is my dad, in case you haven’t guessed.

“How did you find out about his new girlfriend?” the photographer yelled, happily sharing my family’s private business with everyone taking a plane out of LA that day. But his question shook us out of our stunned state, and Mum grabbed my arm to pull me towards the back of the cab, where the driver was unloading my case from the boot.

“Did he tell you himself?” the photographer continued.

I knew the answer to that one: no. Mum found out the same way I did. The same way most of the country did – when photos of Dad and his co-star kissing showed up in the papers.

I wasn’t telling the paparazzi that, though. Rule one of being a celebrity’s daughter – don’t tell the press anything. And I wasn’t just a celebrity’s daughter. I was Willa Andrews, daughter of Scott and Sarra Andrews, the darlings of British TV. Or they had been, until this year.

Now I was Willa Andrews, unwanted daughter of two feuding celebs who were too busy dealing with the fallout from their own stupidity to care about me.

Not that I was bitter or anything.

“Sarra! How about a photo with your friend, then?”

Obviously a newbie, if he didn’t recognize me as Mum’s daughter. Mind you, that would make Mum’s new LA agent, Veronica, happy. According to her I wasn’t helping my mother’s flourishing career one bit.

“Let’s get inside, Willa,” Mum said through her teeth.

Taking my suitcase from the driver, I followed Mum through the automatic doors and into the terminal.

LAX was bustling, as always. Mum stopped when we were far enough away from the doors and switched back from celeb mode to mum mode. “Now, have you got everything you need?”

“Hope so,” I said, shrugging on my jacket. I figured if I’d forgotten anything, I’d just have to buy it when I got there. On Mum’s credit card, of course. Assuming she’d unblocked it after my shopping spree last week, anyway.

Mum frowned at me, then smoothed out her expression again. I could almost hear her thinking ‘wrinkles’ as she did it.

“Do you really need to take that jacket?” she asked. “It’s worth a fortune and I don’t want you leaving it somewhere. It’ll be far too hot to wear it in Italy.”

I wrapped my arms round myself inside the leather jacket, thankful for the air conditioning that meant I wasn’t overheating. I loved my jacket. It was the one I’d worn for the magazine photo shoot Mum and I did right after we arrived in LA at the start of the summer. Before Veronica decided that having a teenage daughter wasn’t good for Mum’s image. Too aging, apparently, now she had this bigger role and the possibility of a part in the next series, too.

I wasn’t sure if Veronica had shared this insight with Mum, but she’d shared it with someone in a phone call that I just happened to overhear. (OK, fine, I was listening in.) “She could make it really big over here now she’s dropped the deadweight husband. People love a survivor. The daughter’s not helping, though. Too old to be passed off as cute. We’ll have to come up with a strategy for that, if she wants roles as anything other than The Mother.”

But that day at the magazine shoot – with us both in ripped jeans and matching leather jackets (hers was navy, mine was cherry red) – it had felt like Mum and me against the world. Against all the friends and papers talking about our family. Against Dad, and his midlife crisis.

I’d thought it could be the start of a whole new life for us.

Turns out I was wrong.

Mum sighed, again. One small win to me. I smirked.

“Come on, then. Let’s get you on this flight.”

My smirk disappeared. Six thousand miles’ worth of wins to Mum.