handed me the lighter… I didn’t even think, I just wanted to get rid of what I’d written. When I get angry, I act first and think later. Big mistake, huh?’

That’s kind of an understatement. Dan must have wanted to keep his writing secret pretty badly if he was ready to set fire to it rather than read it out in class.

‘Bet Fisher excludes me,’ Dan says, kicking out a bit of crumbling brickwork. ‘Mum’ll be really upset, and Dad will go crazy, and things will get even worse at home. Nightmare. Stupid cafe. Stupid Dad. Stupid school…’

The dark, scowly frown fades from Dan’s face and he sighs heavily, shoulders slumped. Now he doesn’t look angry so much as lost, a sad-eyed boy in wet angel wings with all the cares of the world on his shoulders. He looks at me sideways.

‘Don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ he says. ‘You don’t even know what I’m saying, do you? Not all of it, anyway. Just as well. I’m not much of an angel, that’s for sure.’

I want to tell Dan that I understand a lot more than he thinks, but I can’t find the words, so I just smile. Dan smiles back, his brown eyes shining, and then, before I can even see it coming, he leans across and kisses me softly.

I have never been kissed before.

Dan Carney smells of milkshake and vanilla. The umbrella drops to the ground and cold rain falls on us like confetti, but Dan’s lips are warm and sweet as sugar frosting. Then he pulls back, moving away from me.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘We’d better get you home.’

Home? My mind has emptied of everything except Dan. I don’t want to come back into the real world, but Dan seems to be in a hurry. He scoops up the umbrella and pulls me to my feet. ‘Where did you say you lived?’ he asks. ‘The flat over the chippy, right?’

He takes my hand, steering me through the park gates and across the road. The chip-shop windows are streaming with rain, and the hot stink of frying fish drifts out as we stand on the pavement, discarded chip wrappers at our feet.

Dan frowns. ‘One thing you should know about me, Anya – I’m kind of a mess, OK? Bad news.’

‘Bad news?’ I echo.

‘Sorry, Anya… I’ll see you around.’

He walks away, crossing the wasteground that’s littered with broken glass and scrunched-up chip papers, hunched under the big white umbrella.

That’s the day I begin to believe in miracles. Nothing has changed, but everything has… all because of a boy in angel wings.

My life is still a disaster zone. I am still sharing a room with my little sister in a scabby flat where the smell of chip fat and vinegar clings to everything, but none of that seems to matter any more… because of Dan.

I lie awake late into the night, listening to the sound of people outside, laughing, singing, fighting. When I sleep, my dreams are full of a tall boy with caramel skin and angel wings, a boy who kissed me in the rain.

The next day I go to school with a little less dread in my heart. My heart races a little as I walk through the corridors, but there’s no sign of Dan. He’s not in the corridors, he’s not in class, he’s not in the canteen… Dan Carney has vanished.

Frankie flops down next to me at lunchtime. It looks like I have a new friend – we bonded over the strawberry meringues, a match made in Heaven. Frankie is an outsider, a misfit, a million miles away from Nadia and the cool, popular kids I knew back in Krakow… but then I’m kind of a misfit myself, these days. The laughing, pink-cheeked, hockey-mad girls I imagined I’d meet don’t seem to exist outside the pages of the books Dad used to send me.

‘So… Dan Carney is gone?’ I ask her, trying to be casual. ‘In trouble?’

‘Big trouble,’ she says, biting into a hot dog. ‘He’s been excluded. Mr Fisher takes that whole burn-the-school-down stuff very seriously.’

‘Excluded?’

‘Banned from school for a few days,’ Frankie explains. ‘Still, it’ll take more than that to change Dan.’

The disappointment must show in my face, because Frankie starts to grin. ‘Wait a minute, Anya… he was flirting with you, right? In the cafe? Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for him!’

‘Dan is a friendly boy,’ I whisper.

Frankie snorts. ‘How friendly, exactly?’

I can’t quite meet her eye. ‘In the park, we talk.