Like how difficult it was to be a beacon in the subterranean, wind-swept and coal-black abyss that is Dellwood, New Jersey.

I had no trouble getting everybody at school to call me Lola. I told my teachers that even though the register said my name was Mary, Lola was what I’d been called at home since I was a squalling infant in my mother’s arms.

Only Mrs Baggoli, my English teacher, put up a struggle.

“Lola?” Mrs Baggoli stared at me with her gimlet eyes. “You want to be called Lola?”

Ignoring the soft snickers around me, I nodded. “My parents fell in love watching Damn Yankees together,” I explained, inspired. “That’s why they call me Lola.” As far as I know, neither of my parents has ever seen Damn Yankees. I saw it by chance when I was home with the flu one winter. I would have turned it off if one of the characters wasn’t named Lola. One of the few signs that my parents are actually intelligent enough to be related to me is the fact that they both detest musicals. But Mrs Baggoli believed me.

“‘Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets’?” queried Mrs Baggoli.

I’d known she’d catch the reference. She was the drama coach as well.

I smiled. It was a good-natured, self-mocking smile. Teachers hate any sign of arrogance.

“I was two when they started using it,” I said. “You know what two-year-olds are like.”

“Don’t I just,” said Mrs Baggoli, with what I took as a significant look at the rest of the class. “All right, Lola,” she went on, pencilling my real name in her register. “I’ll try to remember.”

As I’ve already said, however, I was less successful in other areas. I’d pretty much thought that all I had to do was appear on campus like an incredible sunset after a grey, dreary day, and the starving young souls of Dellwood would immediately abandon their videos and glossy magazines, and flock to me, begging for shelter from the storm of meaningless trivia that made up their lives.