Elena smiled. 'You want me to be modest or just go for it?'

Danny laughed. Elena always did have a way of making him laugh. 'When were you ever modest?'

'In that case, I did brilliant. Six A stars and four As brilliant. Boff or what? Now, let's go down.'

Elena was a genius, her school's star pupil, but definitely no boff. She didn't spend hours and hours with her face buried in textbooks or bore you with endless streams of useless information. But she didn't mind letting her friends know how brilliant she was. In the nicest possible way, of course.

Foxcroft was an old building. Victorian, with three main floors and an attic where the below stairs maids would once have had their poky little bedrooms. At some time between the First and Second World Wars it had been the home of a government minister.

You wouldn't have thought so now. It was faded. Sad. The paintwork was flaking, the boiler down in the cellar wheezed and spluttered like an old man after a lifetime of too many unripped fags, the sash windows jammed in their runners, and when the wind blew the whole place seemed to groan and shiver. But there was something about Foxcroft that almost everyone who lived there liked. It was reassuring. Something to do with old glory that refused to lie down and die.

Danny and Elena made their way down the stairs to the first floor. The staircase was broad and grand, with a dark oak banister and a threadbare carpet that might once have been red. Boys' bedrooms were on the second floor, girls' were on the first. Telly room and living rooms were on the ground floor.

Dave the Rave appeared on the first-floor landing just as Danny and Elena arrived. There was no chance of slipping quietly by. Dave was a huge bloke. He'd been a rugby player with Saracens in his younger days and might have made it into the England team had it not been for a back injury.

But he was all right; you knew where you stood with Dave the Rave, and right now they knew they were in trouble. Dave was scowling. 'Elena, you know you're not meant to be on the boys' landing.'