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screaming brat in tow? So Summer had learnt not to complain when she constantly changed schools as Molly drifted from lover to lover, had never complained when Molly left her alone all night to romance the latest rich target, hoping that one of these ‘uncles’ would become a permanent fixture and rescue them from the nomadic lifestyle. If she was lonely and frightened, Summer would never show it, because she knew that her mother was trying to find a man to marry, to provide a better, safer, more stable existence for them both and she didn’t want to blow it.
    ‘Now, I do hope you’re going to be more sociable tonight,’said Molly as they walked into Molly’s bedroom, which had dresses of every colour and size strewn over the floor, bed and chairs. ‘You can be so sullen when you want to be, and there’re going to be some very promising men at this benefit.’
    ‘Well, as long as you don’t abandon me with some fat seventy-year-old with wandering hands like you usually do,’ said Summer, moving a £2000 Dior gown from the corner of the bed so she could sit down.
    ‘Oh, don’t bring that up again,’ said Molly. ‘Sir Lawrence just happens to be a very tactile man. Anyway, you can hardly blame him, when you’re always playing this moody “hard to get” game with everyone I introduce you to. It’s almost as if you’ve got something against rich men.’
    Well, maybe I have , thought Summer.
    Two months after Summer’s fifteenth birthday, Molly came home terribly excited. She announced that she had met a man called Graham Daniels, an electronics tycoon who apparently ‘ticked all the right boxes’. Within a week, Molly and Summer had moved into ‘Tyndale’, Graham’s huge house in Ascot. Summer liked Graham. Unlike many of Molly’s other boyfriends, he didn’t treat her like an irritation. In fact he treated her as an adult, even letting her sit behind the wheel of his red Ferrari Testarossa and kangaroo-hop up and down the gravel drive in front of the house. Summer enrolled in the local private girls school, where she made lots of new friends, and was given her own pink bedroom with an en-suite bathroom and a balcony that overlooked acres of wooded grounds. Summer loved her pink bedroom until one night when Graham came to say goodnight. Summer could still hear the click of the door opening and see the white of Graham’s teeth smiling in the shadows. On that first night, Summer had felt fear as his hands moved under her nightgown. On the second night she had felt a terrible sense of shame for the unfamiliar but pleasurable feelings her youngbody had experienced. On the third night, Graham Daniels forgot to lock the door. He froze like a rabbit when the door creaked open and Molly’s silhouette loomed in the doorway. Summer had pulled her candy-striped duvet tightly around her body, waiting for the screams and anger to erupt. But none had come.
    ‘Get out,’ Molly had said quietly, as Graham scampered across the floor on all fours, then fixed her daughter with an icy stare. ‘Get dressed,’ she said, bundling Summer’s belongings into a rucksack. Molly did not stop to collect her own things or even to change out of the floor-length silk negligee before she grabbed her car keys and dragged Summer from the house, bare feet crunching across the gravel.
    The next day, Summer enrolled back into her old comprehensive school in Ladbroke Grove. They never saw Graham Daniels or his magnificent Ascot mansion again.
    ‘So, which do you think?’ asked Molly, jolting Summer out of her thoughts by waving two silk Cavalli dresses in front of her face. Summer pointed to the scarlet red halter-neck with the dangerously low back.
    ‘It matches your toes.’
    ‘Good. That’s what I thought. I want everybody to see me coming tonight,’ she winked. ‘Did you want to borrow the other one?’ she continued, holding out the older, plainer black gown.
    ‘No. It’s okay. I’m just going to pop downstairs and have