Levitation for Beginners

It's 1972 and ten-year-old Deborah is living a ten-year-old life: butterscotch Angel Delight and Raleigh Chopper bikes, Crackerjack and Jackanory, 'Layla' and the Bee Gees, flares and ponchos.

But new girl Sarah-Jayne breezes into school, pretty as a picture and full of gossip, as well as unlikely but thrilling stories about levitation. The other girls are dazzled but Deborah keeps her distance. That same week, eighteen-year-old brickie Sonny turns up on her doorstep with a stray tortoise and begins an unlikely friendship with her young widowed mum. That's bad enough, Deborah thinks, but then Sonny starts work on a site opposite the school and Sarah-Jayne decides he's the latest love of her life.

Nothing escapes Sarah-Jayne, and Deborah fears what she'll make of her mum. It's good to be different, her mum often says; but not, Deborah knows, too different.