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“GET INTO GROUPS OF TWO OR THREE. EACH group will represent a planet,” said Miss Steadman in science. “As it’s stopped raining, we’re going out to the playground to map out the solar system.”

I said to Mia Johnson, who was my best friend, “Let’s us two be Earth.”

Then Daisy Bouvier came over, chewing her nails. She hung around us like she’d been doing a lot lately since she fell out with Florence Green at a sleepover. Mia looked at me funny and said, “Daisy, you’re in my group too.”

Miss Steadman started talking about planets being millions of miles away and that we had to pretend the playground was the whole solar system. I nudged Mia and tried to whisper about what us two could do at break-time, not including Daisy. But I couldn’t tell her because Miss Steadman said, “Shush, Cally. Let’s try very hard today not to talk when I’m speaking. Otherwise you won’t learn anything.”

She marked our place with a blue chalk circle and set off to Mars with another group and some red chalk.

Doing space reminded me of the day when our family had gone to Wells. Inside the enormous yellow cathedral was one of the oldest clocks in the world. The earth was painted in the middle of the clock and the ancient sun circled round the outside on the long hand.

Mum had said, “Sometimes people get things the wrong way round.”

Because it was hundreds of years old the people who painted it didn’t know what the universe was like. Now everyone knows we are the ones spinning on our tiny planet through space, circling round the sun. It’s funny how that happens and we can’t even feel it.

“Look,” I said to Mia and Daisy, “this is how our planet spins.”

With my arms out, I went round and round. It made my hands go heavy and my eyes go giddy.

“Stop it,” said Mia, “we’re supposed to be listening not talking and spinning.”

“You could be the moon,” I said to Daisy.

“Miss Steadman didn’t say to be a moon,” she said. “And I wanted to be Mercury.”

“But look,” I said, “look what would happen if we suddenly started spinning a different way.”

I bumped into the moon and that made me fly off in a different direction.

“Look,” I said, “we could go right out into space and see what’s there.”

“Cally Fisher!” Miss Steadman shouted across the galaxy. “Go back to your circle and stay there!”

But I wanted to see what was out there. I imagined a splash of light winking from across the universe. Maybe it was a star, maybe it was a doorway, a way through a hole in the sky where souls and angels go. And who wouldn’t want to find out what was shining in the darkness when it’s the only bright thing in the whole of space?

Anyway, I got sent to Pluto with Daniel Bird who didn’t have a partner.

“You’re in trouble again,” he said, because he is always stating the obvious.