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Chapter One

My name? It's Holly Starcross.

"You don't know who I am," I said, and Mum raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows at me and carried on feeding Zoe from a plastic spoon. The twins giggled. I turned my back on them all and went up to my room, my sanctuary, where my posters of owls and leafy trees gave me windows, and my real window had soft green curtains like fields of grass. I felt upset. I felt ridiculous. I wish I hadn't said it. It just fell out, the way Lisa's tooth had fallen out that morning, tinged with blood and excitement.

Somewhere in the world outside there was a man following me.

Like a ghost, it walked with me, the image of that man in the street. But I wasn't afraid. Strangely, I was never afraid of that ghost.

I love my room. It is white, like a house of ice. It has a sky window that lets in the stars. I have a string of bells hanging by the other window, and when the wind stirs the curtains, they sing with tinkling chimes. Mum says I shouldn't leave the window open at night because it encourages Panto to use it as a cat flap. I don't mind, even when she flops across my face with her tummy wet from the dewy grass.

Panto belongs to my old life.

"If you really want to know who you are," came Lisa's voice from the other side of my door, "you're Holly."

"Prickly Holly," giggled Julian, who always agrees with everything she says.

"Prickly Holly Starcross," Lisa reminded him. "She's prickly and cross."

They seemed to think this was hilarious. I could hear them giggling and wrestling on the landing. I ignored them. I switched on my computer and opened up my e-mail.

"Not Murray, like us, Prickly Holly Murray." Julian can't say Murray. Muwwy, it sounds like.

"Prickly Molly Hurry. Hickory Polly Mully." Lisa was ecstatic at the sound of her own wit.

I heard Mum come up the stairs and sweep them away from my door. The baby was crying now. Beautiful Zoe with her amethyst eyes. She's the best thing that's happened in my life for eight whole years.

Do you know who I am? I typed onto the screen. I addressed it to Zed-zed@brainwave.co.uk.

Mum came into my room. Zoe was squirming in her arms. She put her down on the floor, and Zoe gazed up at me. Her cheeks were wet, and her eyes were huge and brimming with too much blue. I love Zoe. Everybody does. What a gift to be born with. You didn't have a wicked fairy at your christening, little beauty. I lifted her up, and she held out her arms and tugged at the chin-ling bells.

"I'd like to know what you think you mean by that," Mum said, nodding toward the message on the computer screen.

I pressed the mouse and flicked it away. "Nothing. If you don't know what it means, then it doesn't mean anything."

"And I'd like to know who this Zed person is."

I would, too. Zed is my guru, my planet, my deep sea, my best friend. My Einstein, my aboriginal. I think he's a he. He just appeared one day last autumn when I typed a simple question into the www.musicbox Web site. I go to Hazelwood School and I'm nearly fourteen. I probably shouldn't have put that, but our school is really well known for its music. And I don't play any musical instruments. I want to learn the cello, and Mum says I'm too old now. Is she right?

And I had written that because of what had happened earlier that day, when I was in our car with Mum and Henry and the twins. Zoe hadn't been born yet. We were all tired. I had my eyes closed; the twins were bickering. Henry put the car radio on, and suddenly I was inside my dream. I opened my eyes and found that the dream was still there. I was listening to my dream. Mum said, "Find something cheerful, for goodness' sake." But just as Henry was about to switch over, the music stopped and the announcer's voice said, "That was the Elgar Cello Concerto, played by Jacqueline du Pré.

"Mum, can I learn the cello?"

She didn't hear me, or chose not to hear me. Henry winked at me in the driving mirror. He does that when he senses trouble. It's his way of saying, "I'm on your side, but don't expect me to get on the wrong side of your mother by saying so." It's so easy, that is.

"I want to learn cello more than anything."

"It's out of the question," Mum said, cold as ice, in her no-arguing voice.

"Why?"

"I don't like them, that's why. I couldn't put up with all that scratching and scraping."

"Actually, it would be better to learn piano first," Henry said, trying to be helpful to both of us.

"And I can't be doing with one of those in the house either. It takes years to learn an instrument properly. You're probably too old by now. So forget it, Holly."

As I said, that was nearly a year ago, and it was where Zed came in.

The reply from him was: When is a bird too old to sing? Ghostly! I went straight to the music teacher at school and begged to have a go on the school cello. When I told him I couldn't have lessons, he raised his eyebrows. Of course he was surprised. It's not as though we couldn't afford it. There's no shortage of money in our house ...