A few people moan.

'I suggest you come forward and sit at the front.'

Akshat moves up the bus, knocking everyone with his oversized sports bag.

'Cretin,' says Katie.

The bus moves off with a shudder and the clunking of gears.

'It's like a right boring place to go, innit,' says Janine. 'My cousin's school went to Chessington World of Adventures. They went on Rameses' Revenge and the Rattlesnake and everything.'

'I'm gonna have a nap, Janine. I didn't get much sleep last night.'

'Why's that, Loos?'

'Dunno really, just couldn't sleep.'

As if I'd tell her how it all kicked off once I got back from swimming. I wouldn't tell her anything.

'You don't look tired,' she studies me with her hard brown eyes. 'You look nice, you always look nice, and your hair's so pretty,' she fiddles with the bit that's hanging down my shoulder. 'I wish I had blonde hair like yours. You're so lucky.'

'Janine, I really need to sleep,' I shut my eyes, and concentrate on breathing. It's almost back to normal, while the inside of my eyelids are all red and squiggly as if my head's on fire. It is. Perhaps I should listen to Janine go on about theme parks and pop stars. It would take my mind off things.

Diaries are dangerous, I knew that, though I thought the risk was all mine, like if Amy found out who I fancy or who I'd kissed.

I'm kicking myself. Normally, I'm so careful. You have to be when you share a room. I never write in front of Amy. I wait till she's out or in the bathroom or else I take it with me. And then, when I am writing, cross-legged on my bed, I always have a cushion close by so I can hide it. I reckon I'll always have a few seconds once I hear the door.

Mind you, I didn't hear the phone at first. I must have been too engrossed. Then Dad was shouting up the stairs and I know not to ignore Dad if he shouts. Still, Amy should never have read it. And she certainly shouldn't have told Dad.

'Lucy, are you crying?'

Oh G.o.d, Janine's curly head is hovering right over me.

'It's nothing, the sun's in my eyes.'

Janine gives me the kind of hard look I'd normally run from if I didn't already know how much she admires me.

'It's just the sun, I just woke up. I'm all right now. What were you saying about Lady Ga Ga?'

After about an hour the coach leaves the motorway and trundles along a few quaint country roads where the period houses are all absurdly pretty with perfect, flower-filled gardens and not a hint of dark green woodwork anywhere.

'Looks like a film set, doesn't it,' I say.

'People really live here, yeah?' says Janine.

The boys at the front start to cheer and whoop.

'That was the coach park,' shouts Kelvin, 'He's missed it.'

Mr Sole jumps up to peer out of the side of the bus then has a quick word with the driver.

'He has b.l.o.o.d.y missed it,' I say to Janine.

Next thing we know, he's trying to do a three-point turn in a tiny country road and backs into what is probably a listed Elizabethan wall resulting in more cheers from the boys. The bus stops. The driver gets out, inspects back of bus and glances at wall. Wall looks okay, don't know about bus.

He gets back in, manages to manoeuvre it into the right direction, finds the coach park and at last we can all get out.

Mr Sole has this strange, mesmerised expression. 'That's it, that's where she lived,' he says, looking across the road at a neat, red-brick, rectangular house with white-framed picture windows and a green sweep of garden on the corner with a majestic, ancient tree.

'It's beautiful,' I say. 'Here, sir, I thought you said she didn't have much money.'

'She didn't, it was her brother who looked after her.'

'Give me MTV Cribs any day,' says Janine, making hip hop gangster-style gestures with her hands. 'I like penthouses with walls of gla.s.s.'

Where the h.e.l.l is Megan?

Behind me, thank G.o.d.

'How's your head?' she smiles.

'What?'

'Janine is she doing your head in?'

'You have no idea.'

Mr Sole leads the way to an outbuilding that's been converted into a cla.s.sroom. It's a pleasant, light, whitewashed room with chairs and there's a young woman with long dark hair and a trendy fringe, dressed in a white linen blouse and trousers. 'h.e.l.lo everyone, my name's Emma. I'm going to show you round today.'

'Not Emma Woodhouse, surely,' Mr Sole thinks he's so hilarious.

Emma smiles, though she's obviously heard it before, 'No, I'm not Emma Woodhouse or Emma Knightley.'

'But are you single though, miss?' shouts Mathew Relf.

'Mathew,' his mum looks furious.

'Not really relevant,' says Emma with a smile, but Mr Sole is shaking his head.

'No shouting out, and sensible questions only,' he says, 'do remember you're representing Portsmouth City Comprehensive.'

Portsmouth City Dump, more like.

Emma then gives a talk about Jane Austen's life at Chawton. 'This house was provided by her brother, Edward, who owned nearby Chawton House, which you can also visit. It's a much grander residence with a large hall for entertaining and a well-stocked library which Jane would often visit.

'It was a great relief for Jane to have this house at Chawton and it enabled her to concentrate on her writing. It was here during the last eight years of her life that she revised Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey, and also wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion.'

Emma takes us back out into the courtyard, round the back and through the front door which is at the side and probably wasn't the front door in Austen's day. We file through the shop and I'm watching Janine. Her left hand can't help reaching out to touch a Regency-style bonnet, and a Chawton eraser, and I can see she's really tempted by a quill just like Jane used to use but thankfully she places it back down.

Emma talks us through a Jane Austen timeline, detailing the big events Austen lived through; then it gets more interesting: a lock of hair, a ball and cup, ivory dominoes and Jane's silhouette. She really lived here. She really lived.

'And this is where she wrote,' says Emma, as we enter a lovely square room with a window of small-paned gla.s.s. And that is where she sat, by the window at a tiny wooden desk.

'Bit small, innit,' says Mathew Relf.

'That's all she needed,' says Emma, and then she tells us about the door and shows us how it creaks. 'Jane Austen wouldn't let anyone oil or mend the door, she liked to have a warning if her writing was about to be disturbed.'

Upstairs, we see the room where she slept and then there are the clothes, the tiny clothes.

'You are joking me?' says Chantal Thomas, her arms folded, as we stare at the mannequins dressed in Jane Austen's printed muslin dresses.

'Jane Austen wore that? I was bigger than that when I was eleven.'

A few people nod in agreement. Chantal Thomas has always been tall.

'I'm nearly six foot now,' she says, 'I've been scouted by Models One.'

'Oh, very impressive,' says Emma, 'but I have to say, I doubt any woman was as tall as you in Austen's day. You see, people weren't as well nourished as we are today. Okay, I'm going to take you out to the gardens now and we'll have a look at the kitchen and laundry.'

Everyone starts to move, shuffling down the stairs in a long, snaking line and out of the back door, but I don't want to go. There's something about this place. I want to stay and try to feel Jane Austen's presence. I can't do that with my schoolmates around so I hang back, check no one's noticed, and then scoot back into Jane's writing room.

I can see her there sitting at the window, watching friends and neighbours and the world in general all pa.s.sing by until she focuses in on her work in progress and her characters: Emma, Harriet, Mr Elton and Knightley- She had it sussed positioned herself perfectly. She could take in both the outside and inside, whoever was coming through the door. It's all so simple. She had all she needed a quiet little life and yet so much to say.

'Lucy, there you are, I've been looking for you,' Mr Sole is frowning. 'You upset my headcount. I couldn't think who was missing, and then I realised it was you yet again.'

'Sorry, sir, I just wanted to have another look.'

Mr Sole stops, his frown fades away. 'And what is it you see, Lucy?'

He's really interested, waiting to hear, waiting as long as it takes.

I look back at the room, from door to desk to window.

'I see that you need only a little s.p.a.ce, a tiny desk and a creaky door.'

My inspiration: Having visited the Jane Austen Museum at Chawton twice, once as a child and once as an adult with my own family, I wanted to look at how learning about Austen's life, where she lived and how she worked could inspire someone young.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MR COLLINS.

Mary Howell.

'Cup of tea, Charlotte? Black isn't it?'

'Lovely,' Charlotte smiled. They were practically friends. Eliza, the only woman she would trust to cut her hair, wayward curls that needed a firm hand. Charlotte smiled again before retreating under the pile of glossy magazines and the noise of the blower and a good half hour's staring. Weekly trips to Thin Lizzie's on the high street were the highlight of her quiet life; a constant round of light dusting, light shopping, light gardening, light strolls. Here, in Eliza's capable, manicured hands, she had her light trim, light set and, very occasionally, low lights to mask the incipient grey.

She found going to the hairdresser very pleasing. Nothing was expected of her as she sat inventing lives and intrigues for the other ladies reflected there and listening to the lop-sided conversations half drowned by mechanical sounds. The mirror in the salon was a perfect medium, allowing her to see the world yet to see only its reflection refracted many times, multifaceted yet flat like the pages of novels.

'Thought I'd buy ready-made and pa.s.s it off, save all that slog in the kitchen. Anyway I've clients till half six.' Eliza's hands-free phone was on constantly.

None of the ladies ever complained of inattention, so grateful perhaps to have a decent hairdresser in the village. She was pulling out curlers from the woman two seats down, running her hands through the fine grey, her red nails disappearing and reappearing rhythmically, repeatedly down the salon in smaller and smaller versions.

'Do you want hairspray, Gladys?'

The can was out in a flash, perhaps Gladys had commented on the windy day. Charlotte watched the slack lips move in the mirror but could not make out what they said. She imagined the hiss of the can and saw the cloud of fine spray.

Yes, definitely a hairspray day.

'She's not wearing hairspray '

'Oh yes she is,' and workmen looking meaningfully into the young girl's shopping basket and seeing Harmony.

'A face without a trace of make-up.'

Charlotte laughed out loud and Eliza turned and smiled. Charlotte could meet her eyes in the mirror and see the woman's lips move wordlessly in front of Eliza's smile and the little black microphone in front of her teeth.

'Well you make it then if you're so bothered.'

Charlotte imagined the other end of the line. A husband, athletic, handsome in an earthy way with a broad back that would ripple under Eliza's red nails, who loved Eliza's no nonsense approach to life. Perhaps this was an important business supper and the husband needed to impress in order to make that step up the ladder.

'If I don't die of boredom I'll kill you for inviting him.'

She could not help feeling that Eliza should be a little more sympathetic to the needs of her husband and his a.s.sociate. She could see her impudently picking her nails with her teeth at the table, fidgeting one slim leg over the other with a sc.r.a.pe of black stockings, to distract the men from their serious discussions. She was sure that, in Eliza's shoes, she would be more sensitive, she would know instinctively what was needed.

'A whole evening of Mr Collins would be fatal.'

The name made her focus and she was not often called in to the real world. For a delightful moment she imagined the clatter of a carriage, the rustle of silk and the appearance of the rector and his patron. She felt there was a place for her somewhere in the pages of this novel. Why else had she been christened Charlotte? The unmarried daughter of respectable, elderly parents now deceased, leaving their unmarried elderly daughter comfortably off but elderly and unmarried.

She was hot under her blower, with an uncomfortable sense that time had dislodged and been lost somewhere.

'Thanks very much, Gladys.'

The cash till registered with a ching, and a welcome rush of cool air as the door opened and closed, then relief when Eliza turned off the machine.

'Think you're cooked, Charlotte. You're all pink.'

Curlers dropped one by one onto the waiting trolley with a little click and Charlotte's hair recoiled.

'You'll have to ask someone else as well.' Eliza sounded almost petulant.

'Call me back will you.' Eliza moved the mouthpiece above her head. It looked like a hover fly, Charlotte thought.

'I could come and entertain Mr Collins for you.'