Author(s): Jacqueline Wilson

Children's fiction

Fourteen-year-old Prue and her sister Grace have been educated at home by their controlling, super-strict father all their lives. They know they are different to 'normal' girls but their attempts to find out what being an ordianry teenager are like - buying nice clothes instead of wearing Mum's odd hand-made garments, reading teenage magazines etc - are greeted with fury by their Dad. But when Dad has a stroke and ends up in hospital, unable to move or speak, Prue suddenly discovers what it's like to have a little freedom.

Unable to cope with their education and a sick husband, the girls' mother sends them to the local comp and they experience school life for the first time. Prue had never thought it would be so bitchy and that she'd find it so hard to fit in. The only person she can talk to is her kindly, young, handsome Art teacher, Rax. She and Rax bond over art lessons, and soon he asks to babysit for his young children while he and his wife have a night out on a Friday. This becomes a regular 'date' and Prue can't wait for the ten minutes they have along together as he drives her home. As her feelings for Rax develop, she begins to realise that perhaps he feels the same way about her. But he can't act upon them, can he?

An absorbing portrait of a forbidden relationship for teenage readers from the mega bestselling Jacqueline Wilson. First published 2005.