COPYRIGHT

  First published in 2026 by Farshore

  an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

  farshore.co.uk

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper,

  Dublin 1, D01 C9W8, Ireland

  Text copyright © 2026 Farhana Islam

  Illustrations copyright © 2026 Simran Diamond Singh

  The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted.

  PB ISBN 978 0 00 864001 9

  Ebook ISBN 978 0 00 864002 6

  Version: 2025-12-02

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Without limiting the exclusive rights of any author, contributor or the publisher of this publication, any unauthorised use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expressly prohibited. HarperCollins also exercise their rights under Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790 and expressly reserve this publication from the text and data mining exception.

  NOTE TO READERS

  This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

  Change of font size and line height

  Change of background and font colours

  Change of font

  Change justification

  Text to speech

  Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008640019

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  About the Publisher

  ‘Pencils down, please,’ Miss Khan announced as she sat up from her desk. ‘And complete silence until the last test paper has been collected, thank you.’

  I glanced over at my best friends, Mobeen and Reema, as I slumped back into my seat and let out the

  BIGGEST sigh – the kind you do sitting on the toilet after holding in your wee all day. Reema winked at me and fist-pumped the air as she handed her test paper to Miss Khan while Mobeen continued to secretly scribble away with a tiny nub that was once his pencil.

  One by one, Miss Khan tucked all of our test papers under her arm. I could hear Reema’s fingers drumming on the table, the creaking of Mobeen’s chair as he swung back on it to get a closer look at the clock. It felt like time had just stopped. That was until a GINORMOUS smile spread across Miss Khan’s face. ‘Congratulations, Year Six, you –’

  ‘HURRAAAY!’ we all cheered at once.

  It was a big jumble of emotions. Some of the class jumped up on to their chairs, all excited, while others sobbed, glad it was all finally over. Me? I just sat there like a pile of melted ice cream.

  ‘Thank God that’s done!’ Mobeen exclaimed, looking at the many patches of sweat on his jumper.

  I nodded in agreement. No more exams (at least, not until high school, but let’s not talk about that).

  No more meltdowns in the school toilets.

  No more stress itching over BIDMAS, and most importantly . . .

  No more past, present, perfect or progressive tenses.

  Even Bilal the Bully looked like he WASN’T thinking of putting someone’s head down the toilet for once.

  ‘The page at the back was SO hard, right?’ Reema announced as she attempted to calculate her score on her fingers.

  Mobeen’s jaw dropped, ‘THERE WAS A PAGE AT THE BACK?!’

  Several people gasped and Miss Khan’s eye began to twitch.

  ‘I actually thought that was quite fun.’ Nosey Nancy chimed in as she playfully swung on her chair. ‘Maybe we could do some more practice questions to celebrate –’

  ‘NO!’ We all blurted out at once, Miss Khan included.

  ‘Or,’ Miss Khan quickly added, ‘perhaps we could now focus our attention on something a little more exciting and well deserved . . .’

  Instantly, our eyes darted to the poster taped to the back of the classroom door.

  6K’s POST-EXAM PARTY BONANZA!

  Ice cream van on the school yard

  Use the climbing apparatus for PE

  Water balloon fight

  Indoor bouncy castle

  School discoPizza partyPyjama dayiPad timeExtra playtime

  As far as lists go, this was a pretty AWESOME one, and boy do we deserve it.

  Boy, do I ESPECIALLY deserve it.

  The last few days have been more STRESSFUL than trying to get my Nana to walk on to a moving escalator.

  STRESSFUL THINGS:

  • Finding out school isn’t actually over

  • Forgetting how to spell my name

  • Circling an answer instead of underlining it

  • Being escorted to the toilet (and getting stage fright)

  • Bilal the Bully telling everybody that if you failed the tests, you’d have to repeat primary school all over again

  But now it was finally over, we had plans.

  BIG PLANS. ‘Can we do the pizza party first, please?’ Oscar bounced out of his seat and pleaded with Miss Khan. ‘My mum doesn’t let me have cheese at home because she thinks it makes me extra gassy, but I think she’s wrong, I think it just makes me a regular amount of gassy.’

  ‘Well –’ started Miss Khan, before suddenly the classroom phone started ringing. She seemed very relieved for the distraction, telling us to keep brainstorming while she answered it.

  ‘Can the water balloon fight be teachers vs kids?’ Owen suggested quickly, smirking as Bilal the Bully nodded in agreement.

  Chairs scraped noisily as we huddled together to plan how we wanted to spend the next few days.

  ‘I’m not sure I can go on another bouncy castle after, you know, the Incident,’ I whispered to Mobeen and Reema as I glanced over at the list.

  It was 2022, and the unplanned Eid party at Reema’s house was CHAOS. Her ammu had set up a GIGANTIC bouncy castle that she got second-hand from a dusty van in the middle of Uddin Fried Chicken’s car park. We should have known better, but there we were, flipping higher and higher AND HIGHER, until suddenly . . . POP! DOWN came the walls. WE WERE TRAPPED. Fighting for our lives. I wasn’t even sure we’d make it out. Our ammus had to carry us out like babies. And to make things ONE HUNDRED times worse, people at school somehow found out about it.

  They called us ‘the bouncing babies’ for a whole year.

  I still get nightmares.

  ‘Definitely no bouncy castles,’ we all agreed.

  Excitedly, we all talked over each other, trying to come up with a plan, until Miss Khan very loudly shushed us all.

  ‘I heard the clowns at Fisbo’s Circus like to hide in th—’ began Owen.

  All of a sudden, there was a WHOOSH, as the test papers Miss Khan was holding scattered on to the floor.

  Everybody fell silent.

  Miss Khan pressed the phone harder into her hijab, her eyes wide with fear as the smile slipped from her face.

  ‘Miss,’ I said quietly. ‘Are you okay?’

  After a few seconds, Miss Khan put the phone down into a plant pot and fell back into her swivel chair, rolling over our test papers. For a little while, she just sat there, staring into space.

  ‘Miss Khan?’

  ‘Miss Khan?!’ we all shouted. Nosey Nancy and Poppy began waving their hands in her face, until finally, she gasped and breathed out two words.

  ‘THEY’RE COMING.’

  The next morning, the sound of Mr Aku’s voice echoed through his megaphone as Mobeen, Reema and I walked through the school gates.

  ‘Everybody inside!’ our headteacher shrieked as all of the teachers opened their classroom doors at once. ‘NOW!’ he screamed even louder as he ran across the yard like a squawking bird, scaring all the nursery kids.

  ‘Are we late?’ I asked anxiously as we hurried towards our usual spot. I already had two late marks this month and nothing good will come from having another.

  ‘I didn’t even brush my teeth this morning, so if anything, we should be early,’ Reema insisted, just as confused as I was.

  As we got closer to the classroom door, I noticed that things were looking different. In fact, I glanced back just to make sure we had actually walked through the school gates, and not some kind of portal into another universe.

  ‘Look!’ Reema gasped as she pointed. ‘The fence we got our head stuck in . . . It’s fixed!’

  My jaw DROPPED. It’s been almost five years since that happened. We still hold a minute’s silence there every year.

  ‘So is the pothole by the allotments!’ Mobeen announced as he scratched his head, ‘Where will the ants go now? You can’t just go and take somebody’s home like that!’< br />
  And that wasn’t all.

  Miss Khan, who usually wears the same brown hijab with a hole punched into the corner and the same abaya that she has in five different colours, was standing in front of our classroom door wearing her FANCY hijab (with NO holes) and her special embroidered abaya. She only ever wears it for school picture day, or parents’ evening. And I was one hundred per cent sure it was neither.

  Quickly, Miss Khan ushered us inside and locked the door.

  ‘Coats on pegs, bags AWAY, books in trays – as fast as you can, everybody!’ she squealed without taking a breath, her voice higher pitched than usual.

  ‘We have FIFTEEN minutes, children . . . FIFTEEN MINUTES!’

  Until what? I wondered as I ran to the cloakroom and back. Whatever it was, it had Miss Khan spooked.

  Back in the classroom, instead of everybody sitting at their desks doing their times tables worksheets like we usually do, a crowd had formed around Miss Khan.

  ‘Somebody clean the snack tray . . . and bin that mouldy apple!’ Miss Khan shouted.

  Barney shoved the mouldy apple in his pocket.

  ‘Wash out those paint pots! Get rid of the half-eaten crayons!’

  The list continued. One by one, EVERYBODY was given a job to do.

  ‘There isn’t enough time!’ Nancy panicked, as she leaned over Miss Khan’s desk with a green pen, highlighting the learning labels on a mountain of exercise books.

  It wasn’t the first time Miss Khan had asked Nosey Nancy to finish marking books.

  ‘The glue-stick lids are missing again, Miss!’ Poppy yelled as she frantically ducked under one table to another.

  ‘FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WE’VE RUN OUT OF PAPER TOWELS!’ Oscar shrieked as he threw his school jumper on his desk and began wiping furiously.

  Miss Khan zoomed around the classroom like a tornado, grabbing dried-up felt-tip pens, broken rulers and old, forgotten PE kits, and shoving them into a cupboard that looked like it was ready to burst.

  ‘Barney, don’t make me say it again, take that ridiculous hat off! Oh and Mobeen, please can you hide – I mean, gather your exercise books and put them in the cupboard?’ she yelled.

  ‘Yes, miss!’ Mobeen quickly picked up his pile of exercise books and headed towards the cupboard. ‘On the same shelf as last time?’

  The classroom door suddenly swung open and Mr Aku appeared out of nowhere.

  Okay, something was DEFINITELY going on.

  Instead of his usual, wrinkled brown suit, Mr Aku was also wearing something different, like Miss Khan: a bright red bow tie and a fancy tailcoat. I tried hard not to, but I couldn’t help staring because he looked like some kind of magician. His shoes were shinier than my forehead after bath time and a whole tub of Vaseline.

  But, believe it or not, Mr Aku’s clothes definitely weren’t the strangest part.

  ‘What happened to his face?’ I whispered quietly to Reema.

  ‘I dunno. He looks like a penguin. But I think he’s . . . SMILING?’ Reema suggested, completely flabbergasted. ‘He is . . . He is!’ she added. ‘He’s smiling . . . at us?’

  It was true. Instead of his usual scary frown, Mr Aku’s face was stretched into a stiff smile, like it had been sewn on. Which was somehow even MORE terrifying.

  We both shivered at once.

  Mr Aku stopped in front of us and looked around the classroom, his eyes jumping between Nancy, still marking books; Melvin, who was standing on a desk stapling the display boards in place; and Mobeen, as he desperately tried to squeeze the cupboard door shut. Everyone else had frozen in place.

  ‘Is everything . . . under . . . control?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow at Miss Khan, the eerie smile slipping from his face and the vein on his forehead starting to throb.

  Uh oh. Things are NEVER good when Mr Aku’s vein throbs.

  ‘Erm, I-I-think so . . .?’ Miss Khan’s voice cracked. She breathed in through her nose, shook her head and clapped her hands together. ‘Okay, everybody, back to your seats, it’s time . . . Mr Aku and I need to talk to you all about something VERY important.’

  We all hurried to our desks as Miss Khan and Mr Aku stood at the front of the class with a SERIOUS look on their faces.

  And there was that strange smile from Mr Aku again.

  ‘It has come to my attention that this class has made plans to abandon the school curriculum in a bid to, what’s the word . . . “celebrate” completing compulsory school exams,’ Mr Aku began, his voice sharp.

  Miss Khan stood beside him, looking slightly guilty.

  ‘And while I somewhat understand this childish need,’ Mr Aku went on, ‘these kinds of “FUN” and “EXCITEMENT” can be dangerous distractions in our school day. ESPECIALLY today.’’

  We all blinked as he walked over to our ‘6K’s POST EXAM PARTY BONANZA!’ poster, peeled it off the classroom door and folded it into his pocket.

  ‘Because today, children – today is special.’

  Nobody said a word.

  ‘Today,’ said Mr Aku, ‘there will be some very important GOVERNMENT officials coming to inspect Western Primary, and we need to – NO, we MUST make an EXCELLENT impression.’

  Reema glanced at me over her shoulder. I shrugged. What on earth is a ‘government official’? A spy? It sounded like a spy.

  ‘We MUST be STRICT, PROFESSIONAL, OUTSTANDING, EXEMPLARY . . . and most importantly, YOU MUST not embarrass ME.’

  Mr Aku puffed up his chest and smirked.

  ‘So I regret,’ he said, ‘I regret to inform you that your post-exam party bonanza is officially . . . CANCELLED.’

  The entire classroom erupted into gasps of horror. Mobeen clutched at his heart. I did too. Reema stood up in defiance and very quickly sat back down when Mr Aku caught her eye.

  He looked completely unfazed by our reactions as he nodded away to himself.

  ‘There will be NO ice cream,’ he said.

  ‘NO disco dancing.

  ‘NO bouncy castle.

  ‘And certainly NO PIZZA.’

  I wanted to throw up. We had worked so hard. Nobody knew what to say.

  ‘B-b-but, sir, can we –’ Nancy begged, finally breaking the silence and trying to negotiate. She was our only shot.

  ‘No,’ Mr Aku interrupted.

  ‘But I didn’t fi—’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  She hopelessly sighed and sank back into her seat, her cheeks blushing pink.

  Miss Khan stroked Poppy’s hair as Poppy quietly sobbed.

  ‘I know it isn’t what we had planned.’ Miss Khan spoke softly, avoiding eye contact with Mr Aku, who narrowed his eyes but said nothing. ‘But we have a . . . wonderful’ – she cringed – ‘a wonderful opportunity to show these inspectors how absolutely fantastic you all are.’

  None of us responded. Miss Khan sighed. She DEFINITELY didn’t believe her own words, and she was clearly just as disappointed as we were.

  ‘I know it all seems unfair,’ she whispered as Mr Aku replied to the voice coming from his walkie talkie and swiftly headed out the door, ‘but maybe, after the inspectors are blown away by your EXCEPTIONAL behaviour, we could plan a day trip to . . . shall we say . . . Fisbo’s Circus?’

  As we all sat up, Mr Aku suddenly barged back into the classroom.

  ‘You, you and you!’ he yelled, pointing his finger at me, Reema and Mobeen. ‘Follow me, now!’

  This time, I actually did throw up a little inside my mouth. I couldn’t even get out of my seat because my bones had turned into soup. Just by looking at Mobeen and Reema, I knew they felt exactly the same.

  Sensing our pure panic, Miss Khan nodded reassuringly at us. And one by one, our chairs scraped against the floor as we headed to what felt like our execution.

  Everybody stared at us as we made our way out the door.

  Barney nervously scratched his hat and waved us goodbye.

  ‘It was nice knowing you,’ Melvin whispered, shaking his head.

  ‘You will be remembered for your sacrifice,’ said Thomas as he saluted us.

  ‘Don’t say anything without a lawyer,’ Oscar quietly advised.

  My sweaty fingers slipped off the handle as I shut the door. We followed Mr Aku down the corridor and into the school library.

  Think, Mina . . . think, I said to myself, trying to figure out what our crime was.

  But I kept coming up blank. We had been on our best behaviour for the last couple of weeks because Ammu promised that if we didn’t get a phone call home for the rest of the school year, Mobeen and Reema could come on holiday with us to Bangladesh.

 

1 2 3 4 5