Faiza, charismatic, outgoing and light-skinned, also sunk more easily into the social fabric of their almost-all-white school – though she went through a phase of telling people she was Italian. Speaking as someone who is actually of Italian extraction, I found this surprising and sad. ‘I sometimes used to get picked on for being Italian,’ I confided. ‘You know, for being swarthy.’ ‘It’s not quite the same,’ said Farrah. When I explained that this was a private boys’ school in the seventies, Farrah seemed to accept that the situations were more similar than she’d initially thought.
