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Tracy wasn't surprised that her dad disapproved of Kev, with his hair in spikes, his Dayglo socks and all the rest of his punk gear. But she liked the way he looked and enjoyed going round with him. Besides, she was determined to have a good time before she had to get some boring job and settle down, like her sister Mary.

That was why the trip to Holland seemed such a great idea. Of course it was Kev who suggested it, and Tracy knew that her parents would never let her go off with Kev, just the two of them. On the other hand, if there was a whole bunch of them going, including her friend Karen and some of the others from school, Dad might - just might - say yes.

As things turned out, persuading Dad to say yes was only the beginning of her troubles. In fact so much went wrong that it was hard, afterwards, to remember the good bits, and it wasn't until the whole awful business was over that Tracy realised she should have seen what was going on all along.

Lynne Reid Banks was born in London, the daughter of a Scots doctor and an Irish actress. During the war she was evacuated to the Canadian Prairies and on her return to England she studied acting at R. A.D. A.. She worked for several years with various repertory companies all over the country and wrote a number of plays which were performed both on stage and television. She then took up journalism, becoming one of the first women reporters on British television, with the ITN. In 1961 she went to live in a kibbutz in Israel but returned to live in England. Her first novel, The L-shaped Room , was a bestseller which was later filmed; her other novels include An End To Running , Children At The Gate , The Backward Shadow and Two Is Lonely . She has also written a study of the Brontë s called Dark Quartet , published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, three novels for teenagers, One More River (Vallentine Mitchell), Sarah And After and My Darling Villain , both published by The Bodley Head and a number of successful children's books. She is married to sculptor Chaim Stephenson, and they have three sons.