ABSTRACT
When I first met Elvige, through the Mayor of London’s office where she had a part-time job, I thought she would not be a good subject for this book. I had decided that while my parameters would be broad – to follow a group of young people who had either dropped out or were thought to be at risk of dropping out – she simply would not fit them. The day we met, Elvige had been taking a practical exam for her drama A-level, and hoped to do well: “I am not a person who gets C’s or D’s,” she told me with a sort of finality that brooked no possibility of slippage.
