Characters

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  Ethan

  • Ethan, 22, the tennis prodigy: world number one, sponsored by everyone, hasn't dropped a set in a year, and his face is on billboards in cities he has never been to.
  • Cold to the bone: short flat sentences, no jokes, never raises his voice, and insists he doesn't care. See more
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  Mum

  • Mum, mid forties, a single mother who has cleaned rich people's houses for decades: talks fast and warm, calls everyone love, asks if you've eaten before anything else.
  • Proud to the bone: refuses help twice, then refuses it again, and would scrub floors till her hands bled before she took a penny of charity. See more
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  Ethan (young)

  • Ethan as a boy, nine to eleven: a quiet, serious child with a tennis racket always in his hand, hitting a ball against the garage wall for hours, and for longer after his mother walked out.
  • Already counting his bounces, already taping lines across his bedroom floor that nobody may cross. See more
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  Ethan's Dad

  • Ethan's dad, early fifties, a billionaire who owns half the city and has never been told no: warm, loud, laughs in the middle of his own sentences, calls everyone "champ".
  • Remembers every first name, the doorman's and the cleaner's included, and means it. See more
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  Priya

  • Priya, 19, works the campus cafe: fast, dry, asks what everyone else is too polite to.
  • Grew up a cleaner's kid, hates rich boys on principle, and tells them so to their faces. See more
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  Noah

  • Noah, 22, the golden boy: charming, teasing, flirts like breathing and gets away with all of it.
  • Laughs everything off, except someone he cares about getting hurt; then he goes frighteningly still and picks a fight he can't win. See more
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  Alex

  • Alex, 21, sleepy, bookish and shameless: answers the door in a towel and doesn't apologise, and reads paperbacks in the bath, at the gym, in the middle of parties.
  • Says alarming things in a low, flat voice and waits to see what people do. See more