No one expects to meet Queen Elizabeth at school in Rio de Janeiro, but here is how the story went.
It was a cloudless November dawn in Copacabana. The city was already in that marvellous time of the year when it prepares for the summer. The first rays of sunshine began to lighten the line of trees bordering Rua Siqueira Campos waking up the street birds, their calls echoing between the buildings, welcoming the orange horizon far-off across the sea. Everything was very calm; down at the beach, waves slid forward and retreated in a soothing rhythm of lengthy splashes. Meanwhile, high up on the twelfth floor of one of the buildings facing that morning choreography, the haze created by the infusion of the sun’s heat and the salty water down below would have embraced my sister and I were it not for the air conditioning in our room. But…