PROLOGUE
April 1962
Frank spotted her out of the front window as the bus pulled up at Clapham Common Station.
She was standing at the bus stop, wearing a pair of wide-legged trousers, what looked like a man’s tweed jacket, and a black beret, set on a sideways angle to reveal a shock of red hair underneath. The whole ensemble was unlike anything he’d ever seen a girl wear before, both boyish and feminine at the same time. From his seat at the front of the top deck, Frank saw a flash of green eyes under the beret and felt his heart quicken.
The 88 stopped and the girl boarded, disappearing from view. Frank could hear the conductor downstairs greeting passengers as they paid their fares, and he imagined the girl taking a ticket and finding a seat on the lower deck. Should he move downstairs? He paused, struck with indecision. And then he felt a movement behind him and caught a glimpse of tweed to his right. Frank kept very still, his head facing the front window, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girlsit in the vacant seat across the aisle from him. She put her bag down by her feet, closed her eyes, and let out an audible sigh.
The bus pulled away from the stop and set off up Clapham High Street. The girl didn’t move from her position or open her eyes, so Frank was able to steal glances at her. He guessed that she was slightly younger than him, maybe eighteen or nineteen, although she held herself with the confidence of someone twice her age. She was surprisingly tall, with a long, slender neck and a sharp, pointed chin. Her skin was so pale it looked like porcelain, and up close he could see that her hair was the color of the orange marmalade his parents sold in their shop. As the bus approached Stockwell, she still hadn’t moved and Frank was beginning to wonder if she’d fallen asleep, when all of a sudden she opened her eyes and turned her head toward him.
“Do you make a habit of staring at girls on the bus?”
Frank was so taken aback that he felt himself blush.
“Oh, I’m... eh...” he stumbled, sounding like the schoolboy he suddenly felt like. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at him with her olive green eyes, and Frank saw a flicker of amusement dance across her face. Oh god, she was laughing at him. “It’s rude, you know. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”
“I’m sorry,” Frank said again. His pulse was racing, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out his book, desperate to end this excruciating moment. He could feel her watching him, so he hurriedly turned to a random page and pretended to read.
“What’s the book, then?” she asked.
“Eh... it’sOn the Road.By Jack...” He hesitated, unsure how to pronounce the surname. “Ker-ooh-ick.”
“Any good?”
At once, Frank had an urgent sense that how he answered this question was vital; that he had one chance to make up for the terrible first impression he’d made. But the problem was, he really didn’t like the book. He’d been lent it by a friend who loved all things American and had ordered it all the way from New York. His friend had raved about the book’s modern style and said something about Beat poets, but Frank had been struggling with its chaotic and strange narrative and had barely got past the first ten pages.
“Yes, it’s great. It’s from America. The author is part of the Beat generation.”
Frank hoped that sentence made him sound grown-up and sophisticated, but he saw she still had that same faintly amused expression on her face.
“What happens in it?”
“Oh. Well, he goes on a journey. On the road.”
“Yes, I’d got that much from the title. Then what?”
“He meets some people and goes to parties and... eh...”
Frank tried to remember what else he’d been told about the book, but this girl was making his brain turn to jelly. She was watching him silently, with no intention of putting him out of his misery.
“To be honest, I’ve not got very far with it yet,” he said, and heard a sigh of defeat in his own voice.
The girl didn’t say anything, just reached into her bag, pulled out a large notebook and pencil, and began to scribble something down. Frank waited for her to speak again but realized with a sinking sensation that she’d got bored of him and their conversation was over.
The bus trundled on, up South Lambeth Road toward Vauxhall Junction. Frank desperately wanted to observe hersome more, but whenever he glanced over, she seemed to sense it and looked back at him, so he resigned himself to staring out the front window instead. He was painfully aware that she might get off at any moment, and as they approached each bus stop, he held his breath in case this was the one. But she didn’t leave, and the only sound was the scratch of her pencil on the paper.
Finally, when he could bear it no longer, Frank turned back to her.
“What are you writing?”
“What’s that?” she said, not looking up from the page.
“I said, what are you writing?”
“I’m not.”
