It was a bright morning. Prue had done her homework before leaving Norfolk and had printed off a street map covering the immediate area. London was a huge place, pretty daunting for a girl like her, and the last thing she wanted was to get lost. She’d looked up the local bus routes too, to find out what landmarks might be within easy reach. But first she fancied a stroll along the main road outside and a peek down a few of the side turnings, to get her bearings and track down the nearest shops and cafés.

She closed the front door and hovered for a moment on the steps. Should she try to the right first, or to the left? A bus was coming into view. A real, red London double decker, so different from the little green local bus that came through the village just twice a day, and went into town and back again on Saturday nights. She gazed at it in awe, whipping her small digital camera out of her pocket and taking several photos in quick succession and from different angles as it came closer. Although the bus was red she could already imagine how it might look in black and white, an iconic, unchanging image of a city she had only ever seen in pictures. Oh, wow! There was going to be so much here in the capital that she would love to capture, as a reminder, a record. Who knew when, or if, she would ever spend time here again? Next time she came out she would bring her bag with her proper camera, and some of her lenses, although just the thought of it made her shoulder ache after yesterday’s struggle with the suitcase.

She watched the bus sail by, the occupants mostly staring ahead or busy reading papers, just one small face pressed against the glass and sticking its tongue out at her as it passed. She laughed and stuck her own tongue out in reply, then stepped down onto the pavement and set off in the same direction.

There was a row of shops on the first corner she came to. An off licence, currently closed, but it was only half past nine. A newsagent’s cum post office and card shop, with a pillar box outside. A small Co-Op, with a lottery advert on the door. An old-fashioned hairdresser’s with a price list stuck to the window, offering cheap cuts for pensioners and half-price perms on Tuesdays. And, across the road, a kebab place with faded pictures of its meal choices, showing that they did chips and burgers too. She didn’t stop, but it was good to know that anything she was likely to need in a hurry was within yards of her door.

Five minutes later she came to the first of several coffee shops, dotted among lots of larger shops and offices. She went into the third one, which looked cleaner and brighter than the rest, and bought herself a cup to take away, baffled by the enormous range of what, when it came down to it, was just coffee by different names, in varying strengths and degrees of milkiness, and shocked at the prices. She chose a bun with icing on top to go with it, the filling effect of her meagre portion of cereal having already worn off. A black iron gate to her left led through to a small square park, hidden away behind the buildings, mostly laid to grass with some cut-back rose bushes in neatly weeded beds and a series of wooden benches placed at regular intervals along the circular path. She sat down on one at the far end and shared some crumbs from her bun with a hungry pigeon and a couple of sparrows brave enough to venture right up to her feet.