Cover Page

Title Page

Praise

Acclaim for Barbara Vine’s

GRASSHOPPER

“Grasshopper is as skillful as anything this wonderful writer has done.... Vine excels at peeling back the layers of her characters’ personalities and exploring her themes.” —The Seattle Times

“Vine writes strikingly about London as seen from the rooftops, about the pleasures of being an electrician, about people’s tics and vanities and foibles. . . . Confident, thrilling, and provocative, the way literature ought to be.” —J. Robert Lennon, The Bookpress

“Multiple meanings emerge as the layers move freely from forefront to background, crashing and receding like waves, building to a subtle yet powerful crescendo. . . . This is a coming-of-age novel but an intriguingly conflicted one; there is a touch of Lord of the Flies pointing us one way, but there’s also a dash of Jane Austen demanding equal time. How’s that for psychological suspense?” —Booklist

“A vertiginous, atmospheric story of youthful misdemeanor and misfortune. . . . Few writers are as good as Barbara Vine at describing the experience of innocents in a complex and sporadically evil world.” —Times Literary Supplement

Author’s Note

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Although I have done my best to render the appearance, atmosphere, and architecture of Maida Vale and its environs in this novel, I have also allowed my imagination some play. Paddington Basin, the canal, the main streets, the churches, parks, and gardens are much as they are in reality, but Russia Road does not exist and, though these are typical and characteristic names for the area, there are no such places as Torrington Gardens, Peterborough Avenue, or Castlemaine Road.

Chapter 1

1

THEY HAVE SENT ME here because of what happened on the pylon. Or perhaps so that I don’t have to see the pylon every time I go out or even look out of a window.

“We’ve thought of selling this house and moving,” my father said. “Don’t think it hasn’t been in our minds. Still you won’t . . .”

He left the sentence unfinished, but I knew how he would have ended it. You won’t always be here, he’d meant to say. A girl of your age, you won’t live at home much longer, you’ll be off to college or a job, a home of your own. And out of sight, out of mind, he meant too. Gradually people will stop thinking of us as the parents of that girl, they’ll stop asking what kind of parents we were to bring up a girl who would do that, and they’ll stop staring and pointing us out. Especially if you don’t come home very often. Maybe they’ll think you’re dead. Maybe we’ll tell them you are.