The punk PRINCESS

Tina froze on the top stair leading down to the communal hallway. Why did it have to creak so loudly?

Since she’d moved into the one-bedroom flat on the second floor of a Victorian conversion a week before, the elderly woman in the ground-floor flat had tried to start a conversation with her four times. The noisy stairs made it impossible to sneak out.

The last thing Tina wanted, as she started her big adventure living in London, was to be befriended by a 70-year-old. The whole point of coming to live in the big city at the age of 30 had been to experience some of the excitement she’d missed out on during her 20s, when she’d been trapped in a dead-end job in a small town.

After 12 years answering phones and dealing with complaining customers, she’d finally plucked up the courage to apply