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straightaway.
     
    Dear Fred,
    This is the first of a series of letters describing the horrors of travel in the 21st century. I am upstairs in my tragic little bedroom, packing. I ’m only packing black clothes, of course. I shall be in mourning throughout this doomed trip. I shall pose picturesquely against haunted ruins, at sunset, with ravens in my hair, utterly deranged and occasionally muttering, ‘ Fred . . . Fred . . . ’
    I t ’s a shame you have n ’t got a slightly more tragic name. I mean – Fred. Not much grandeur there. I think I shall rename you. How about Archibald? Or would you prefer Hamlet? Hamlet Parsons – it has a certain ring.
    I ’m bracing myself for an early start. My mum has O D ’d on history guidebooks and I dread wha t ’s in store: ‘ Jess, are you listening? Here is the stone where King Egbert the Hard-boiled was mashed up with mayonnaise by the Vikings in the year 809. And this is the tower where St Kylie received the Sacred Acne. In this garden Prince Flatulent proposed to Lady Isabel Ginger-Niblets in 1678. And this flower commemorates their love, as well as being a cure for severe halitosis. I t ’s called the lesser spotted stinkweed. Rub some on your gums and feel it tingle ! ’
    So, my dear Hamlet, tomorrow morning I shall be wrenched away from the divine city where you live. I shall be dragged screaming down country lanes infested with thundering herds of squirrels and things.
    But you – you will be left here undefended against evil. Beautiful girls will pass you in the street, giving you saucy sidelong glances. They will be playing tennis gracefully whenever you walk in the park, flashing their bronzed elbows seductively in the sunshine. How will you ever hold out?
     
    There was one local girl in particular that Jess was worried about. Flora, of course. She and Fred might not need the romantic setting of a campfire at a festival. They might just bump into each other in the High Street and go for a coffee, and one thing might lead to another.
    Eventually Jess prayed briefly for God to smite all the local girls with boils, and make Flora smell like a rubbish bin full of rotting cabbage – just for the duration of Jess’s holiday. Then she went back to her packing.

Chapter 9
    Next day they started early. Normally at 8.15 a.m. (in the holidays, anyway) Jess would have been turning over in bed and sinking luxuriously into a dream about being chased around dark city streets by an ape in a tutu. But today, by 8.15 a.m. they were already driving down the motorway.
    ‘Oh, look at the sky! Have you ever seen such blue!’ cried Jess’s mum hysterically. Her normal character, mostly stern and anxious, seemed to have been replaced by a disconcerting, deranged joy.
    This happened occasionally when her mum had a chance to wallow in nature or history. History and nature were clearly going to loom large on this trip. Jess sighed.
    ‘Blue is my favourite colour!’ Mum went on, as if she hadn’t already done it justice. ‘So many lovely things are blue. Sapphires . . . the sea . . .’
    ‘What’s your favourite colour, Jess?’ asked Granny from the front passenger seat.
    ‘Black,’ said Jess. She was dressed from head to toe in black.
    ‘Oh, that black thing is just a phase!’ said her mum. ‘You’ll grow out of it.’
    Jess made immediate plans to wear nothing but black for the rest of her life. She would even get married in black (if indeed she ever got married). She would wear a long dress in black satin, carry a bouquet of black flowers, wear jet earrings and a deep black veil, and on her shoulder she would display her pet raven, Nero.
    Fred would wear white, though. She hoped it would be Fred she was marrying, anyway. She certainly couldn’t imagine herself ever marrying anyone else. Yes, Fred would wear a white suit, white shoes and a white rose in his buttonhole. And possibly, for that final little weird touch, white contact lenses.
    Jess spent the next hour