The next Monday morning Bard got up at an ungodly hour to catch the bus, shivered at the stop, nodded to the man behind the wheel, then spent a half-hour hunched over a composition book, scratching away with a stubby pencil in his cramped handwriting.

“What are you writing?” A melodious voice.

Bard started and then looked up and saw two earnest, black-lined blue eyes set in an angular face, a red mouth set in a cheeky expression, a mane of blonde hair sticking out in unruly waves. She was leaning over the back of the seat in front of him, her hands with black-painted fingernails draped over it as she peered down at him.

“Words,” he said, then exaggeratedly studied the page of his notebook, said “Words,” pointed at a line, said, “words,” another line, “words.”

She rolled her eyes in a way that reminded him of Cass. “All right, Prince Hamlet, I’ll leave you to it then.”

And, abruptly, she turned and slid back down into her seat.

Bard frowned, trying to think of something to say to show he appreciated her understanding his reference. But what was some girl with a posh accent, looking like she did, doing talking to him?

Bollocks. He took a deep breath and just came out with it. “My name is Isambard,” he said to her back.

She turned back to him and raised one black-penciled eyebrow. “Well met, Isambard. I see we both have parents with delusions of grandeur. My name is Victoria, but please don’t ever call me that.”

“What should one call you then?”

“Victory. Never Vicky.”

Bard smirked. “Victory.”

She smiled. “A girl’s gotta make her own way in this big bad world. Victory Palmer.”

“Palmer?”

“You’re just going to repeat what I say to you, eh? Yes, those Palmers.”

“Your father is my father’s boss,” he said. “Roger Fox is my father.”

“Well, well, well.” She paused, her eyes turning skyward for a moment. “Isambard Fox—a hero of the Wilthrop fire, weren’t you?”

Bard’s shoulders went stiff. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“Some would. But I hear you, mate.”

“Right,” he said.

She glided past the moment to the one before. “Is that where you’re going, then? Intern orientation day?”

“Oh. Yeah,” Bard said. “You got pulled into it, too?”

She changed her posture, tucking in her chin, squaring her shoulders. “It’s the family business, darling, and you have to learn something about it. You can’t just fritter away at your little drawings all your life.”

“You draw?”

“A bit. Graphic arts are more my thing.”

“What do you draw?”

She smiled again, close-lipped. “What do you write?”

He hesitated for a moment, then handed her his notebook, though half his life was on its pages, more than half, since he lived more in words than in the world.

She took it and began to read. “The sorry state of Miltonian culture was on full anemic display Friday night at the Cog and Wheel as The Fuzz couldn’t be said to have taken the stage so much as to have been swallowed up by it—”

“Not out loud!” Bard whispered, looking around the bus. “My contributions MMW are anonymous.”

“Why? Are you hiding something? If that’s what you think, let it be known that you think it.”

“Thank you for the life advice, girl I just met.”

Unexpectedly, she laughed. “Don’t mind me. It’s the Palmer arrogance. Doing my best to cast it off.” She flipped the pages of his composition book, making the air blow into her face. “But I saw The Fuzz last Friday too. They weren’t that bad. What’s the point of slagging them off?” She opened his notebook where her thumb landed. “Oh! Perhaps this is a clue! What have I found here? Lyrics?”

He snatched it back from her and she didn’t resist. 

“So you’re insulting them because it makes you feel superior?” she asked.

“No,” he said evenly. “I’m insulting them because I am superior.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What’s your band called, then?”

He didn’t bother to look abashed. “I haven’t got one—yet.”

She laughed again, a hearty country manor kind of laugh. “Well, why not?”

“I have this bloody internship, for one thing.”

“Oh, that’s never an excuse. Einstein was working at the patent office when he came up with the theory of relativity, you know.”

Bard almost snapped, Well, I’m not Einstein, but thankfully thought the better of it. He closed his eyes briefly and sighed. “Why are you on the bus, anyway?” he asked. “I wouldn’t expect Daddy Palmer likes his daughter mingling with the hoi polloi.”

“Oh, he doesn’t like it,” she said. “But I told him that if I’m going to do this bloody boring internship, I’m going to do it like everyone else does.”

“You are truly a champion of the common man—and woman.”

“Oh do fuck off,” she said, but she smiled as she said it, and Bard gave a little sniff of laughter in response.