Frost The Kings Head

The exhilarating celebration of female friendship from a startling new literary talent for 2026
Main
ISBN: 978-1-80546-239-2
Verlag: Atlantic Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten

A fierce story about friendship and competition set among London's forgotten girl gangs for fans of The Girls by Emma Cline _______________________ 'Compelling' THE TIMES 'The Kings Head's postwar era is clearly defined. But the questions it asks are eternal' OBSERVER 'A glorious tale of female friendship and rivalry' LUCIE McKNIGHT HARDY 'Wonderfully vivid, powerful and compelling' JOSEPH O'CONNOR 'A startling new talent' PETER JAMES _______________________ We never ran the place on paper, but we had reigned here as Kings, reigned over the world we created for ourselves. 1957, London. A gang of girls called the Kings rule the bomb-struck streets of Finsbury Park. When Harry, their unpredictable but charismatic leader, tries to encroach on the territory of the rival Seven Sisters gang, the Kings know they're in for a fight. Armed with flick knives and fists, they do battle in dancehalls and on football fields. But with the authorities closing in and conscripted boys threatening to reclaim what was once theirs, the Kings must ask if they're willing to pay the price of loyalty... __________________________ Readers are loving The Kings Head 'Fresh and exhilarating' 'Thoroughly enjoyed' 'Well-written' 'I would definitely recommend' 'Looking forward to reading more from Kelly Frost'

Kelly Frost grew up in Salisbury and lives and works in Jersey. She has an undergraduate degree in English from UCL and a Masters degree in American Literature from Oxford. The Kings Head is her first novel.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Frost, Kelly

Leseproben

ONE

1957

Tony had misplaced the balls – both of them. The other girls were livid, but Tony, swaying as she shut the front door behind her, was too drunk to care.

‘Come on, then, where did you last see them?’ Saint demanded, swatting Tony’s blazered arm, looking at the watch ticking away on Tony’s wrist. Less than an hour until the football match. The wind shifted the dried leaves, skittering them around their ankles. Tony pulled the hip flask to her lips for another gulp. ‘, Tone, for God’s sake. Are they somewhere in your flat?’ Saint looked up to the top-floor window.

‘Prob-ly not,’ Tony said, shrugging.

‘What about the park? Did you leave them there last week? In the hole near the gate?’

Tony shrugged again.

, the other girls chorused.

Saint threw up both hands in defeat.

‘Alright, alright. I give up. It’s not my bleeding fault she’s drunk for the Sunday football match, or that there’s no balls. But if the Kings lose, I’m blaming you.’ She started off down the street, the others gathering behind her.

‘ would fix it… if she was here,’ Leslie nodded, head bobbing up and down.

‘Well, she’s not,’ Jackie snapped back. Leslie punched her twin’s bicep; Jackie punched back, ever in unison. The twins were identical in both their features – with the same face shape, eye shape, sweep of home-permed brown curls – and their clothing choices. They wore the same scarf tied with the same knot, the same blazer and pin, trousers rolled to the same height above the ankle. It was uncanny (, Tony sometimes said), but neither of them cared. Instead, they revelled, in their own ways, in the security of sameness.

The terraced houses rose around them like greying, unsightly weeds, casting the streets into shadow-light nearly-darkness. Through a gentle wishwash of Sunday-afternoon strollers, the Kings walked to the Dent, a burnt-down carcass of a building that had once been a laundrette. On last year’s Guy Fawkes Night, a firework had gone astray and hurtled into the terrace. The fire that followed forged a new spot for the youth of North London to congregate. Since then, it had been left as it was, and life moved on around the street’s hollow – a permanent gap, undented by time. Piles of dust and rubble formed large, unraked molehills, and the charred timbers caused shadows to criss-cross and lace the dusty floors and remaining walls. Half-wasted rafters invited brave climbers to test them: cracked beams showed the results. The Dent didn’t look much out of place, with the war still writ large on the streets. Indents in pavements were the echoes of bombs; three stone steps and half a railing leading nowhere.

As the Kings milled around, kicking mounds of caked ash, chatting, filling the silent wreck, another one rushed in: Bert, breathless and blasting out words.

‘Have you heard?’

‘Heard what?’ Saint said, snapping up her head.

‘She’s back.’

‘She ?’ The twins clambered around each other to reach Bert, who wore the attention of fresh gossip like a cloak over her plainness.

‘I’ve her.’

‘Where?’ Saint placed a hand on Bert’s shoulder, her eyes darting around, half-expecting someone to jump out of the shadows.

‘Just… , you know. Like, earlier. Outside the arcade near Lennox. She looks… different.’

‘Different how?’ Jackie asked.

‘New suit, new hairdo, the whole works. It’s short and stiff, all put up and permed, with black slacks and jacket, and the shirt with the high collar that Les was eyeing up on the Row. It must have cost a fortune, even marked down. I don’t know where she’s got the money.’

‘She’s really back?’ Saint breathed out something deeper than relief. She held a shaking hand to her forehead, pushing back a curled fringe of dirty blonde hair, rearranging the wire-rimmed spectacles on her nose, as she let the thought intoxicate her:

.

Saint remembered the feeling of Harry’s approving glance, her lip curling upwards. To have Harry agree with something you said was a rush like no other. Everything else became irrelevant. The girls clustered around the idea of Harry, entranced: it was loyalty in its purest form, awe distilled.

Bert continued, spurred on by the spotlight, ‘She even said that she’s got a plan for the football match… she wants to mess the Seven Sisters around.’ She paused. ‘Harry wants their turf.’

‘You mean turf,’ Jackie butted in.

‘Why haven’t I heard anything about this?’ Saint asked. ‘Why didn’t she come to me? If she—’

‘How long’s she been out, then?’ Tony interrupted, springing up from where she was perched on a heap of bricks.

‘A couple days. Since Friday, I suppose.’ Bert crossed her arms.

‘Cor, two months in that hole.’

‘I know, but there’s no getting around the fact that…’ Bert looked up from the clump of rubble she was trying to crumble with her foot. The others waited for her to complete the sentence. ‘Well, the fact that it was her bleeding fault she went away in the first place.’ The clump broke apart, wind tugging at the wisps of brick dust.

The Kings stilled.

Tony threw the hip flask to the floor and shoved Bert square in the chest.

‘Take that back.’ She was wobbly on her feet already. It was only four in the afternoon; plenty of night remained for drinking away. ‘It was her fault. It just wasn’t.’ The others rolled their eyes: Tony defending her Harry, with a loyalty blind to logic. How many times had she told them about the day Harry chose to be a King: their disagreement, the cricket bat behind the shed, the blood in Harry’s teeth? Repeating it with the cadence of a prayer.

‘Bert’s right,’ Saint smirked. ‘You don’t get off lightly for coshing an old woman and locking toddlers in a bedroom, and then nicking half the candlesticks. She should have been more careful – it was stupid.’

‘She careful. Don’t you get it? It was that grassed her up.’ Tony turned to Saint. She grabbed her collar, scrunching the starch in her fist. Silence descended like a shot fowl to the ground.

It broke when a pack of young men rounded the corner in a sprint and skidded to a pause. Dark-skinned and wide-eyed, the four of them stared curiously at the girls in their slacks and blazers. Girls dressed like boys, rough like boys, wrestling like boys.

‘Oi, what’s your problem?’ Bert shouted at them. No one replied, their lungs beaten out of breath. The shortest had a cut on his forehead that he touched, looking at the blood on his fingertips. He watched one drip hit the floor, as if wondering how it got there.

‘They’ll be right behind,’ another whispered to the tallest.

‘Look, you can see us here, can’t you? Move on.’ Tony crossed her arms. Still, no reply. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Who are you lot, anyway? We’re hanging about here, can’t you see?’ Tony stepped closer to the tallest, puffing out her chest. She was tall, lanky, but her eyeline only skimmed his chin. ‘Where’re you from anyway?’

He grinned, teeth gleaming. A small chuckle escaped through them and he shook his head.

‘Whadcoat Street,’ the bleeding one piped up in a Caribbean accent.

‘Is that right?’ Tony arched her eyebrow. Everyone knew Whadcoat: a smoking clutter of a street, with cobbles of rooms, forgotten houses with rotting bricks, ripe for demolition. All of its residents had been born in different time zones, it was said.

Tony inched another foot closer, but heavy gravel-crunching from the corner of the Dent stopped her from doing whatever she thought she was about to do. Another gang poured into the lot. The Hackney Hackers: acne-scarred, milk-skinned and sooty, with the sharpest pleats in their suit trousers that she had ever seen.

When the Whadcoat gang saw the Hackers crunch into the Dent, which was now becoming particularly packed, they made a run for it, mowing through the Kings.

Tony, Bert and Saint shot off a chorus of and , flinging their hands at the retreating backs. Their voices were barely audible over the skirmish of Hackers continuing the chase. The boys trampled through the Dent, knocking aside the twins and darting off through the rafters to the alley behind. Some of the Hackers remained, idling in the corner and murmuring to themselves, lighting up cigarettes to pass a minute or two.

‘Who’s that lot, then?’ Tony strode towards the Hackers, raising her voice.

Marcus, the taller one, separated himself from the chat. He walked towards Tony and planted himself in front of her, his body as solid as a marble column. His heavy dapper coat hung down nearly to the floor. The collar, turned up to his ears, licked at his slicked-back hair. He carried himself with the surety of a boy who knew he was handsome – had heard it all his life. He lit a cigarette, slowly,...