Location from Work in Progress by Kat Mackenzie
A rickety, temperamental tour bus that smells like old upholstery and tea — the unlikely vessel for a three-week journey across Britain and the found family that forms inside it.
The bus is less a vehicle and more a living room on wheels. It smells like tea, biscuits, old books, and whatever Bertha's waterproof jacket has been exposed to. The acoustics are such that every conversation is everyone's conversation, which means privacy is extinct and gossip travels at the speed of sound. Over three weeks it becomes the most important location in the story — the place where Alice stops being a tourist and becomes part of something. Arguments happen here, confessions happen here, the slow thaw between Alice and Robbie happens here in the space between his driver's seat and her usual spot three rows back. The bus breaks down at narratively convenient moments and somehow always starts again.
Old and characterful in the way estate agents call 'full of potential.' The paint is faded, the seats are worn velvet in a color that was probably burgundy once, and the engine makes sounds that Robbie interprets like a language. There's a tea station wedged behind the driver's seat, a shelf of dog-eared paperbacks along one wall, and a hand-lettered sign in the windscreen reading PAGES & PLACES LITERARY TOUR. The heating works when it wants to.
Also known as: The Bus, Pages & Places Bus, The Tour Bus