Alice Penrose

Alice Penrose is sixteen and edits the school paper at Seabrook Secondary. She is Mr Penrose’s grand-niece, and the only person who calls him Uncle Arthur.

Mr Penrose once said that she wrote for the paper, and was corrected. She runs it with the rigour of a Fleet Street editor on the budget of a jumble sale, and anything said in her hearing should be regarded as on the record.

Her method is to build a picture from public records before going anywhere near a source. Companies House takes her about twelve seconds. The Land Registry takes about four minutes. Older matters are in the back issues of the Seabrook Chronicle in the school library. She brings what she has found before she asks for anything, which makes her difficult to refuse.

She is going to study journalism and has looked at courses. Her father thinks she should do law. Her mother thinks she should do what she is already good at, and is generally held to be the more sensible of the two. Alice wants a job at the Chronicle. It would be simplest to give her one.

She built the Penrose Investigations website. Mr Penrose told her not to bother. She showed it to him three days later. He said it was good. She said she knew.

Where you will find her

• At Seabrook Secondary, in term. The uniform is grey and the collar is slightly wrong by the afternoon.
• At Harper’s Bookshop, cross-legged on the floor between the Local Interest shelf and the window.
• In the office above it, in a free period, with twenty minutes before history.
• At Finch’s Tea Room on a Saturday, with her phone put away. Mr Penrose’s views on phones in tea rooms have been made clear.