Picture this: there’s a girl. A girl with such massive dreams. Her whole life, her whole being has been built on these dreams; this obsession. She’s in love. Crazy in love. In love with Europe and travelling, and it is the biggest dream she’s ever had. She decided at the age of eleven that she would take a gap year one day, and has been putting away money for it, saving it away, ever since that idea came into her head. She’s collected books and books about it, dreamt and dreamt. Eventually, she began to think of it differently: it now inhabited the same space in her head as Hogwarts. Hogwarts and Wonderland and the Inkworld: amazing, magical places, but far out of her reach. A fantasyland, a fictional land, a far away and dreamy land. It wasn’t like she gave up. She would never, ever give up. If you had the chance to go to any of those places, you’d never stop trying, would you?

So it was the same for this girl.

Putting away money and keeping hopes under lock and key, all the while jabbering on about the place to anyone who would listen or care.

Imagine her surprise when someone told her that those dreams would come true much sooner than she had ever dared wish for.

Imagine it.

Now imagine the moment, the very moment, making her way up and out of the tube station, and nearly stopping dead. Was she dreaming? Was she going mad? Jetlagged and ecstatic, this girl’s dreams were coming true the way they never had before.