Of the four Prime siblings of the Beacon farm, Frank, the second boy, was, throughout their early lives, ‘almost invisible’. He did everything late, spent most of his time alone, and was a dunce at school, where he bemused teachers and children alike.
They never knew what to make of Frank, they said; what went on in Frank’s head was one of the great mysteries. He did little speaking but a great deal of staring out of large green-grey, slightly bulbous eyes. He followed people too … Turn round, and Frank would be there, silent, watching, following.
Beware of the individual close to you whom you have never got to know, whose mental life you have written off as ‘mysterious’. For when Frank leaves the Beacon, indeed quits the north of England altogether, he discovers and projects a personality utterly dissimilar to that ascribed to him by his brother and two sisters, one wary of neither the external world nor interior depths.
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