14

It happened. It finally happened. And I must say it was a relief, although it’s hard to explain and you probably won’t understand unless you’ve done it yourself, which I don’t for a second advise you to do, for reasons you’ll discover before this story ends. What I have to do is tell you how this part of it began.

I’ve said how things began to go wrong, or right according to how you look at it, like when I began to have feelings for Terry which no praeceptor is meant to have for a client. Then I realized that I was shouting advice at him from another world entirely. In the world I came from, bishops and chaplains and praeceptors and probation officers, they all talked about sin and crime but they couldn’t really understand anything about it. Take Robert, for instance. He preached hours and hours of sermons about sin, but I don’t believe he’d ever committed the smallest sin in his life, not even been unfaithful to Sylvia, not even after she fell a victim to the G&Ts.

Orlando Wathen, Gwenny and Mr Markby all set themselves up as experts on crime, but, as Mr Wathen confessed, he couldn’t understand the first thing about it. He hadn’t had Terry explain the excitement. It was what turned a dull party at the Smith-Aldeneys into the most exciting turning point of my life.

When Christopher was showing me his collection, something he’d done many times before, the thought of doing it hadn’t crossed my mind. It was when he was called away to get Sylvia a gin and left the Emperor Claudius out lying on the table that the sudden irresistible urge came over me. I suppose I could say it was all Sylvia’s fault for wanting her own sort of drink that gave me the chance, but I won’t. It was what Terry had told me and the sudden feeling of understanding him and being near him, closer to him than I could ever get in any other way. Oh well, I don’t have to explain any more, do I? I felt everything had changed when I picked up the Claudius coin and put it in the back pocket of my jeans. So it was mine, and down in Aldershot they’ve never solved the mystery.

I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, ‘What happened to that Lucinda Purefoy who wanted to do a bit of good in the world?’ And I suppose I’d find that a hard one to answer, at least to your satisfaction. I suppose I might say that what I was doing was trying to do some good to Terry by understanding him and being on his side, and I think that’s what I told myself. It sort of made sense to me at the time.

I tried to explain some of this to Terry. I wanted to get him to come out with me to some good, cheap place where we could eat dinner, but poor sweet, he insisted on taking me out to the most expensive restaurant in London run by the ghastly Jean Pierre O’Higgins, who does those wretched television programmes about how rude he has to be to the customers who criticize his awful cooking. The worst thing about it was that I had to pretend to be thrilled to be there and oooh and aaah over the crystallized seaweed with roasted pâté and oysters vinaigrette and the spiced cod in a veal sauce and, most horrible of all, the steak and kidney ice cream! It was at the end of this gastronomic nightmare that I did what I’d been longing to do. I produced the Emperor Claudius coin and told Terry I’d stolen it for him.

Honestly, I found his reaction disappointing. Let’s say I’d expected more. I thought he might have congratulated me on what I’d done, although it couldn’t possibly have been easier. I thought he might have welcomed me into his exciting world of thieves, where we could sink or swim together. I have to admit I felt really let down when he didn’t welcome me into it at all.

Of course they’d warned us at SCRAP about this male chauvinist thing that criminals have, like they don’t want women committing crimes, or sitting on juries or, especially, trying to reform them. Gwenny told us that was one of the hurdles we had to get over. It’s the same thing again, isn’t it? I mean, Tom Weatherby, soon to become my ex-boyfriend, for reasons I’ll explain later, thinks that him writing scripts for documentaries no one in television seems to want is a serious business whereas my job in advertising at Pitcher’s is just a sort of hobby, like Pilates classes or painting in watercolours. Robin Thirkell always thought my sincere ambition to do a bit of good in the world was a joke, and even my dad, for all his liberal views, seems a good deal more enthusiastic about gay marriages than he is about women bishops.

All I can say is that if being a woman is a hurdle in me getting closer to Terry, it’s one I’ve got to get over as soon as possible.

In all this, Tom was no help at all.

I was particularly glad when Terry suggested Thursday because that was when Tom planned to do some late-night research on his underground project and spend the night with his sister in Sidcup. So I thought the flat would be empty and I could invite Terry up after dinner, and cook him scrambled eggs if the food had been disgusting, or we could do whatever we wanted to do. I was sure he’d be in a pretty good mood after I’d shown my solidarity with him by handing over the coin. I was really angry with Tom when I found his plans had changed and all the lights were on in the flat when Terry took me home in a taxi. All we could manage was a quick frustrated kiss and then home. I suppose we could have gone on to the maisonette, but then I didn’t fancy waking up to that crook and his awful secretary and, what’s more, Terry never invited me.

Of course, Tom had some feeble excuse, it wasn’t convenient for his sister to have him to stay, and nothing much was happening on the underground, as though that was a big surprise. Then he said, ‘I suppose you wanted to bring the little thief up here?’

‘Terry’s not particularly little,’ I reminded him.

‘But he is a thief. I know you find that tremendously exciting. I’m terribly sorry. I do apologize! I’ve got no criminal convictions! ’

I suppose if I’d listened to Tom at the time, I might have saved myself a great deal of trouble; but of course I didn’t want to listen. All I knew was that our relationship, such as it was, had definitely fizzled out.