‘We once spent a weekend together,’ I said as I reintroduced myself to the country’s oldest and most distinguished crime writer at a party deep in Mayfair.
‘Did we?’ she asked, smiling sweetly but looking entirely blank.
‘In Cambridge,’ I prompted, ‘King’s College.’
‘What on earth were we doing there?’ she asked with what sounded like genuine amazement.
It was a good question. I think she and I were the only working writers around the mighty conference table. Everyone else appeared to be either an academic or a lawyer. I believe we had been invited to discuss something to do with the legal implications of writing about living people, but like her I am more than a little hazy as to why that was deemed to be a good way for anyone to spend a weekend.
I remember there was a sumptuous dinner involved, evoking scenes from Tom Sharpe’s university satire, Porterhouse Blue, put before us by discreet college servants who would not have looked out of place serving Lord Byron. I also remember extremely spartan bedrooms, which would not have looked out of place in a Victorian prep school.
One of the most curious things about growing older is that some incidents from your past begin to take on the appearance of dreams or half-forgotten movies.