Everything changed again.  I was sent to board at an international school in Switzerland run by the firm Mrs Telman worked for; I was miserable there, but no more than I'd been in the months between my mother dying and completing the term at Kessington Academy.  I studied for my baccalaureate and found a keen, solitary release in skiing and skating.

I was surrounded mostly by forbiddingly bright girls from families which seemed to possess infinitely deep reserves of money, taste and talent, and glamorous idiots with braying laughs who were destined to go straight to finishing schools and who had no ambitions beyond a rich marriage.  I finished with a flourish and several academic prizes.  Brasenose College, Oxford, awaited.  Mrs Telman adopted me and I took her name.

I cried for both of them when she died last year.

The phone rang for a long time, well past the number of rings you'd normally allow before concluding that there was nobody present to answer it.  Finally: 'Who is this?'

The voice — rich, sibilant and velvety — was that of an elderly man who was rather angry; the voice of a man answering a phone that rarely rang and which, when it did, was equipped to tell him the number that was ringing him, and from its memory also tell him to whom that number belonged.  A phone which he expected to bring only important information.

'Hello.  It's me.'

'Kate?  Is that you, dear girl?'

'Yes, I'm using a call-box.'

'Ah, I see.' A pause. 'Does that mean that I was right and you've discovered something interesting?'

'Possibly.'

'Where are you?'

'Near where I've been all week.'

'I see.  Would it be best to meet up?'

'I think it would.'

'Perfect, perfect.  This weekend's definitely on.  Can you still make it?'

'Of course.' My