I caught an early train so as to get there with plenty of time to unpack and find my way about before I had to perform, and I went First Class because although you still have to listen to a lot of boring businessmen bleating down the phone telling their secretaries they are on the train, like it’s going to be a big, big surprise, you do get a better class of accent doing it, plus endless cups of coffee – which was just as well, because I discovered later that Mallard Rise coffee tastes like it was made from ground-up owl pellets, and possibly was.

I got off the train somewhere industrial, and then was whisked by taxi through quite promising countryside until we suddenly turned off into a seedy village, then on up a long drive to what looked like some kind of institution … which, sure enough, proved to be my destination, though most of it was very modern, so it was unfortunate that my room was a vast and sparsely furnished attic chamber in the one old building, spooky even in the middle of the day.

Stephen King would have felt quite at home there.

Moira, the desiccated but sprightly pensioner deputized to show me the ropes, seemed to think she deserved congratulations that I was not sharing the attic with anyone else, since the many small bunk-bedded compartments leading off it were often used for the overflow of late-bookers. (And serve them jolly well right, too, her tone implied.)

After explaining that she would meet me later to escort me to dinner where I was to dine in state with the committee, and then afterwards show me to the Great Hall to give my talk, she added that she was sure everyone would be there, even if, like her, they hadn’t actually heard of me before, and wasn’t it wonderful about Hereward Brunswick coming tomorrow? They could all hardly wait, but now she would have to leave me to settle in because she had to dash off and take her class in ‘Successful Steps to Getting Your First Novel Published’.

‘Oh, I hadn’t realized you were a fellow novelist,’ I said. ‘What do you write?’

‘Religious poetry, actually. Well, see you later!’

All this gave me a feeling in my waters, as Linny so repulsively used to say … only I had vowed not to think about Linny. At all. Ever again. Or Sergei.

I unpacked, showered in a bathroom straight out of Psycho, and put on the garnet suit, since no one here would have seen it. It was certainly earning its keep, which was just as well because it was very expensive. And it was either wear the diamonds or carry them, because my door seemed to have a very odd lock on it. You could only lock it from the outside so when you were inside you couldn’t tell if it was locked or not.