The Society of the Mysterious West

I was a teenager when I first met her, an old lady with too many bags of shopping, who I helped up the stairs at the faculty of oriental studies at Cambridge.

"What are you doing here?" she asked when we got to the top. I had hair down to my waist and pixie boots on my feet, so I probably didn't look like I should have been there.

"I'm looking for Carmen Blacker," I replied.

"Oh," she said. "That would be me. You're not Jonathan Clements, are you…? You can't be…" I had been expected a...