As a teenager I always used to spend about ten days each year with Cousin Clare and her parents. Clare wasn’t actually my cousin, but her mother and my mother were at school together, and it was a convenient way to refer to her. Clare was an only child.
At the time of the following exciting adventure we were sixteen, but I was a few months older than she was.
Clare’s parents had plenty of money. They lived in a large house in rural Berkshire and Clare went to a private school, girls only, a