I’ve just finished reading the quite wonderful “Restless”, a thriller by prize-winning novellist William Boyd. A couple of phrases ended up being read aloud to Haron as I went. Take this description of a posh London gentlemen’s club, by one of the book’s leading female protagonists:

“The modest entrance concealed a building of capacious and elegant Georgian proportions. On the first floor we passed a reading-room – deep sofas, dark portraits, a few old men reading periodicals and newspapers – then a bar – a few old men drinking – then a dining-room being set up for dinner by young girls in black skirts and crisp white blouses. I sensed it was very unusual ever to have a female in this building who wasn’t a servant of some kind.”

Clearly, a traditional sort of place: I can imagine the members thrashing out the club’s disciplinary policy for staff. “Etonian rules” would be in effect: said smart young ladies would be dealt with soundly for any misdemeanours.

Later, the same character described some rather interesting emotions:

“I was in a strange giddy panic: a combination of excitement and fear, a mood I hadn’t truly experienced since childhood when, on those occasions you wilfully do something wrong and proscribed, you find yourself imagining your own discovery, guilt and punishment – which is part of the heady appeal of the illicit, I suppose.”

‘Appeal’, eh? Ah, it seems that your secret’s out, ladies…