“So what do you make of our national Museum?” she asked the Stranger.

            She had seen him inside the building, mostly looking bored, trailing awkwardly behind a guided party until at last he slipped away. She glimpsed him later in the Marbles Room and when she passed him in the Portico his open face made it so easy to ask him a question.

            “Museum?” he laughed. “More like a crime scene. The hideout where the gang stores the loot.”

            And when she laughed he offered her a cigarette.

            The rain brought them together. Pushed them together perhaps, as if it knew what it was doing. It pelted down mercilessly on Great Russell Street to keep them under the colonnade so that they had to stand and smoke together.

            “Don't get me wrong,” he said. “We do the same sort of thing as you. But you had a 1000 year start on us so... Big building too dignified to belong to a crime syndicate. Good Lord,” he said in a mock British accent, “we are so respectable. Just look at the stone work, look at the columns. So strong, so ancient, so noble... Just like the Romans and the Greeks and all the other fellows they displaced. Yup,” he went on in his own American accent, “you did for those guys and a quiver-full of others. But look down, Sister,” he added, dialling up the twang, “and you won't see no blood on these here steps.”

            “Of course the rain helps with that,” she smiled.

            And their eyes said they wanted to be alone together. But not in the rain. And not, from her point of view in this vicinity, so they walked south towards Piccadilly. He offered her his long waterproof but she declined. They ducked neatly in and out of shops and under awnings but since she still got soaked it was perfectly natural to tell the desk clerk at his hotel that his sister's clothes could be dried while they relaxed in his room.

            And that is what happened.

            “You will have noticed I'm not from round here,” he grinned.

            “And you'll have noticed that I am.”

            “And do you work? I hope that's not an offensive question for a British lady. We're very open about such things.”

            That's not what I've heard, she thought but she said, “I'm a writer.”

            “So am I,” he said.

            She flinched Oh no... But he saw that and said, “Not one of your kind of writer.”

            “What kind is that?”

            “Hm, a museum piece, like that place we met.”

            “Now that is offensive,” she said.

            He apologised in a most unusual but highly effective way.

            Later, when the rain stopped and her clothes dried they went to the cinema. They sat holding hands but never once took their eyes off the screen.

            They went to a coffee house where he didn't like the coffee. Which was the first thing she found not to like about him. But soon they were debating whether the movies would put them both out of business.

            “Never,” he said. And she agreed. Though for different reasons.

            They walked silently through the Park without holding hands. The wet grass glinted at them.

            “Is there,” he said, “a reason why someone should be following you?”

            She found this idea so exciting she virtually dragged him back to his hotel.

            Although she kept a diary religiously there is no mention of this man or their meeting in it.

            And there are good reasons for this. Or bad reasons, if you care to call them that.

            For the Trouble started soon afterwards.                                              To be continued..............