Sometimes the inexplicable simply cannot be explained away

THEY thought she was the bee’s knees, did her parents, and they did their best to make her the cat’s pyjamas, too.

She was sent to elocution classes so that she would talk like an upper class girl. She was pushed to succeed in school, because her parents believed education was the key to every worthwhile thing in life.

Then, when Lynn Barber was 16, on her way home from school one afternoon, a luxurious car – a Bristol – pulled up alongside her and the driver offered her a lift. Despite parental instructions about not talking to strangers, she hopped in. The driver took her home and asked to meet her again. She agreed. In no time at all, this ordinary Twickenham schoolgirl was spending her weekends in London nightclubs, being wined and dined by a man claiming to be in his late 20s. She was 16. He was, in fact, a decade older than he claimed.