A rather less vile crime

[fpb]

So I was standing around my mother's flat chatting with her, when I told her - now it can be told - that 27 years ago, when I was in my early teens, I stole one of the books that are now in her bookcase from one of our then-local newsstands.

Name me anyone but a mother who could go into the quivering shakes, 27 years after the fact, at the thought of her son being caught stealing.