When the message landed, I was in the sandwich bar next to the office queuing to get a coffee and a pain au chocolat and idly fiddling with my BlackBerry. It was sent by a member of the compliance team at the company where I am a non-executive director and began innocently enough: "Hello Lucy." Yet as I read on, I came across a sentence that not only spoiled my day but has also had a seriously dampening effect on the four weeks that have passed since then. The Financial Services Authority, it said, had asked to interview me on such and such a date for 90 minutes.
I had, of course, read about this sort of thing. After Northern Rock and Royal Bank of Scotland, the FSA has got nastier; when it conducts its regulatory ARROW visits it now often insists on seeing non-execs as well as execs, to make sure they are up to the job.
In case you don't understand why this perfectly reasonable request was so upsetting, let me spell it out. It directly fed my fear of being found out. I've had this fear all my working life; it hasn't gone away as I've got older, though it has been slightly dulled by the experience of not getting found out, month in month out. I was almost allowing myself to think that I'd get away with it forever.