London 1999 – a few months before the great vampire revelation.

My name is Sookie Stackhouse, and I'm a spy.

Okay, I agree that sounds rather melodramatic, and to tell the truth I don't spend a lot of time doing the things you might expect a spy to do. I've never shot anyone, or driven an Aston Martin round hairpin bends at ninety miles per hour. But I do work for MI5, which is officially the British security and intelligence service, so in my book I'm justified in taking that title.

It was the career I'd always wanted, back from when I was a little girl. My brother Jason and I would watch endless re-runs of James Bond movies on the TV. I used to think how unfair that the men got most of the action and the women usually ended up dead.

I know it's not very kind to want to shoot people. Maybe I've got too much testosterone, or maybe people just piss me off too often. As time went on women did get some action in the Bond movies, but they still ended up dead. I didn't let that put me off although, looking back now, maybe I should have taken it as a warning.

Jason and I lived with our Gran deep in the Forest of Dean. If you've never heard of it, I'm not surprised. It's the kind of backwater place that hardly anyone would visit unless they lived there. Off the beaten track doesn't start to describe it.

It was the perfect place to practice my spying skills though – endless ancient woodlands with only a few roads, criss-crossed instead by old cart tracks. We'd climb trees and watch the people passing by, some of them working but most just enjoying nature. We would see some interesting things, and I'd write them all down in a notebook in a secret code that I'd made up.

We lived in an old cottage, up an isolated track in the middle of the Forest, with only Grandma and Grandpa as neighbours. Grandpa had worked in the forest until he retired, and Dad did the same. The cottages came with their jobs.

The Forest is a strange place if you're not used to it, isolated in a kind of no-man's land between England and Wales. People from outside the area sneer, they say we're all inbred, but I think that's just because they don't understand or perhaps they're scared. Gran used to tell us that there was an old magic there. I'm not sure I fully believed her but sometimes I could sense strange powers that I could feel but didn't understand. Perhaps that's where my special ability came from, I really don't know.

The isolation of the forest was wonderful for me. We went to a little village school that had only had twenty other children. It's closed down now of course, no longer economically viable, but I loved it. There were only two teachers and it was easy to sit quietly in a corner and not be disturbed by the other children.

When I was seven we had to make a little book at school: 'What I want to be when I grow up'.

"I will be a spy," I wrote in mine. "I will live in London in tall block of flats. I will not get married and I will not have children." Well I don't live in a block of flats – when I tell you more about myself the reason for that will become obvious – but apart from that it was a pretty accurate prediction.

My brother Jason's book was called 'I want to be an Astronaut'. He drives a bus in Bristol now.

As a little girl, I had no idea that I was different from other people. It seemed normal to me that I could hear people's thoughts as well as the words they said out loud. I assumed they could hear mine as well, so I made sure that I only thought naughty or unkind things when Mum and Dad weren't around.

My life changed forever when I was eleven. I had to leave our tiny village school and go to the High School in Coleford, our nearest town. I was an early developer, and had to be fitted for my first bra in the summer holidays before I started there.

It was probably the worst year of my life. Grandpa had died of cancer, and Mum and Dad were killed in a car crash – the roads in the Forest are notorious and they fell victim to two boy racers trying to overtake on a blind bend.

Joining the high school in Coleford was unbearable. There were so many people all the time, and trying to shield myself from their thoughts was impossible. The subject of my developing breasts was an unending source of fascination to the boys in my class.

It's hard to concentrate in lessons when you're trying to block out the thoughts of five or six kids trying to imagine what you look like topless, and how they can get to snog you after school.

Jason was the complete opposite to me; he loved the move to a town. I'd worked out by then that he didn't have my 'ability'; to be honest he wasn't great at many things. He was handsome though, and the girls loved him. He was followed by a small crowd of admirers wherever he went.

It took a while for Gran to work out what was wrong with me. I faked a constant stream of ailments: headache, period pains (often twice a month if I was really desperate), nausea. Eventually she agreed to take me out of school and teach me herself.

I can't honestly say my home education was balanced. She loved English literature, especially the Romantic poets: Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth. Personally I was rather impressed by Lord Byron, but she thought him too racy. We studied some history and a little geography. Once a year someone from the local Council would come round to check up on us, but they didn't seem to care too much.

Best of all, Gran would show me the secrets of the Forest. She knew where to find the tastiest wild mushrooms, and herbs that could heal a fever. I had this fantasy that maybe she was a witch or a fairy with special powers. I wish I'd asked her then; it's too late now.

Gran died when I was twenty-three. By then I had a job as an assistant at the local library. I came home to find her slumped on the kitchen table. The doctor said it was a heart attack, and that she wouldn't have suffered. Jason had already moved to Bristol. He'd got a girl pregnant and they thought it would be easier to find somewhere to live and for him to get work.

They said I could come and stay with them, but I'd never liked his girlfriend, and I knew she didn't like me, so I guessed that they probably wanted a live in cleaner and babysitter. Dawn worked as a checkout girl in the big Asda supermarket and said she could get me a job if I wanted. Life behind a supermarket till wasn't exactly my chosen career.

I had to do something though. Now that Gran was dead I could no longer stay in the cottage, and my part-time job didn't pay enough to rent a place of my own. I was lucky that the landlords allowed me six months notice.

Gran always used to say 'if you don't ask, you don't get' so I decided to test out my childhood ambition. I wrote to MI5 and asked for an interview. I told them I had a very special talent that I was sure they'd be interested in. When I look back now, I'm amazed they even replied; but they did, and I was invited to London

The outfit I chose probably wasn't the most suitable. My friend Tara Thornton helped me select it from the dress shop her aunt owned. The skirt was a little short, but she said I had nice legs and I should show them off. The blouse was possibly a little too tight, and showed rather more cleavage than was professional.

Leaving the Forest was terrifying. I had to get the bus to Bristol then the train to Paddington, and I just wasn't used to being surrounded by so many people. I'd never been quite so grateful for a modern invention as for the MP3 player. I could tune into the music and it helped me keep my shields up.

Somehow I made it to the banks of the River Thames and stood for a long time outside the Headquarters building. The tall grey gates looked to me like the entrance to a prison. Perhaps this was all a huge mistake. Eventually I plucked up the courage to go in. People bustled past as the narrow heels of my shoes clattered across the tiled floor of the lobby. I would need to practice keeping my shields up if I was going to survive this environment. Everyone was worried about something: the meeting they were late for; the budget that was over-running; the agent they'd briefed to infiltrate an environmental group who seemed to have gone native. Anxious, angry thoughts bounced around the cavernous space.

I was shown into a small office, which was cluttered and messy. Papers were piled up on the table, and on top of every other surface. The man behind the desk looked unhappy and harassed. He forced a smile when I came in, but it never reached his eyes.

Rudely, I listened in to his thoughts. Apparently there was an equal opportunities drive in the organisation. They wanted more women, black people and people from working class backgrounds. I scored on two out of three. He hated the idea; he'd been in the service for over ten years and had only moved up a couple of grades. Naturally he blamed everyone else for this and expected things to get worse when lots of newcomers arrived who would all be unfairly favoured over him.

He didn't even look at me at first, but once I was sat in the chair he raised his head and looked me up and down, with the emphasis on down. That was the point when I realised that my skirt was definitely too short, and my blouse far too low cut.

"Yes, I am wearing a bra, and no, I won't go for a drink with you later," I snapped at him.

He swallowed hard and stared at me.

"And no, I'm not just assuming you're sexist because you're a man. Want to try something else?" He had really pissed me off with his attitude, and I didn't care if I made him uncomfortable.

"I don't understand," he stammered, uncertainly.

"I said in my letter of application that I had an unusual talent. I can read people's minds. I don't know how or why, I just know that ever since I was a little girl I've been able to listen in to what's going on in people's heads."

Most people, anyway. There were a few of our neighbours in the forest whose thoughts were very unclear to me, just random angry emotions, but I'd always put that down to the inbreeding.

'If I report this to Sir Stephen, he'll think I've gone stark, staring bonkers and I'll never get another promotion,' he was thinking.

"No he won't," I tried to reassure him, just let me see her and I'll explain everything.

I never did get to meet Sir Stephen, not then at least, but one of her deputies gave me a second interview and decided to take a chance, even though he couldn't quite understand how I could work out everything he was about to say.

I was assigned a controller when I joined the organisation. Julian was Oxford educated, aristocratic and terrifyingly intelligent. He was also black and gay, so despite all his advantages he was as out of place as I was in this pillar of the British establishment.

He quickly became my best friend. He even found me somewhere to live. I found the big city unbearable at first, all those thoughts assaulting me twenty-four hours a day. There was never a moment's peace. Through his connections, he found a little mews house in the ground of Buckingham Palace. It was what they called a 'grace and favour' property, but technically I was the Queen's employee, and Julian was a distant relative of the Duke of Edinburgh (on his father's side) so he pulled a few strings.

My only neighbours at night were the horses ridden by the Lifeguards. If you've ever seen a tourist photo of London, you will have seen the troops who ride them, guarding the Queen in their antiquated uniforms with silver breastplates and feather plume helmets. I don't know whether or not animals have clear thoughts, but if they do I can't understand them, so I had blissful nights of dream-free sleep.

I got to see Queen Elizabeth once, when she came to inspect the horses. I managed a clumsy curtsey before disappearing back to my rooms. I think she mistook me for a groom. "Such lovely horses, dear," was all she said.

My first few months were uneventful. I had to sit in on interviews with suspected terrorists, or with staff from foreign embassies who had strayed too far outside their official brief. I like to think I was doing some good by exonerating the innocent, and helping to find the guilty. I know that I prevented at least one major bomb attack. To tell the truth though, most of the time the job was deathly dull – not at all what I had expected when I wrote that little book back when I was seven. I'd wanted drama and excitement. If I was completely honest with myself, I'd probably hoped for romance.

No-one had ever warned me to be careful what you wish for.

The character of Sookie Stackhouse belongs to Charlaine Harris.

This story is dedicated to VicVega66 and FairyBlood who organised the IndieFic Contest – that was where I got the idea of an English Sookie with the same telepathic skill, but some different life choices. Also to Northman Maille, Crisi TM and AmaZen who pre-read an early short version of the story and gave feedback.

'They Met in the Dark' is the name of an obscure fifties spy movie, which I thought was appropriate to the story.

Chapters 1 – 6 were originally posted between 5th July and 6th August 2011, but have been reposted with some editing improvements, and a few tweaks to the time-line and plot.

14 September 2011