It was Christmas Eve and I was alone in the nettled churchyard visiting the graves of my parents and their five infant children when a terrible man with a great iron on his leg leapt out in front of me.

"Hold your noise, you little devil," he cried, "or I will slit your throat. What's yer name?"

"Philip Pirrip, sir. But everyone calls me Pip."

"Well, Pip. I want you to bring me some victuals and a file. And tell no one."

I crept home slowly, fearful of what lay ahead. Since my parents had died I had been brought up by my sister, Mrs Gargery, who was as fearsome as her husband, Joe, the blacksmith, was simple. Many was the time I had felt the Tickler in her hand. Yet that night I could not help myself stealing a pork pie from the kitchen and a file from the forge.

"You're a good boy, Pip," said the stranger in the churchyard.

Time moved slowly on Christmas Day, as I was afeared my sister would discover the pork pie was missing. Then a cannon shot rang out.

"Meantersay there be a second convict escaped from the Hulks out on the marshes," said Joe in his Kentish dialect. "We must help the Constables track 'em down."

We went out into the darkness and espied a badly beaten convict hobbling off into the night. Then we found the man whom I had helped. "I want you all to know," said the convict, looking me straight in the eyes, "that it was me who stole the pork pie and the file."

So relieved was I to be let off the hook that it never occurred to me to wonder how a prisoner could have swum away from the hulk while wearing a leg iron. Luckily it didn't seem to have occurred to anyone else either, and when, a few years later, I was paid to play at Satis House it was all soon forgotten.

Miss Havisham was a fearful sight, a woman who had not seen the light of day for many years, and I was terrible in awe of her when she commanded me to play with her adopted daughter, Estella. "You are a very common boy," Estella said, "and I shall tease you and break your heart."

Oh Estella! What beauty! I was smitten from the moment I saw her and swore to myself she was the girl for me, even though I was only 10 years old. I learnt to despise the commonness of my own home, and though I loved Joe dearly and admired his loyalty, I couldn't help wishing he was a bit less stupid. And that Biddy, the young girl who had come to live with us, was a little bit prettier and posher. "Darling Biddy," I told her. "If only you weren't quite so hideous and from the lower orders, then I might reconcile myself to marrying you one day. Then all would be well. But sadly, you aren't."

"That's nice," said Biddy.

The conversation might have turned awkward had not a stranger arrived some years later to announce that I had Great Expectations. "Young Pip has been chosen to be brought up as a gentleman in London," said the stranger, a lawyer named Jaggers. "Here is £25 on account. The only condition is that the benefactor's name must never be revealed."

"Yer goin' ter be a gennelmun in Lunnun,' cried Joe.

"Indeed I am," I exclaimed. "Perhaps now I can marry Estella one day. I must say goodbye to Miss Havisham, for I am certain she must be my guardian angel."

"So you're off, Pip," said Miss Havisham. "Just don't open the curtains."

London, city of opportunity yet city of destitution, where wealth and poverty walked side by side etc. My first lodgings were in Little Britain, a crowded, fetid area of Cheapside close to Newgate where both felons and the unlucky poor swung from the gallows. My housemate was an amiable soul named Herbert Pocket. "What's you name?" he asked me.

"Pip."

"Then for no very good reason, I shall call you Handel."

"I am in love with Estella," I said.

"Then let me fill you in on the backstory, Handel. Miss Havisham was abandoned at the altar by the man she loved and from that day has never ventured from Satis House, and has brought Estella up to take revenge on men by hardening her heart against them."

"Indeed, Herbert," I replied. "That is such an important piece of backstory it bears repeating in case any reader should have missed it."

We spent many happy times together and I was educated in the ways of the gentleman by his father. Then one day I heard from Jaggers that my sister had been beaten senseless by an unknown assailant, so I went home to pay my respects to Joe and Biddy. "'Tis a terrible thing," said Joe, though in truth it made little difference to me or anyone else, as she had been such a one-dimensional character. I did, though, have my suspicions that the perpetrator of this vile assault was Dolge Orlick, Joe's journeyman apprentice.

"I can't prove you did it, Orlick," I said, "but as you will beat me unconscious for no great reason later in the book, I think we all know you did."

Back in London, I had word that Estella was betrothed to Bentley Drummle, a loathsome ne-er-do-well from my lunching club. "He is not worthy of you," I pleaded with her. "What about me?"

"It is true that you are more of a gentleman these days," Estella replied, "and had I known that, I wouldn't have been quite so beastly all those years ago. But, you see, my heart has been hardened by Miss Havisham, so I cannot love anyone."

Had not Jaggers summoned me to see him on the day of my majority some years later, I might have wondered at the psychological implausibility of an old woman training a child to be a psychopath, but luckily I was so caught up by the possibility of my benefactor's name being revealed that the thought quite slipped my mind. "If you thought your benefactor's name was to be revealed, then you are greatly mistaken," said Jaggers. "Though I can tell you you are to receive £500 per year. Truly these are Great Expectations."

Indeed they were, though for the time being the money would barely settle the debts I had accrued, nor allow me to secretly provide Great Expectations for Herbert who was fundamentally as useless as I.

And so time passed amid the dirt and grime of Little Britain, until one night I returned to my lodgings to find that fearful man from the Kentish marshes at my door. "My name is Abel Magwitch and I'm your benefactor."

How my head reeled. All these years I had dreamed of the nobility of Miss Havisham, and my destiny was in the hands of a convict. "Yes," he continued. "After I was transported to the colonies I vowed to make a fortune and use the money to make a gentleman out of the boy who had helped in the churchyard. And so that I have done. It is my revenge on the oppressive, imperialist class structure of Victorian Britain."

"Indeed it might be, sir," I replied. "But this puts me in a very awkward situation, because, being now a gentleman, I cannot accept your money. Yet you seem a decent cove, so I am minded to help you. But first, pray, tell me if there are any other coincidences I should know about."

"That there are. You see, I was led astray by an upper-class villain named Compeyson and he was the other convict out on the marshes that night whom I tried to batter with my irons."

"Don't tell me that this Compeyson is the man who left Miss Havisham at the altar, that he is now searching for you in London, and that you are actually Estella's father."

"Lord have mercy. How did you know?"

"I just had the feeling that's the way things were going. But we must first get you out of the country."

Despite our best plans, Compeyson was drowned in our escape and Magwitch mortally injured. Had I not been so concerned about the decline in my fortunes, I might have wondered why Mr Dickens had forgotten I should have been arrested as an accomplice in a fugitive's escape.

Instead, I made my way to Satis to beg Miss Havisham to secretly confer several thousand pounds on Herbert. "That I will," she replied. "I have been an evil witch, but now I can set light to the house and die happy."

Seldom have I felt my spirits lower, and yet I felt a surge of hope that my pursuit of material wealth had been undone, and so I resolved to live a life more simple and made my way to Kent to do Biddy the favour of asking her to be my wife. "Meantersay Biddy and I were married yesterday," said Joe.

Had I not been so concerned by this importune turn of events, I might have wondered why two of my oldest friends hadn't told me they were together or invited me to their wedding, and so I resolved to work humbly for Herbert for the next 12 years.

And so it came about that I was back in London many moons later and I espied Estella in the street. Her beauty was still indescribably majestic.

"Drummle has conveniently died," she said knowingly. "And I sense I am less psychopathic."

"Then perhaps we may be friends."

"I wouldn't count on it."