I should really have been expecting it, but seeing my reflection in the mirror makes me genuinely jump. If Harv’s been inflated, then I’ve been whittled down. It’s the face I saw in the programme last night. I push my bony nineteen-year-old cheeks right up to the glass to find soft patches of nearly-stubble in place of wrinkles, and no sign yet of a widow’s peak retreat in my thick dark brown hairline.

I splash my face with cold water and as soon as I come out of the toilet, I hear a voice behind me.

‘Marek is going to KILL you!’

Alice is right there, smirking up at me. She looks … To be honest, she looks almost exactly the same as when I saw her at the wedding. Which is to say that she looks a bit like a blonde Phoebe Cates in Gremlins, except she’s now sporting more of an Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction haircut. She looks good.

‘Come on, the audience will be in any minute.’ She beckons me through to the dressing room, which is stuffed with bodies: people wriggling into shiny suit jackets, having their faces frantically powdered, yelling out lines at random across the uproar. I spot Marek – who hasn’t changed much either; same beard, glasses, wild hair – in the corner, muttering into his phone. He sees me, mimes throttling someone (presumably me) but doesn’t break off the call.

‘He’s found somebody to do the props, I think,’ Alice tells me. ‘Some mate of Jamila’s. He’s just speaking to her now.’

I nod as I feel the beginnings of a thin film of sweat on my brow. Because I suddenly know where all this is heading. I know that I’ll see her in – what will it be – ten minutes? And then it’ll be much, much harder to pretend this is all happening to someone else.

‘Audience is coming in!’ somebody hisses, and suddenly the noise level in the room sinks to a nervy murmur.

The next few minutes are a total blur. I’m helped into my costume – a cheap black Reservoir Dogs-type suit – and then slapped about gently by a girl with a powder brush.

The play has started by now – I can hear Marek on stage, hamming it up – and its finer details begin to tumble back into place in my mind.

The Carol Revisited. ‘Dickens meets Tarantino’ is how Marek pitched it to us at the first rehearsal. Six months from now, he will be openly dismissing it as ‘crude and underdeveloped’, but at the moment, I can hear him giving it his absolute all as he bellows, ‘Humbug, motherfucker!’ at the presumably bewildered audience.