‘I certainly did not.’ She delicately dabbed vividly cerise lips with a starchy napkin. ‘Ma used to say it to my da every Friday when he brought home the wage packet.’ Her voice dropped into a tragic monotone. ‘Before he went and drank it all down at Boyo Dyffd’s.’

‘Before he came home and beat Ma black and blue, was it?’ I added sugar and smiled sweetly at Renee’s startled face. ‘Before you shouldered every chore, bringing up your thirty-five siblings single-handedly while also going down the mine?’

‘My sainted mother was a – a – saint, I’ll have you know, Maggie.’

‘Renee, with you as a daughter, I don’t doubt that for a moment.’ I sat so heavily beside her, her own drink slopped out and spotted her pink linen top. ‘Whoops! I’m sorry.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ She glowered at me. ‘I’ll have to change for the show now.’

‘I’m not sure pink’s your colour actually, so it’s probably a good thing.’ I bit into a pain au chocolat with gusto. Everything in the room suddenly became absolutely crystalline, as if it had all been washed by super-jets and polished afterwards. I’d had an epiphany; I could almost hear the angels singing.

‘Maggie!’ Charlie’s voice held a warning note. ‘Have you been drinking?’ he hissed, and I wagged my finger at him.

‘Silly boy. At this time of day? Of course not.’ I licked the chocolate off my fingers lasciviously. ‘Now, shall we get on? Have you been through the guest-list?’

Renee was staring at me like I was something disgusting on her shoe. ‘Of course I’ve been through the bloody list.’

‘No need to swear, Renee,’ I rebuked her mildly. ‘You have got a bit lazy recently.’

Donna rushed into the room. ‘We’ve already got one dropout and the driver outside Melanie Adams’s flat has been ringing for half an hour but there’s no answer.’

‘Typical,’ said Renee, glaring at me as if I’d planned the whole thing. ‘This is bloody typical.’

‘Renee, we always have no-shows; it’s hardly a surprise, is it?’ I remembered the days when a missing guest had utterly panicked me; recently I just felt glad that people had the sense not to turn up.

Sally burst through the door, her round face flushed. ‘The Scottish lads have gone and done a bloody runner from the hotel.’ She stuck her pencil behind her ear. ‘I thought they were a bit too good to be true. Willing to dump each other on air but prepared to share a hotel room first.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, not again. All this bloody free-loading pond-life.’ It was Charlie’s turn to glare at me now. ‘I said we should have done a pre-record.’