Sally lingered in my office. ‘The truth is, Maggie, I don’t think he’ll ever really fit in. He’s just one of those slightly oddball kids, you know? Like the ones at school who had an imaginary friend they played with at breaktime.’

‘Yep, I do know. But that lot can be remorseless, we both know that.’

‘I suppose.’ She brightened. ‘You going to Bel’s tonight then?’

‘Oh my God.’ I clapped a hand to my forehead in distress. ‘I forgot to pick up my dress. She’ll kill me.’ I cast a quick look across to Charlie’s empty office. ‘If I don’t go now, I’ve blown it.’

‘Go,’ Sally urged. ‘I’ll cover for you.’

I dragged my coat on and grabbed my bag. ‘With any luck,’ I switched my computer to sleep mode, ‘Charlie’ll be too pissed to notice anyway.’

In a dim little street on the Covent Garden borders I found the shop with the fancy name that Bel had insisted I visit. The window heralded some of London’s most expensive clothes – a veritable myriad of gorgeous stuff. Minty greens and frilly pinks, gold silks and silver froth, below which crouched lethal-looking shoes with four-inch heels, poised to spring cruelly onto unsuspecting feet. It was so utterly not me – but my fate was sealed. As I hovered by the door, a size-zero girl with scary eyebrows slithered towards me, and, with disdain ill-hidden, relieved me of my polystyrene coffee-cup. ‘Can I help, madam?’ she asked, barely keeping the sneer off her face.

‘I’ve come to collect a dress Bel Whitemore has reserved for me.’ I looked around nervously, taking in the flounces, the backless and frontless, the micro-mini and the slit-to-the-thigh. ‘Lord. I do hope it’s something subtle.’

The girl swished through the chiffon, the beribboned and the barely-there to find what Bel had chosen.

‘So brave to try that colour. Red hair must be so difficult.’

Manfully I ignored the girl as I stepped into the beautiful forest-green floor-length dress, plunging at the front and cut deeply at the back. To complete the outfit she gave me stilettos by someone called Manolo Blahnik, the perfect eyebrows nearly shooting off her face in horror when I said I’d never heard of him.

‘Everyone’s wearing Blahnik,’ she chastised, forcing my feet into what seemed little more than a few skinny straps and another killer heel.

‘Sounds more like a space shuttle to me,’ I joked, but she didn’t laugh – and she only blanched a bit at the scar on my left foot.

I wobbled out anxiously through the curtains to look in the full-length mirror, staring at myself for a silent moment. When I read the price-tag, though, I nearly fainted.

‘Thanks very much for your help, but I’m afraid –’