Gilbert and Sullivan is not my thing. I resisted the temptation to put my dainty fingerettes down the back of my throat and applied myself to playing hunt the ruby slipper. By the time Ricky and Morris had run through their material and got themselves ready, I’d found the missing items and had packed up most of the costumes. Each one was on a hanger, labelled with the name of the actor it was destined for, and sheathed in a thin polythene bag. Instead of lugging them all downstairs to the waiting hampers, I’d used the time-honoured method of dropping them over the bannisters on to the immaculate marble of the hall floor, then picked each one up, folding it and packing it neatly.

‘Everything’s labelled,’ I told them, struggling to do up the leather straps of a hamper as they appeared, bow tied and cummerbunded, in the hallway. ‘I’ve just got to put the address labels on the hampers for the courier tomorrow.’ Fortunately, the hampers were on wheels. When I’d finished labelling, I could roll them up to the front door, ready for the morning. All Ricky and Morris had to do was push the hampers straight out to the waiting courier’s van.

‘Where did you find Glinda?’ Morris asked.

‘In with the Cinderella costumes. Remember last year, the lady who couldn’t fit into Fairy Godmother? We gave her Glinda instead.’

‘Juno, you’re a marvel!’ Ricky pressed a wad of notes into my palm, about twice my hourly rate. ‘Don’t argue!’ he added, before I could protest.

‘You don’t need to pay me this much …’ I began.

‘What else can we do, if you won’t let us adopt you?’

I gave a crack of laughter. They’d offered me a permanent job on several occasions, but much as I love ’em, I couldn’t work with Ricky and Morris all the time. Half an hour in their company is usually enough to drive me insane. I glanced at my watch. ‘You’d better get going. I can finish here and let myself out.’

Morris stood on tiptoe to kiss me. ‘Just drop the latch. And you be careful with Mr Nickolai tomorrow,’ he added. ‘They don’t call him Old Nick for nothing!’

I was ravenous by the time I got home, my hunger pangs made sharper by the cooking aromas that always hang around in the hallway downstairs waiting to mug me. At the sound of my arrival, Kate poked her head out of the kitchen door, her dark plait swinging over her shoulder. She has the hair I’ve always longed for: dark, sleek and straight, hair you can actually drag a comb through.

‘Curry any good?’ she asked, smiling.

‘I’m about to find out.’

‘Well, let me know what you think, it’s a new recipe,’ she said, and she and her plait disappeared.