‘Ta,’ said Props. ‘Goo’night,’ and made off at a tidy shamble. Peregrine adjusted the self-locking apparatus on the door and banged it. He was in time to see Props being sick at the corner of Wharfingers Lane.

When he had finished he straightened up, saw Peregrine and waved to him.

‘That’s done the trick,’ he shouted, and walked briskly away.

Peregrine went to the car park, unlocked his car and got in. Emily, in her woolly dressing gown, let him in.

‘Hullo, love,’ he said, ‘you shouldn’t have waited up.’

‘Hullo.’

He said: ‘Just soup,’ and sank into an armchair.

She gave him strong soup laced with brandy.

‘Golly, that’s nice,’ he said. And then: ‘Pretty bloody awful but nothing in the way of practical jokes.’

‘Bad dress. Good show.’

‘Hope so.’

And in that hope he finished his soup and went to bed and to sleep.

III

Now they were all in their dressing rooms, doors shut, telegrams, cards, presents, flowers, the pungent smell of greasepaint and wet white and hand lotion, the close, electrically charged atmosphere of a working theatre.

Maggie made up her face. Carefully, looking at it from all angles, she drew her eyebrows together, emphasized the determined creases at the corners of her mouth. She strained back her flattened mane of reddish hair and secured it with pins and a band.

Nanny, her dresser and housekeeper, stood silently holding her robe. When she turned there it was, opened, waiting for her. She covered her head with a chiffon scarf: Nanny skilfully dropped the robe over it, not touching it.

The tannoy came to life. ‘Quarter hour. Quarter hour, please,’ it said.

‘Thank you, Nanny,’ said Maggie. ‘That’s fine.’ She kissed a bedraggled bit of fur with a cat’s head. ‘Bless you, Thomasina,’ she said and propped it against her glass.

A tap on the door. ‘May I come in?’

‘Dougal! Yes.’

He came in and put a velvet case on her table. ‘It was my grandma’s,’ he said. ‘She was a Highlander. Blessings.’ He kissed her hand and made the sign of the cross over her.

‘My dear, thank you. Thank you.’

But he was gone.

She opened the case. It was a brooch: a design of interlaced golden leaves with semi-precious stones making a thistle. ‘It’s benign, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘I shall wear it in my cloak. In the fur, Nanny. Fix it, will you?’

Presently she was dressed and ready.

The three witches stood together in front of the looking glass, Rangi in the middle. He had the face of a skull but his eyelids glittered in his dark face. Round his neck on a flax cord hung a greenstone tiki, an embryo child. Blondie’s face was made ugly and was grossly over-painted: blobs of red on the cheeks and a huge scarlet mouth. Wendy was bearded. They had transformed their hands into claws.