From the beginning, both investment and expectation of our little cookery show has been low. Being at the bottom end of a long list of hot shows and hotter stars left me below the radar – and this has suited me fine. Things changed late last year after Titan Media, the US entertainment giant, acquired a large chunk of our relatively tiny UK operations. This afternoon, at 3 p.m., I have a meeting with the American executives who now run things to discuss my ‘future services to the company’. It hasn’t escaped me that not everyone summoned to such meetings returned from their New Year breaks. People have been literally disappearing from the studios in droves. And I know my ratings aren’t the best.

I don’t disagree with Mitzi that things around here could be better. However, today is a day for putting the best, most confident and upbeat version of me forward.

‘I’m sure things will settle down and everything will be fine again soon,’ I assure her. I put my wet umbrella inside a cotton shopping bag.

Behind me, the front doors burst open. I turn to look. Shadowing the doorway, wearing her long, spectral black-hooded cape, stands Zelda the Magnificent, our resident daytime television psychic.

‘Gracie,’ Zelda declares on seeing me. ‘Dahling.’ Her voice is deep and melodic. Her accent is old Budapest enchantment. She’s like a darker, earthier Zsa Zsa Gabor. ‘Please, stop for Zelda,’ she implores in her dulcet tones. ‘I have, for you, a vision.’

Pushing the hood from her head, Zelda releases a mass of black curls to topple down and over her shoulders. The curls are part of a voluminous wig. Rumours abound that, underneath, Zelda is completely bald. Rumours also abound that Zelda isn’t merely old but ancient, a hundred years and counting. Because these conjectures add to her mysticism, Zelda does little to quash such blather. Having once shared a dressing room, I know from my own eyes that her scalp is in fact covered with a short mop of white-grey ringlets and, by the birthday card she received last summer, that she isn’t more than eighty years young.

Closing the few steps between us, Zelda clasps my frigidly cold hands within her un-seasonally hot fingers. She smells of sage, vanilla and cloves. I breathe in her aroma. My mind drifts to thoughts of crispy sage in a burnt butter sauce, drizzled through ribbons of pasta. Of vanilla pods in pots of clotted custard. Of melt-in-your-mouth hot salt beef, boiled with cloves and juniper berries and served thickly cut with mustard on rye. Shutting her eyes, Zelda’s face wrinkles with whatever wizardry she’s conjuring.

‘Um, Zelda, I’d rather—’ I begin to protest.

‘My child, I see a gathering of dark clouds.’ Ignoring my attempt to dissuade her, Zelda begins her psychic vision. ‘I see a storm is brewing...’