‘Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, for your entertainment, I give you my rendition of that lamentable scene from the story of Mr Punch,’ said Lesley. ‘I refer of course to his incarceration and, alas, impending execution.’

‘No,’ I yelled. I’d read the script. I knew what was coming next.

Lesley looked straight at me and smiled. ‘But of course,’ she said. ‘The play’s the thing.’ There was a crack of breaking bone, and her face changed. As her nose became a hooked blade, her voice rose to a piercing, warbling shriek.

‘That’s the way to do it!’ she screeched.

I was too late, but I threw myself into the orchestra pit just the same. The Royal Opera House doesn’t mess about with a quartet with a drum machine – you get a full-on orchestra seventy musicians strong, and the pit is built to match. I landed amid the horn section, who were not so dazed by the compulsion Henry Pyke had them under that they didn’t protest. I pushed my way through the violinists, but it was no good, even with a standing jump I couldn’t get my hands on the stage. One of the violinists asked me what the fuck I thought I was doing and, backed up by a bassist, threatened to kick my head in. They both had that same Friday-night, mean drunk look in their eyes that I was beginning to associate with Henry Pyke. I’d just grabbed a music stand to hold them at bay when the orchestra started up again. As soon as it did the two homicidal musicians ignored me, took up their instruments, took their places and, with a great deal of decorum, considering they were having a psychotic episode, started playing. I could hear the thing wearing Lesley’s body singing in its awful high-pitched voice:

Punch when parted from his dear,

Still must sing in doleful tune.