We chose the clothes in which to clad her: her armour. It is pink and white and gold, and the reason is the reason kings wore ermine for generations: garish and cruel and for special occasions. She is really pretty, and the pink is satin on her skin, and the white is silk, and the gold shines like real gold, so why should we have chosen differently? We’ve chosen her eyelashes: they have feathers on them and when she wrinkles her nose, they ruffle. She sits on the edge of the bathtub and swings her feet, fully a girl. We wing her eyeliner. We condition her split ends with a coconut mist. We paint her face. We take a long time, the time it takes. There is no one here to rush us. We drink fruit cocktails, which we set on the edge of the bathtub. ‘Girls love sweet cocktails,’ they say. Here in the bathroom it is safe to drink from a straw, bite on a strawberry; we could eat a banana whole, shove it right down our throats if we wanted. We touch her eyes, smooth out the primer. We sprinkle powder on to her eyelids. It makes her eyes sparkle. We shade in her bone structure and she acquires definition, coming into focus from the outside inwards. We say, ‘Tilt your head up,’ and she does. Baby girl. We work in a team, the all-girl team, in the top league of the overall league. We curl her hair in ringlets like a doll, then brush it all through to tousle them, and though the iron is hot, near her face, never once does she flinch. The last thing, of course, is to put the crown on her head. A crown, not a tiara. Gracious Alanna.

The very, very last thing is to slide the garter belt up her leg. This is a role that falls to me. It’s like fitting Cinderella’s shoe: it does, perfectly, and my heart flutters. ‘Careful with the tights,’ Alanna says. ‘They are so delicate.’ I am extremely careful.

Bex spearheads our party into the hall. She’s blackened her beauty mark with eyeliner. It’s slick on her left cheek, like a dot of caviar, like Marie Antoinette’s.

Emmy braided her hair into a tight knot which looks like melted copper or coiled-up snakes. She’s brushed red glitter into the creases of her hair-do, green glitter in the creases of her eyelids: the effect is Christmassy and somewhat patriotic, like she’s representing a foreign country at Eurovision. She pulls it off with flair: her cheeks are sleek with powder, her eyes snake-like, too.