OK, maybe this is a slight overreaction. But I’ve always been nervous around policemen, ever since I smuggled six pairs of dollies’ shoes out of Hamleys, at age five, and a policeman came up to me and boomed, “What have you got there, young lady?” and I nearly jumped out of my skin. He was admiring my helium balloon, it turned out.

(We sent the dollies’ shoes back in an envelope after Mum and Dad found them, with a letter of apology, which I wrote myself. And then Hamleys wrote back and said, Don’t worry, very nicely. I think that’s the first time I realized that writing a letter is actually a very good way to get yourself out of a tricky situation.)

“Luke!” I mutter urgently. “Quick. Are we supposed to bribe them? How much cash have we got?”

“Becky,” says Luke patiently, “I said, don’t panic. There’ll be a perfectly good reason why they’ve pulled us over.”

“Should we all get out?” says Suze.

“I say we stay in the vehicle,” says Janice, sounding edgy. “I say we act perfectly normal, as though we’ve got nothing to hide.”

“We have got nothing to hide,” says Alicia, sounding exasperated. “Everyone needs to relax.”

“They’ve got guns!” says Mum wildly, peering out of the window. “Guns, Janice!”

“Jane, please calm down!” says Luke. “I’ll go and talk to them.”

He gets out of the RV, and the rest of us look around at one another anxiously. I’m traveling with my best friend, Suze; my very much un-best friend, Alicia; my daughter, Minnie; my mum; and her best friend, Janice. We’re on our way to Las Vegas from L.A., and already we’ve argued about the air-conditioning, the seating arrangements, and whether Janice should be allowed to play Celtic pipe music to calm her nerves. (Answer: no. Five votes to one.) It’s a tad fraught, this road trip, and we’ve only been going for two hours. And now this.

I watch as the cop approaches Luke and starts talking.

“Doggie!” says Minnie, pointing out of the window. “Big, big, big doggie.”

A second cop has come up to Luke, with an intimidating-looking police dog. It’s a German shepherd and it’s sniffing around Luke’s feet. Suddenly it looks up at the RV and barks.

“Oh God!” Janice emits an anguished cry. “I knew it! It’s the narcotics squad! They’re going to sniff me out!”

“What?” I turn to stare at her. Janice is a middle-aged lady who likes flower arranging and doing people’s makeup in lurid shades of peach. What does she mean, sniff her out?

“I’m sorry to have to tell you, everybody…” She gulps dramatically. “But I have illicit drugs about my person.”

For a moment, nobody moves. My brain is refusing to compute these two elements. Illicit drugs? Janice?

“Drugs!” Mum exclaims. “Janice, what are you talking about?”

“For jet lag,” Janice moans. “My doctor was so unhelpful, I had to resort to the Internet. Annabel at the bridge club gave me the website, but it had a disclaimer: May be prohibited in certain countries. And now that dog will sniff them out and we’ll get hauled in for questioning—”