‘In the past six weeks, Miss Cleverley, you’ve issued threats against the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Leader of the Opposition, President Macron, both Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, a backbench MP from Yorkshire, Kate Winslet, Salman Rushdie, Banksy, the wives of three England football players, Delia Smith, Ant and Dec, and Her Majesty the Queen.’ He closed his folder now and looked at her with barely disguised contempt on his face. ‘Her Majesty the Queen,’ he repeated, spitting out the words. ‘Elizabeth Regina. Who has served this nation with distinction, while never putting a foot wrong, since coming to the throne at the tender age of twenty-five. Have you no shame?’

‘But I didn’t mean any of them,’ she protested. ‘They were just jokes.’

‘Threatening to chop the Prime Minister’s head off with a machete is a joke, is it?’

‘Well, it’s not the funniest joke of all time, I’ll give you that. But it’s just harmless political satire.’

‘That contravenes the Terrorism Act of 2018.’

‘Well, I haven’t read that, so how would I know?’

‘Saying that you’d like to see the Duke of York pummelled to within an inch of his life by a kangaroo. That’s a joke, is it?’

‘Well, we all want that, surely?’

‘All right, we could let that one slide. But the rest, Miss Cleverley, the rest—’

Before he could continue, one of the armed officers came downstairs carrying an evidence bag containing a lot of banknotes.

‘Thirty-five thousand pounds, boss,’ he said, waving it in the air. ‘Found it in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Looks like a lad’s bedroom by the posters on the wall.’

‘Do you know anything about this?’ asked the man in charge, turning back to Elizabeth.

‘Thirty-five thousand pounds?’ she asked, opening her eyes wide. ‘I certainly do not. And if you found that in my younger brother’s room, then you can take it up with him. The boy’s an idiot. He probably sold his brain.’

The man nodded to his colleagues, and they started to lead her outside, which wasn’t easy as her ankles were still tied.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she cried.

‘To the station,’ he said. ‘You’ve committed some serious criminal offences and it’ll be up to the Crown Prosecution Service now to decide what to do with you.’

With that, they put her into the back of a waiting police van and shut the door. She sat there, torn between laughter and shock, uncertain what to do next, before moving her tied hands to her right-hand pocket and nudging it with her elbow until her phone fell out and dropped to the floor. She leaned over it, poking it with her nose, aware of how undignified this must look but not caring, and clicked on the blue Twitter app but, to her horror, the police had obviously got there first.

This account has been suspended due to a violation of our rules, said the message on the homepage.