And then suddenly she did something that really startled me. She changed her face. Not like pulling a face, or anything; but her shoulders slumped, and she turned her eyes away, and her mouth drooped somehow, and she made her hair into a limp kind of curtain, and suddenly she was someone else, someone else in Zozie’s clothes, not ugly, not quite, but someone you wouldn’t turn round to see twice, someone you’d forget as soon as they’d gone.

‘—or like this,’ she said, and she shook her hair and straightened up and just like that she was Zozie again, brilliant Zozie with her jingling bangles and her black-and-yellow peasant skirt and her pink-streaked hair and bright-yellow patent platform shoes that would have just looked weird on anyone else, but on Zozie they looked terrific, because she was Zozie, and everything does.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Could you teach me that?’

‘I just did,’ she said, laughing.

‘It looked like – magic,’ I said, and blushed.

‘Well, most magic really is that simple,’ said Zozie matter-of-factly, and if anyone else had said it I might have thought they were making fun of me, but not Zozie. Not her.

‘There’s no such thing as magic,’ I said.

‘Then call it something else.’ She shrugged. ‘Call it attitude, if you like. Call it charisma, or chutzpah, or glamour, or charm. Because basically it’s just about standing straight, looking people in the eye, shooting them a killer smile and saying, fuck off, I’m fabulous.’

I laughed at that, and not just because Zozie had said the f-word. ‘I wish I could do that,’ I said.

‘Try it,’ said Zozie. ‘You might be surprised.’

Of course I was lucky. Today was exceptional. Even Zozie couldn’t have known. But I did feel different, somehow; more alive, as if the wind had changed.

First there was Zozie’s whole attitude thing. I’d promised her I’d try it, and so I did, feeling just a bit self-conscious this morning with my hair just washed and a little of Zozie’s rose perfume on, as I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and practised my killer smile.

I have to say, it didn’t look bad. Not perfect, of course, but really, it makes a world of difference if you stand up straight and say the words (even if it’s only in your head).

I looked different, too: more like Zozie; more like the type of person who might swear in an English tea-shop and not give a damn.

It isn’t magic, I told myself in my shadow-voice. From the corner of my eye I could see Pantoufle, looking slightly disapproving, I thought, his nose going up and down.

‘It’s all right, Pantoufle,’ I said softly. ‘It isn’t magic. It’s allowed.’