My outburst made Maggie laugh all the more. So to further demonstrate my disapproval, I gave her a thump on the arm, which resulted in her having to grab the nearest tabletop to stop from falling over in hysterics. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you did up there,’ I said, waving my finger in front of her nose. ‘It’s okay for you with your little-Miss-Leading-Lady-diva-la-de-da perfect singing voice.’ It must have been the alcohol, because I couldn’t think of any other way Maggie could have enticed me up on to that stage let alone sing karaoke with her. And that was the point – it was supposed to have been with her, but I saw how far the bitch kept the microphone away from her mouth, so all the poor sods listening got was my voice coming over loud and unfortunately clear. It was also rather unfortunate that a large number of the audience were my work colleagues, who were by now in no doubt as to my singing inabilities. My reputation did have one fighting chance – Sergeant Frater was now onstage butchering ‘Unchained Melody’. Surely that would displace my efforts in their collective memories.

‘Ah, God, you were funny, I can’t believe you fell for that again.’ Maggie had finally managed to exert enough control over herself to be able to speak, but her words came interspersed with gasps of air. Even I had to smile at the reference to ‘again’. ‘Gotcha. Man, you’re gullible. That, or it was the beer singing, and if it was the Speights, it was flat.’

‘Oh, ha-de-bloody-ha. I suppose you think you’re clever. It’s all your fault. You shouldn’t have given me that second one. You know what I’m like. One glass and I’m happy, two glasses and I’m anybody’s.’

‘For God’s sake, get this girl another drink.’ Unless Maggie’s voice had suddenly broken and cranked down to baritone, this wasn’t hers. I swung around to see if my memory banks served me correctly. It did indeed belong to the face I suspected.

‘Paul, hi. What are you doing here?’ I tugged down on the bottom of my top which had ridden up a bit. ‘You didn’t see my…’ I gestured towards the stage. ‘Did you?’

‘Haven’t expanded your repertoire any, I see. Still doing “The Midnight Special”.’