As soon as I was dressed, Ellen helped me paint my arms and face. I sat numbly as she smeared over me a mix of grease and soot, basting my arms and legs like a stuffed goose, so my skin gleamed dark. She murmured Crillick’s instructions in a sing-song while she worked –‘Here you go then, blood of yer fallen enemies’ – stabbing two fingers into a pot and drawing them across my cheeks to create twin pairs of dripping ‘tribal marks’. The stuff inside the pot was made from poppy petals and thickened to a paste with water and flour. Where did Crillick get this idea of the tribal marks anyway? Would they mean anything to the Black man who sat waiting in the audience for the show to start, or anyone else in Africa either? Ellen made one more line down the centre of my forehead for good measure. The skin puckered and she dabbed her finger to my face to correct the smudge, while I stood silent. Satisfied, she stepped back and looked me over.

‘You’ll do,’ she said.

Growing up, I’d hated how dark I was, how an afternoon in the sunshine would make the colour in me glow. Now it turned out I was not Black enough. In order to convince as the Great Amazonia, I must be the deep, rich colour of mahogany. The darker tone combined with the natural hazel of my eyes would increase my allure. At least, that’s what Marcus Crillick had told me.

‘There can’t be a hint of the East End about you. What you need to be is Black as pitch. What was your father? Let me guess. An English gent, I think? We must remove every trace of him for the act to succeed and no one can ever know of your deception.’

My deception? It was Crillick that was paying me to do it. I’d felt the warmth rise in my cheeks and looked away so he wouldn’t see. It wasn’t embarrassment. There were more bastards than me in St Giles and more almond-shaped eyes and thick black hair than could be explained away by God’s rich tapestry. Still, it was none of his business who my mother and father were, and anyway, what difference did it make? I had only myself to rely on now.

‘Can I help you with your make-up?’ I asked Ellen and pointed to the pot of burnt cork on the dressing table.

‘Not with those nails,’ Ellen grimaced. At Crillick’s request, she had helped me file them the previous week to wicked points. I regretted it already, used to being able to discard the things that made me Amazonia, but one of my rivals at a show on Shaftesbury Avenue had filed teeth. I drew the line at that but Crillick’s Variety was not to be completely outdone.