‘Oh you’re a star, Mrs D, so you are,’ he said, twinkling at her. ‘Damo’ was clearly a charmer. And his gruff Ulster brogue embellished his rock-solid air of self-assurance. No wonder Mrs D was putty in his hands. Eugh, perish the thought.

‘And will you be wanting any laundry done?’ Mrs Daniels asked with a smile. ‘I’ll put a load on tonight.’

‘No, you’re all right, sweetheart, I’m just taking my cousin here out for a cup of tea and I’ll be home and tucked up in bed before ten. Been a long day. Come on then, Lana, let’s hear all your news.’

Cousin? Christ.

Within three minutes they were waiting to be served at the bar of the Fox and Vivian, now teeming with pre-Christmas revellers.

‘I wasn’t going to bother. I was just a bit intrigued,’ she said. ‘To be honest, I had difficulty remembering who you were.’

‘Shagged a lot of fellas in Athens, did you?’ he smirked.

‘No, that’s not what I meant, I—’

‘Hey, makes no odds to me, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I like a woman who knows what she’s doing.’ And he looked at her intently over the rim of his beer glass.

She held her own and stared back, refusing to be intimidated.

Go home, Lana, she said to herself. Shouted to herself, even. Go home now!

‘Right, well, I’ve got lines to learn. Nice to see you again.’ Lana finished her beer and put the glass down on the table. ‘Thanks for the drink.’

‘Any time. You know where I am.’ And he didn’t even look at her as she left, just headed to the fruit machine and fed it with a few coins.

Outside in the cold air, Lana could hear the muted music filtering out from the pub and the punters singing that they wished it could be Christmas every day. Lighting a cigarette, she leant back against the wall and thought of a woman she’d read about in a magazine, who really did try to make Christmas a daily event. Ate turkey every day an’ everything. Utter madness. But wasn’t she, Lana, just as mad herself? What on earth had she been thinking, coming here tonight? She closed her eyes and blew out the smoke, willing her nerves to calm down with every drag.

And suddenly he was there, with that stupid grin again. ‘Couldn’t quite bring yourself to leave, I see.’

She stubbed out her cigarette, and didn’t grin back. ‘Yeah, looks that way, doesn’t it?’

He nodded – an implicit agreement made silently between the two of them.

And that was that.

Ten minutes later, they’d locked the door of his room at the Collingwood Guest House and were pulling off each other’s clothes in frenzied desperation.

Downstairs in her private quarters, Mrs Daniels was oblivious to the reunion taking place in the Kenneth Williams suite above her, currently occupied by the charming Damian Magill, whose flask and Tupperware container she’d just washed and dried ready for re-use tomorrow.