Trembling with fear and defiance, she walked up to a clerk at his desk, slapped fifty warm dollars in front of him and said, ‘I want to start a bank account, all right?’ She left five minutes later with a shiny account book and the delightful recollection that a posh-looking man at a posh-looking desk in a posh-looking building had called her madam, and enjoyed the sensation until it ran into the reality that madam had better roll up her sleeves and get to work.

There was a lot to do. She made pies at least a day ahead so that they could mature, and Mister Nutt’s appetite last night had put quite a large dent in her pantry. But at least there wouldn’t be much demand for pies tomorrow night. Even the wizards didn’t call for a pie after a banquet.

Ah, yes, the banquet, she thought, as the rain started to soak into her coat. The banquet. She would have to see about the banquet. Sometimes if you wanted to go to the ball you had to be your own fairy godmother.

There were several obstacles requiring the touch of a magic wand: Mrs Whitlow did indeed operate a certain kind of apartheid between the Night and Day Kitchens, as if one flight of stairs actually changed who you were. The next difficulty was that Glenda did not have, according to the traditions of the university, the right kind of figure to serve at table, at least when there were visitors, and, lastly, Glenda did not have the temperament for serving at table. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to smile; she was quite capable of smiling, if you gave her enough warning, but she positively hated having to smile at people who actually merited, instead, a flick around the earhole with a napkin. She hated taking away plates of unfinished food. She always had to suppress a tendency to say things like ‘Why did you put it on your plate if you didn’t intend to finish it?’ and ‘Look, you’ve left more than half of it and it cost a dollar a pound,’ and ‘Of course it’s cold, but that’s because you’ve been playing footsie with the young lady opposite and haven’t been concentrating on your dinner,’ and when all else failed ‘There’s little children in Klatch you know… ’–it was a phrase of her mother’s, but she’d obviously missed some significant part of it.

She hated waste, she thought to herself as she walked along the stone corridor towards the Night Kitchen. There never needed to be any if you knew your way around a kitchen and if your diners had the decency to take your food seriously. She was rambling to herself. She knew that. Occasionally she would pull the front page of the Times out of her bag and take a look at it again. It had all really happened and there was the proof. But, it was a funny thing: every day something happened that was important enough to be on the front page of the newspaper. She’d never bought it and seen a little sign that said ‘Not much happened yesterday, sorry about that’. And tomorrow, wonderful though that picture was, it would be wrapping up fish and chips and everyone would have forgotten about it. That would be a load off her mind.

There was a polite cough. She recognized it as belonging to Nutt, who had the politest cough there could possibly be. ‘Yes, Mister Nutt?’

‘Mister Trev has sent me with this letter for Miss Juliet, Miss Glenda,’ said Nutt, who had apparently been waiting by the steps. He held it out as if it were some double-edged sword.

‘She’s not come in yet, I’m afraid,’ said Glenda as Nutt followed her up the steps, ‘but I’ll put it on the shelf over here where she’ll be bound to see it.’ She looked at Nutt and saw his eyes firmly fixed on the pie racks. ‘Oh, and I do seem to have made one apple pie more than called for. I wonder if you could assist me by removing it from the premises?’

He gave her a grateful smile, took the pie and hurried away.

Alone again, Glenda looked at the envelope. It was the cheapest sort, the kind that looked as if it had been made from recycled lavatory paper. And somehow, it seemed to have got a bit bigger.

Inexplicably, she found herself recalling that the gum on those envelopes was so bad that when it came to sealing them it was probably better to just have a very bad cold. Anyone could simply open it up, see what it said, dig out a bit of earwax and no one would be any the wiser.

But that would have been a very bad thing to do.

Glenda thought that same thought fifteen times before Juliet walked into the Night Kitchen, hung up her coat on the hook and put on her apron. ‘There was a man on the bus readin’ the paper and it had a picture of me on the front,’ she said excitedly.

Glenda nodded and handed over her own paper.

‘Well, I suppose it’s me,’ said Juliet, with her head on one side. ‘What shall we do now?’

‘Open the damn letter!’ shouted Glenda.

‘What?’ said Juliet.

‘Er, oh, Trev sent you a letter,’ said Glenda. She snatched it from the shelf and held it out. ‘Why don’t you read it right now?’

‘He’s probably just mucking about.’

‘No! Why don’t you just read it right now? I haven’t tried to open it!’

Juliet took the envelope. It opened more or less to a touch. Glenda’s evil side thought, hardly any gum at all! I could have just flicked it open!

‘I can’t read with you standin’ so close,’ said Juliet. After some time moving her lips she went on, ‘I don’t get it. It’s all kinda long words. Lovely curly writing, though. There’s a bit here saying that I look like a summer’s day. What’s that all about, then?’ She pressed it into Glenda’s hand. ‘Can you read it for me, Glendy? You know I’m not good at complicated words.’

‘Well, I’m a bit busy,’ said Glenda, ‘but since you ask.’

‘First time I’ve ever had a letter that’s not all in capitals,’ said Juliet.

Glenda sat down and started to read. A lifetime of what even she would call bad romantic novels suddenly bore fruit. It read as though someone had turned on the poetry tap and then absent-mindedly gone on holiday. But they were wonderful words, nevertheless. There was the word swain, for example, which was a definite marker, and quite a lot about flowers and quite a lot of what looked like pleading, wrapped up in fancy letters, and after a while she took out her handkerchief and fanned the air around her face.

‘So, what’s it all about?’ said Juliet.

Glenda sighed. How to begin? How did you talk to Juliet about similes and metaphors and poetic licence all wrapped up in wonderful curly writing?

She did her best. ‘Weeell, basically he’s saying that he really fancies you, thinks you’re really fit, how about a date, no hanky panky, he promises. And there’s three little x’s underneath.’

Juliet started to cry. ‘That’s loverlee. Fancy ’im sitting down and writing all those words just for me. Real poetry just for me. I’m gonna sleep with it under my pillow.’

‘Yes, I suspect that he had something like that in mind,’ said Glenda and thought, Trev Likely a poet? Not likely at all.

There was a dreadful load on Pepe’s bladder, and he was stuck between a rock and a hard place, if that wasn’t too offensive a description of lying between Madame and a wall. She was still asleep. She snored magnificently, using the traditional multi-part snore, known to those who are fortunate enough to have to listen to it every night as the ‘errgh, errgh, errghh, blorrrt!’ symphony. And she was lying on his leg. And the room was pitch dark. He managed to retrieve his leg, half of which had gone to sleep, and set out on the well-known search for porcelain, which began by him putting his foot down on an empty champagne bottle, which skittered away and left him flat on his back. In the gloom he groped for it, found it, tested it for true emptiness, because you never knew your luck, and, as it were, filled it again, putting it down on what was probably a table, but in his mind and the darkness could just as well have been an armadillo.