She opened a door and Lucy found herself confronted on one side by a vast locker room that seemed to stretch to infinity and on the other by a room providing not only loos and basins, but showers, too.

She quickly crammed her coat and bag into an empty locker, stripped off her dress, tossed the shredded tights in a bin. There was no time for a shower so she dunked her feet, one at a time, in a basin of warm water to wash off the street dirt, half expecting Pam to burst in with the real elf at any minute.

She didn’t but, until she did, she was grateful for being in the warm and, more importantly, in a very neat disguise.

She dabbed circles of rouge on her cheeks, scattered a few freckles across her nose, then a few more, before removing the nail polish that had been applied at great expense just hours ago. A shame, but clearly elves didn’t have bright red nails.

Finally, she donned the costume, tucking her hair out of sight under the pointy felt hat and regarded herself in a handily placed mirror.

It wasn’t a good look.

The green and white striped tights made her legs look fat and the tunic was doing her bum no favours. Right now, she didn’t care.

Diary update: The day has gone from bad to surreal. I’ve been mistaken for an elf. Not an entirely bad thing since I’m off the streets and I’ve been supplied, free of charge, with a neat disguise. It’s just temporary, of course, like the new name. What I’m going to do when Hastings & Hart closes at eight o’clock is my next problem. But with luck I’ve got three hours breathing space to work on a plan, always assuming the real elf doesn’t turn up in the meantime.