here are apparently pivotal moments where your whole life flashes before your eyes.

This is one of them.

Except instead of my life it’s Tabitha’s, and instead of flashing it’s just one big, blinding glare of white-hot terror.

Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God …

How could I have just left her?

How could I have been so distracted by my Elizabethan ambitions that I let a bunch of strangers walk off with the person in the entire world I love most?

I am the worst big sister ever.

And this is the exact place where Mary Tudor tried to get Elizabeth imprisoned for treason in the Tower of London.

“Tabby?” I shake my assistants off and wobble dangerously into the middle of the room. “Tabs?” Fear is starting to close my throat. “TABITHA MANNERS?” I grab a passing photographic assistant by the jumper. “WHERE IS SHE?”

All week, this felt like a totally reasonable plan.

In the glossy, safe Vogue offices and in the sanctity of my bedroom, what I was doing didn’t seem that reprehensible.

Irresponsible, yes. Selfish and poorly thought-through, quite possibly.

But not bad.

Except it’s finally hitting me: I’ve just ripped a defenceless eight-month-old baby away from her mother without permission and left her in the hands of a bunch of fashionistas I don’t know, to do with as they will.

What the fudge nuggets is wrong with me?

“The baby?” the assistant blinks nervously: I’m shaking him more than a little roughly. “Are we talking about the baby?”

A human bite is approximately 120 pounds per square inch, while a crocodile has the strongest jaw of any animal on the planet at 3,700.

I know it’s not this poor boy’s fault.

But I swear if he doesn’t answer me this very second, I’m going to turn into a reptile and chew his head right off.

“YES OF COURSE THE BABY WHERE IS THE BABY GIVE ME TABBY OR I SWEAR I WILL RIP THIS WHOLE PLACE TO—”

“Blimey,” a voice says behind me. “Are we in character already?”

I spin so fast I nearly poke the assistant’s eye out with my shoulder spikes.

“Tabby?”

She’s curled up in Jasper’s arms, beaming, in a pretty cream lace dress with a train so long it’s thrown over one of his shoulders.

The relief is so intense it’s a good thing I’m wearing the corset because it’s basically the only thing holding me up.

“Bababababa,” she tells me happily as I launch myself across and start covering her in kisses that leave little red lipstick spots all over her face. “Bababababa.”

“They have a farm,” Jasper explains. “We went to look at the goats. Goats don’t say Baa, Tabitha. They say Meh. I told you, they’re the most unimpressed creatures in the animal kingdom.”

I blink at them both.

My heart is still hammering, and I’m struggling to breathe: adrenaline, fear and an already reduced lung capacity are a heady combination.

“I didn’t know where she …” I gulp. “I wouldn’t know what I’d do if …”

Jasper hands her to me without a word.

“Bababa?” she says, smacking me in the face with something damp, small, grey and fluffy. “Bababa?”

Wait. “Is that …?”

Gripped tightly in my deliriously happy sister’s hand is the original Dunky.

“He was in a tree at the end of your street,” Jasper shrugs. “That cat of yours is an impressive climber. I had to fight a squirrel who thought it was its baby.”

A grateful lump rises into my throat.

After my panicked hunt under the bush and a long and fruitless conversation with Victor, I had just presumed that Dunky was gone for good.

“Bababababa,” Tabitha beams, whacking me with her beloved toy again. “Bababababa.”

“Thank you, Jasper,” I say awkwardly. “For … looking after her for me.”

He lifts his eyebrows. “That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?”

I blink. “Uh. Absolutely.”

“Harriet?” Charlotte calls, hurrying across the room. “Are you ready to … Oh.” Her eyes widen at Tabby, covered in little red dots, and me: now lipstick-less. “Let’s get you both tidied up and then we can start.”