I keep thinking it’s a shame if he’s grown hard and cold, but maybe I need to face up to the fact that he probably always was.

As the night enters its final furlong, Lucas breaks it to me that he’s leaving me alone for half an hour to take Keith to stay at a friend’s. He goes into a degree of detail I wouldn’t have deemed necessary about why he has to do it now, given he’s the boss, which only leaves me wondering if he’s spinning a yarn to avoid me.

‘Sorry to leave you on your own, it’s not fair. This is why I wasn’t down with Devlin’s brilliant tactical maverick understaffing.’

I shake my head: ‘It’s fine, go.’

Though I can’t tell how much this is authentic concern for me and how much was a chance to knock his brother. (That said, the very thought of working with Esther …)

‘Sheila’s Wheels, over there,’ Lucas nods towards the hen, and I laugh, ‘As long as they’re not disturbing anyone else, keep serving them, though it’s incredible they’ve not keeled over. How many Nebuchadnezzars of prosecco is it now? Nine? OK.’

After a shaky start, I think I can grow to like him as a boss. He might not be all over me trying to be my best mate, but this starchy professionalism is preferable anyway. Whenever anyone acted like your mate at That’s Amore! they were either trying to get into your knickers or swap for a Bank Holiday shift.

At gone ten, shortly after Lucas has left, the door slaps open like a saloon bar in a western, with a gust of icy air, and a man in a high end Halloween costume enters. He’s got a blond wig with a ponytail, fake armour, a large red cape spilling down his back. He raises a large foam hammer and says, using a cod-dramatic voice: ‘I’m looking for BECKY!’

Oh, God.

The hen do erupts into excited shrieking and the warrior makes his way over to their table.

‘Becky?’ he booms.

‘Yes yes it’s me!’ A woman with a bridal veil attached to an Alice band half stands, at the back of the semi-circle, and windmills her arms.

‘Hello, Becky, I am Thor. Do you like my hammer?’

Becky’s near hyperventilating in her desire to let it be known that she likes his hammer.

Thor puts down a Bluetooth portable speaker that he had secreted somewhere about his person, and Sisqo’s ‘Unleash The Dragon’ blares out.

Aw God no! A stripper?!

He starts swinging his hammer from side to side.

‘You’ve heard of RAGNAROK! Well who wants to see RAGNACOCK?!’

18

There’s deafening screaming and the rest of the pub is split between those who’ve abandoned their drinks to watch and those who’ve simply abandoned their drinks, got up and left. We may well not get these people back again. The Wicker is in the reputation-making phase. This is a disaster.

I have to intervene. For self-interest if nothing else – I can’t have Lucas walk in to find me standing watching some bloke with his wang out. I could be sacked. ‘Well, Devlin, that girl I said was best suited to Hooters? She had a fella wafting his hot rod round the place within minutes of being left in charge.’

Esther’s words ring in my ears. ‘Don’t come back with one of your amusing stories where everything is a huge mess but it isn’t your fault. No incidents. I don’t want there to be incidents and excuses.’

This is exactly that, isn’t it?

Thor has unbuttoned his cape and is swinging it around over his head, like a matador facing a bull.

‘Excuse me,’ I say, ducking round the bar and scuttling out, feeling extremely foolish, as Thor turns towards me, finger framing a crotch thrust by way of ‘hello’. I feel like I’ve wandered in from a National Trust garden to the Magic Mike XXL show in Vegas.

‘Excuse me? You can’t do this here.’

‘GREETINGS, MAIDEN OF EARTH!’

‘I’m not joking, you have to stop. I’m going to turn the music off, OK?’

I move past him towards the table and Thor throws his cape over my head, around my front, and uses it to pull me towards him.

‘Have you heard of ASGARD?’ he bellows, in that daft voice he’s putting on.

‘Let me go! Look, please, you can’t do this here—’

‘Well, ladies – I am ASS HARD!!’

With one powerful yank, Thor pulls me towards him using the cape and I’m crushed against his armour, arms trapped by my sides, while he grinds and shimmies against my rear.

‘Let me go!’

He won’t let me go, the barmaid caught in his cape now being a flamboyant improvisation in his act.

And all of a sudden, this goes from an embarrassing, inconvenient predicament to a frightening one. I know this feeling surging up inside me, I recognise it like an old enemy.

The end of the world panic attack that caused me to run from the exam hall at the end of my first year at university and never go back.

The loss of control, the suffocation …

The more I wriggle and thrash, the funnier the stripper thinks it is to keep a hold of me, and it’s no use. I’m becoming hysterical in the claustrophobia. He’s not going to listen, he’s not going to stop … I push and push and wail until he loosens his grip, momentarily.

It gives me a second or two where I have some mobility in my right arm and I draw it forward free of the cape, gather my might and elbow him in the face. I have no idea how to do this, I’ve never hit anyone, so I do a best guess. He drops the cape and I fall forwards to the floor, with a hard, humiliating bang to both wrists.

‘What the fuck did you do that for?!’ he shouts, in a Sheffield accent now. He has blood trickling from his nose.

He grabs me up by the shoulders, pulling me into a sitting position, and for a moment I think he might be helping me up, until I realise it’s a far more aggressive approach than that.

My breathing is shallow and my whole body is shaking, awash with fight or flight adrenaline. His fingers are digging into me and I can tell by the tension rolling off him in waves that he wants to hit me but is also aware lamping a woman might be a bad career move.

‘Get off her!’ I hear a voice by the door.

Help at last. Thank God. Although, oh no: it’s Lucas. He strides across the room, Keith bumbling at his heels, brushes Thor to the side, offers his hand and hauls me up. ‘Are you alright?’ he says.

I mumble I am. I don’t want to need rescuing by him.

‘Fuck her, look what she did to me!’ Thor says, wig lopsided, proffering a hand that’s full of blood. It does look terrible. I had no idea I could hit that hard.

‘What are you doing in here?’ Lucas says.

‘I’m a male entertainer. I didn’t know you had psychos working here.’

‘Yeah well you don’t male entertain on these premises without clearing it with management first, which you definitely didn’t, so get out.’

The hen-do women are bug-eyed and uncharacteristically quiet, a low burble of disbelief rolling round the group.

Thor collects his hammer, his Bluetooth player and his cape from the floor, his smeared face looking as if he’s a zombie that’s been feasting on flesh. It’s a strangely apt look for Halloween.

‘This is not over!’ he spits, as he passes me, pointing at his nose. ‘Bobby does NOT forget.’ Lucas yanks him away, grabbing his arm and propelling him out of the door.

‘Poldark-looking fuck!’ Thor says to Lucas, as he’s bundled into the street. I’m not yet capable of finding anything funny, but I file it away to find funny later.

The hen do decide to follow suit.

‘You’ve ruined Becky’s hen, you bitch,’ says one of the women to me as they troop out, and I flinch. I don’t know what to say other than whimper: ‘He wouldn’t get off me.’

Am I sacked? Please don’t let me be sacked.

Lucas leans over the bar, pulls the cord to rattle the bell for ‘time’ and takes my hand, firmly. I have no capacity left to find this awkward, I merely submit. He leads me into the kitchen behind the bar and plonks me on a seat. Keith is here! Keith is happy to see me, at least, and breaks off from lapping water for a stroke. (Wasn’t he going to leave him at a friend’s? I totally clock that was a fib.)

When Lucas returns, a minute later, with brown liquid in a brandy balloon, I’m on the floor with my arms round Keith’s neck. I let go guiltily, as if I’ve been caught in a clinch. Lucas says nothing apart from:

‘Drink this. I’ll finish up.’

I’ve never liked brandy but I let it numb my lips as I listen to the offstage, muffled conversations and clanging of the till drawer as it shoots back into the register.

Eventually, Lucas joins me, closing the door behind him carefully.

‘You OK?’

‘Yes, thanks. I’m sorry I don’t know what happened, I told him he couldn’t strip in here. He grabbed me and I had a nervo … and twatted him. I’m so sorry, I don’t usually belt people.’

‘Hey, no,’ Lucas’s eyes are wide with surprise. ‘It isn’t for you to apologise. This is for us to grovel about the idiocy of leaving you on your own. I’m interviewing on Monday and we’ll get others in, and sod what Dev says.’

‘Oh? I … thanks.’