"What do you think? Tartan?"

“Not bad,” says Arabella, munching a sausage roll. It’s several hours later, and the two of you have spent a lovely day touring London. “Ooh, there’s one! What do you think? Tartan?”

“I think… plain white.”

“That’s so boring!”

“I don’t know what to tell you. She looks like a plain white girl to me.”

“Let’s find out,” says Arabella, and whistles. A gust of wind blows up the policewoman’s skirt, exposing her tartan knickers to the whole of Trafalgar Squire. She squeals and hastily forces the skirt back down as tourists chuckle. “Haha! I win!”

“How do you always know?”

“Female intuition,” says Arabella, shrugging. You’ve been playing a game where you do this every time you see a policewoman. So far the tally is five plain white, three pink, two yellow, one green, one scarlet satin, one rainbow-striped, one polka-dots, one black lacy thong, three nothing at all and, surprisingly, four tartan. She holds up a hand and says “Feels like rain.”

“That’s definitely rain,” you say, as the first cold drops begin to patter on your head. “Aw, and here’s us without raincoats. My suit will be ruined.”

“Fear not, Sitri. I have a solution for you. Girls!”

She snaps her fingers. The faces of Meg and Prudence are pictures of misery as the **** ladies strip off their black rubber raincoats and hand them over, leaving them to shiver on the concrete in just their white corsets and stockings. You and Arabella shrug the garments on and smile as the rain comes bucketing down, drenching your scowling little pets from head to toe.

“Mm. So comfortable, Arabella. I’m glad you thought of this.”

“Thank you, Sitri. Why, I’m dry as a bone!”