‘You want to take a good look at yourself,’ my mother says in a voice that’s dangerously low. ‘You’ve never had the male attention that I’ve had. I make sure I always fulfil my potential, unlike you. So don’t blame me for the way your life’s turned out.’

And there it is, her truth versus my truth.

What did I expect? I’d expected her to apologise and hug me and beg forgiveness, but for that to happen she’d have to see it from my point of view.

My throat’s tight from the tension and my heart’s pounding with anxiety, but my tears recede before they can spill and I’m bitterly grateful for that.

‘And the reason that I dressed you up was that you were such a shy, insecure little thing, I wanted to make you more confident,’ she says as she gets to her feet. ‘I’m going to bed.’

It’s been a pretty shit day all round. I can’t breathe properly. I bend over and hug my knees until the blood comes back into my head.

What have I done with my life? I’ve tried to cure people with fashion. Alexa’s comment comes back to me and in my mother’s voice I can hear her saying: Have you any idea how trivial you sound?

My mother slams the bedroom door. I lie on the sofa and wrap myself in my Burberry trench coat, designed for soldiers fighting in the Great War, and try to sleep.

LOT 22

A Givenchy midnight-blue, full-length evening coat, ¾ sleeves, frog-fasteners, couture-labelled, sold as seen.

My mother and I are living like flatmates who steal each other’s yoghurts: we’re icily polite.

I’m about to get settled on the sofa for the night, when I get a frantic phone call from Moss telling me that Dinah’s very upset and he doesn’t know what to do. He sounds so desperate that I get dressed again, pulling on a midnight-blue evening coat that has the voluminous warmth of a comfort blanket, and catch an Uber taxi to Hampstead.

It’s a dark, cloudy night. As I walk up their path I can smell a fire burning.

Moss meets me anxiously at the door in a navy silk dressing gown.

‘She’s out the back,’ he says, ‘destroying everything I made her. Come this way.’ And he lets me down the side of the house and opens the side gate for me.

There’s a fire burning at the far end of the garden and Dinah’s silhouetted against the billowing smoke.

‘Moss – what am I supposed to say to her?’

He raises his hands in surrender. ‘She won’t listen to me,’ he says. ‘God knows, I’ve tried talking.’