When I left, I went home for a while and wrote quite a lot of poetry. I also did a fair amount of cooking and gardening, but as my parents pointed out, I needed a proper job. I wasn’t sure about proper, wasn’t sure I deserved a career, but I knew I had to do something. And so I went to London and cooked directors’ lunches for a large firm of City accountants. I think Dad got the job for me, through contacts. I had no formal training, but I knew enough from Mum to put a boeuf bourguignon for twelve on the table and follow it with summer pudding. One of the young directors there took a bit of a shine to me and asked me to a party. I was trying to get over myself more, and so, even though he was a bit clean-cut for me – Paul, he was called, very ex-army and Winchester – I went anyway. And it was there, at a house party in Clapham, that I met Michael.

Michael was holding court in the kitchen, clearly a colourful character. He was telling amusing anecdotes, and generally playing to a very appreciative audience. All the people there were much older than me and when Michael’s eye fell on me as Paul and I went across to get a drink, I could tell it was in an ‘ah, fresh meat’ sort of way. An older man distracted for a moment from his familiar coterie of writers, journalists and actors, of which this gathering, Paul had told me, was comprised. Paul was an accountant for some of them, and I think rather flattered to be invited.

‘The white’s filthy,’ Michael told me, as I picked up the bottle. His eyes were hooded and pale blue: slightly bloodshot perhaps, but sexy. They forced me to meet them. ‘Here, have some of this.’ He reached behind him for a bottle of red. I didn’t drink red as a rule, but accepted the glass he offered me. I smiled a thank you, and instantly let Paul lead me away, although I knew Michael’s eyes were on my back.

It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, actually, knowing, as the party wore on, that this jovial, very tall and good-looking man, for no reason other than my youth, I suspect, and my novelty value, had his eyes trained on me for the rest of the evening. It was a hot summer’s night and we all danced in the garden on the terrace: Michael with a stunning but rather sulky-looking redhead in tight leopard-skin who shot me savage glances occasionally; and me with Paul, who was sweet but incredibly earnest, asking me every five minutes if I wanted to move on, or go out for supper.