Harri was haunted by a book even more frightening than American Psycho. It was called The Rules, and it was filled with demands that were as confusing and arbitrary as a maths exam. ‘If he calls you on Tuesday and asks you out on a Friday, you may say yes! But if he calls on a Thursday and asks you out on a Saturday, don’t go! Say no!’ There may have also been a very specific way of preparing a chicken that somehow forced the eater to propose marriage. Maybe the chicken had tequila in it. It was a black and white, aggressively heterosexual world in which, if the magazines were to be believed, women only loved men, and men could only be persuaded to love women back if they learned the dating version of close-up magic. ‘Was this your card? The one that says we’re registered at John Lewis and that guests must RSVP by the twenty-fifth?’

Out loud, Harri and her friends noisily mocked The Rules. Still, they made up their own set. Any sexual hang-up was forbidden. To be a modern, open minded woman, you had to put out and shut up about any misgivings you might have about, say, the pop music videos that looked like pornography, or the expression ‘post feminism’, or paying strangers vast sums of money to pour hot wax on one’s labia. (It was a great period for lazy journalists and magazine staffers, because every week, they could commission a debate about waxing. ‘It’s reductive, it’s creepy, it’s antifeminist!’ ‘It’s ironic, it makes me feel more confident, for another twenty quid they’ll stick on a sparkly butterfly!’)

For Harri, the main rule was about wanting. She wasn’t allowed to want because she was a woman who had everything. A great career, sex on tap, the Atkins diet and a very cold, hair-free vulva. Her sex life was a free for all. The only love that dared not speak its name was the romantic kind, which was to be sneered at. Every other week, whichever magazine Harri happened to be working on would run a piece assassinating the (fictional) character of Bridget Jones. Professionally, she lived and breathed freedom, sashimi, seventeen speed vibrators. Privately, secretly, she wanted someone to stay in with, someone to come home to. Someone kind who smelled nice and wore lovely jumpers. The opposite of TBM.