Giles is sobbing now. ‘No, not really. It’s almost funny, how ingeniously evil it is. You know I was doing a few consultancy bits, here and there, a few years ago? They took me off my staff contract and made me a contractor? The day rate seemed too good to resist—well, it means that legally, they can give me bugger all. I’ve got savings…’

For long, long seconds, Giles cries silently. His shoulders rise, and fall, and rise again. Harri squeezes his hands as tightly as she can, and then gets up from the table and takes him in her arms.

‘Oh, Harri, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

‘Shhh, love. It’s OK. It’s OK.’ It’s not OK, at all.

This bold, bright, brilliant man has been broken by a business operating system. Giles—who seemed so dazzling, bitchy, quick witted and glib when Harri met him over a decade ago—but who has also revealed himself to be tender-hearted, wise, profoundly loving. Giles, who turned up and was simply kind to her, day by day, hour by hour, when she thought her own world had ended.

‘It’s just so undignified,’ he says, extracting himself from her body, pressing a crimson cashmere-clad forearm against his temple. ‘I’m forty-nine, Harri! As we all know, that makes me about seven hundred and three, in gay years. Where will I go? What will I do? No one else is going to hire me. I’m too old, I’m not relevant anywhere.’

Harri shakes her head. ‘That’s crazy, any magazine would be lucky to have you! You’re too talented not to be snapped up. We’ll fix this, together. We’ll make it work!’

Giles sighs. ‘I feel like I lost my instincts. I should have seen this coming. I should have gone with you and Rosa, but I felt too old and tired and scared. You know, for a long time, the job was hard, but it was so much fun. I loved the jetlag, the panic, even the sodding models! Do you remember when we made the fake Hollywood sign for that shoot at Pinewood Studios, and we had to get Cara Delevingne to sit in the Y? And every year, it got a little more miserable, a little more pinched, but I was so proud. Together, on a page, we could make every fifty quid in the budget do five grand’s worth of work. And now…’