‘Wait.’ Sage is distracted by a TV on the wall. ‘Look! The interview’s on again. Let’s watch it. Hey, guys!’ she calls to her assistants. ‘The show’s on again! Get popcorn!’

‘Whoo!’ shout a couple of assistants. ‘Go Sage! Awesome!’

‘Let me call Lois. Hey, babe,’ she says as soon as she’s put through. ‘We’re on again. Becky’s here. We’re going to watch it.’ She high-fives me as she speaks, and I notice a tongue stud which wasn’t there before. Is that her new thing?

‘Come!’ Sage beckons me to her enormous white squashy sofa. ‘Relax!’

‘OK!’ I surreptitiously glance at my watch. It’ll be fine. We’ll watch the show and then we’ll get to work.

Except we don’t just watch it once, we watch it four times.

Each time, Sage keeps up a running commentary, saying things like, ‘See how I really nail the emotion here?’ and, ‘Lois looks so good from that angle,’ and once, ‘Where did Camberly have her boobs done? They’re pretty great.’ Whereupon a young assistant leaps up and says, ‘I’m on it,’ and immediately starts tapping at his BlackBerry.

By the fourth go I’m numb with boredom. The weird thing is that if I could see myself, I’d be mad with jealousy. I mean, look at me! Lounging on a squashy white sofa with a movie star … sipping smoothies … listening to her little in-jokes … You’d think it would be paradise. But all I really want to do is go home and see Suze.

I can’t, though, because we still haven’t got to the clothes. Every time I mention them, Sage says ‘Sure’, and absently waves a hand at me. I’ve told her about fifty times that I’ll need to go and pick up Minnie from pre-school soon and I don’t have all day, but she doesn’t seem to have registered that.

‘OK, let’s go have our nails done!’ Sage suddenly gets up from the sofa. ‘We have to get to the spa. We all have reservations, right?’

‘Right!’ says an assistant. ‘We have the cars waiting outside.’

‘Cool!’ Sage starts searching around the coffee table. ‘Where are my shoes? Did they slide under the sofa? Christopher, find my shoes,’ she says prettily to the most handsome of her assistants and he instantly starts grovelling on the floor.

I’m not following any of this. How can she be going off to a spa?

‘Sage?’ I try to get her attention. ‘Aren’t we going to decide on your look for tonight? You were going to try on the dresses?’

‘Oh, sure,’ says Sage vaguely. ‘We’ll do that too. We’ll talk about it at the spa.’

‘I can’t come to the spa,’ I say as patiently as I can. ‘I have to pick up my daughter from her class trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art.’

‘Her kid is so sweet,’ Sage announces to her assistants, and they all croon back, ‘Oh cuuuute! Adorable!’

‘So what about the dresses?’

‘Oh, I’ll try them on myself.’ She suddenly seems to focus. ‘I don’t need you to be there. You did a great job, Becky, thanks! And thank you, Christopher, angel!’ She slides her pumps on.