Work was the best medicine, which was just as well, because Isabelle had precious little else in her life. She was back at the studio, busy with pins and shears and patterns, as happy as she could be among the hangers of silk, the racks of samples, one of Ben’s mixes playing on the iPod. All she had to look forward to was another London Fashion Week in September, showing the new collection, waiting for the next lot of orders to come in, the next round of interviews and spreads in the glossies. She had fallen out with her mother – terminally, it seemed, judging by the stinging silence that followed their last encounter – and only heard from her brother when a CD dropped through the letter box. Her father spent more and more time in Dubai; it looked as if he might have to move out there for a couple of years. She didn’t even have Dan; surely by now he’d have given up on her, and be dating someone more suitable. All that was left was design, and a mixture of over-the-counter painkillers and prescription Diazepam that she’d managed to sweet-talk out of her GP after the abortion.

Will knew better than to bother her with ‘business shit’, as she liked to call it, and they spent more and more time in separate parts of the studio, absorbed in their own worlds. She was back, she was designing, and the designs looked good to Will – as good as anything she’d done, if not better – and that was all he needed to know.

Besides which, he had other things to think about. Rivelli was not paying up. Will tried to play hardball, withholding the orders until the account was settled; Rivelli hit back by stonewalling him, refusing to answer calls. Soon there would be recourse to the law. And now, after the collapse of his divorce, Rivelli had gone to ground completely. Rumour had it that he was ruined – taking with him thousands of pounds that he owed to Cissé. Could Cissé withstand a setback like that? Will looked over at Isabelle, her frail figure hunched over the cutting table. How much more could she take?