The light hurt her eyes. Isabelle had spent so long indoors that she couldn’t bear to go out in the sunshine without shades – and if they stopped people from talking to her, so much the better. The first time she sat in the square with Will, she had to concentrate on her breathing in order not to run straight back to the security of the studio. Little by little, she became accustomed to the light, the air, the happy chatter, the noise of traffic and life around her. The pain that had gnawed away at her entrails for the last few weeks, untouched by analgesics, was gradually fading. If she thought about ‘it’ – the baby she had lost, the abortion, the madness of New York – she had a sensation of breathlessness, her heart beating too hard in her ribcage. But she thought about it less now. She trained herself to keep painful matters at bay – the medication was useful for that, at least. And if she suddenly thought of her mother, her father, her brother, her baby, her hopes for Dan . . . Well, she could switch those feelings off like a light.

Maya Rodean was back in London, her Paris venture having fallen through – ‘We don’t mention the “V ” word in her presence’, said Will, who had heard all the details of her departure from Versace from friends of friends of friends. Maya’s failure, as everyone was calling it, added spice to Isabelle’s success; she didn’t think of herself as a vindictive woman, but there was something particularly delicious about seeing Maya walking through Hoxton with her press portfolio over her shoulder, just like a human being.

They met one day, as they inevitably would, at a gallery opening in Shoreditch; yet another St Martins graduate was putting on yet another show of dreary conceptual nonsense to which they all flocked, just in case this was the one. Isabelle went alone; Will had a date with a mysterious new boyfriend that he was keeping well out of her way, perhaps in deference to her tender feelings. Probably some airhead model. She didn’t care. She had trained herself not to.

Maya made a reasonable attempt to cut her dead, which was quite an achievement in such a small space, made even more crowded by the ‘art’, which consisted of huge squeezed-out tubes of paint and gigantic blobs of pigment like brightly coloured cow dung. But eventually they were obliged to confront each other across a tray of drinks. Maya Rodean was dressed head to toe in Maya Rodean, and looked like an ageing child prostitute.

‘Well well,’ said Maya, flashing her eyes, the upper lids heavy with false eyelashes, which were enjoying a comeback that week. ‘It’s the enfant terrible.’ She pronounced ‘terrible’ the English way.

‘Hello Maya,’ said Isabelle. ‘How are you?’ She didn’t want to pick a fight, but everyone seemed to expect one.