Underneath was the most spectacular black dress that Isabelle had ever been able to imagine, the dress she had dreamed of making since first she started dressing up her dolls in bits of old cloth from her mother’s sewing box. The most expensive silk, cut in a simple circle around the neck, long fitted sleeves that sat right on the wrist, the bodice slashed from the collar bone to the navel, where a single satin button held the whole thing together. And from there it flared out madly, a huge episcopal cape of a skirt, completely open at the front, revealing not only the legs but the hips too, covered now by a tight black silk undergarment. A pair of black strappy heels. No jewellery.

She stalked the catwalk, stopped in front of Rivelli, crossed her ankles and spun on the balls of her feet, the skirt rising up around her like Superwoman’s cape.

The audience stood and cheered.

Dress after dress came down the catwalk, twenty in all, the last of them tiny mini-dresses in heavily sequinned satin, bird of paradise colours, each piece getting louder applause than the last, cameras working overtime to record the collection that would, within six months, have been imitated in every corner of the fashion-conscious world.

And then the final gesture, the moment they had all been waiting for, the model who, more than anyone, had come to represent the Cissé style, Amelie Watts, with her blonde hair and her porcelain skin . . .

She slinked through the silk in a blood-red shift dress, a heartbreaking piece of couture that made every woman in the place sigh with envy. She walked flawlessly to the end of the runway, each perfectly shod foot landing exactly in front of the other, stopped, turned, returned, came halfway back and then, as the music hit its last few chords, ba-ba-ba-baam, and the lights came up to a blinding golden glare, she reached behind herself, wriggled her shoulders and her hips and wham! The dress flew off her body, was tossed into the air and fell, showering glitter over Amelie Watts’s naked skin.

Blackout.

Then they all came on, all twenty of them, all in huge black fake fur coats, moving down the catwalk like enormous fledglings, all in step, left right left right left right left, until they were evenly spaced out and dropped the coats and stood with their hands on their hips, face front, face left, face right, showing off their Cissé gowns for one last hurrah, and then they faced back, applauding as Isabelle came blinking into the light to take her bow, acknowledging the standing ovation with a shy smile and an awkard curtsey.

Rivelli and his companion sat stony-faced throughout the whole thing, slipping out of their seats during the blackout. They headed for the exit just at the same time as a dark figure detached itself from the shadows ahead of them.

It was Joel.