‘Stop styling the world and give me a hand with the cases, Princess. It’s not much further.’ He sounded stern, but he was smiling, and Isabelle danced along the boulevard, insofar as that was possible with a wheelalong case.

He stopped outside a heavy green double door, pushed it open – it took all his weight – and suddenly, from the noise and bustle of the street, they fell into a strange nineteenth-century silence, high walls on either side of a dark courtyard, water dripping from ancient drainpipes, ferns growing in every crevice.

‘Voilà,’ said Will. ‘I hope you’re feeling fit. We have a long climb ahead of us.’

‘No lift?’

‘Are you kidding? It barely has stairs. Allez-oop.’

The apartment was on the top floor, under the roof, the ceilings at crazy angles. It made the studio in Hoxton look like the Ritz. Running water was restricted to one stone sink in the corner, near the grimy window, over which a single tap (froid, needless to say) dripped greenly. The beds were against one wall – bunk beds, Isabelle noted, with some surprise. She had not slept in bunk beds since sharing a room with her infant brother. Every surface was strewn with debris – plates, cups, books, magazines, CDs.

‘Ah,’ said Will. ‘He tidied up, I see.’

They managed to make a cup of tea – there was a very dusty old box of tilleul at the back of a cupboard, and a dangerous-looking electric kettle with worn flex. They cleared two patches on the worn rug, and sat cross-legged, sipping.

‘La vie de bohème,’ said Isabelle.

‘You’d better believe it,’ said Will. ‘It’s a veritable garret.’

‘I can feel my consumption coming on.’ Isabelle coughed weakly, put a hand to her brow.

An hour later, sort-of-washed and changed, they were back at Gare du Nord, waiting for another train to take them to Parc des Expositions.

‘Christ,’ said Isabelle, staring out of the window as the gloomy suburbs slipped past, ‘this isn’t very glamorous, is it?’

‘Wait till you see the hall.’

‘I thought it would be like Moulin Rouge.’

‘More like Milton Keynes, really.’

But nothing could dampen Isabelle’s excitement. They were on their way – in Paris – on a buying trip – together. There was money in the bank, enough to buy fabrics for the first Cissé autumn/winter collection. All Isabelle had to do was swan around the trade fair (Will’s words) and pick out the stuff she wanted. And if she couldn’t find the material she was looking for at Premiere Vision, the fabric fair par excellence, it didn’t exist.

She had only to use her eyes.

The exhibition hall was like a gigantic steel and glass aircraft hangar, overlit, deafening, filled to bursting with people and cameras, lighting and displays, and miles and miles of stuff. If you knotted all these swatches together, thought Isabelle, you could put a belt around the equator.

Colours clashed, argued and fought. Floaty chiffons flirted with sheer silk satins. There were florals, feathers, stripes, dots and swirls. Isabelle’s head flicked from side to side, she darted from one stand to another, ‘Oh God! Oh God!’, burying her face in swatches, draping them over her arms, feeling the silk slipping over her skin, imagining a thousand outfits, a hundred shows, several millions in budget.