‘Oh, I’ve been practising for ever,’ she said. ‘Family law was something I just fell into.’ This wasn’t strictly true: she’d seen which side her bread was buttered on a long time ago, and opted out of the less dependable criminal cases. ‘But it’s something I enjoy . . .’

‘And which you’re very good at.’

‘Well, my clients seem to think so.’

‘And yet, for all that, you remain, if I may say so, a very beautiful woman.’

Christine was about to protest, but found she did not want to. Yes, he was a smooth-talking Italian. No, it probably wasn’t a good idea to start anything with a somewhat crooked, not-yet-divorced businessman. Who may, she had to remind herself, yet end up being her client.

‘Thank you.’ She blushed, and looked down at her napkin, just as the food arrived. Rivelli never took his eyes off her.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Autumn wore into winter, the hours of daylight dwindled, and even in the studio with all those windows it was sometimes hard to distinguish between day and night. Isabelle spent so much time there that she began to feel that she lived there. By the middle of December, she actually did live there. She gave up her flat in Bethnal Green, and persuaded her father to carry on paying the rent into her bank account as before; money saved was money to spend on the collection. The collection. All that mattered was the collection. Isabelle breathed, dreamed, drank and ate the collection. Well, perhaps not ate. She was losing more and more weight. The curves that made her look so emphatically like a woman were disappearing. She looked like a model. She looked like a boy. Will didn’t like it.

There was another reason for Isabelle’s weight loss, besides stress: she had developed a serious cocaine habit. It started with Victoria’s little ‘peace offering’, just to keep going late at night, and when that ran out she got more. There was no shortage of cocaine in Hoxton and Shoreditch. You didn’t have to hang around dodgy council estates waiting for teenagers on bikes, like the crackheads did in Bethnal Green. You got it from a friend who worked in a bar, who gave it to you for free at first, but then, with deep regret, explained that he had money troubles of his own and would really appreciate a token payment, say forty quid a gram. And suddenly, the money that you were saving by sleeping on a mattress on the studio floor had gone up your nose. But, Isabelle persuaded herself, the cocaine was a means to an end. It helped her to work, to cope with deadlines, to blot out the longing for Will. As soon as the collection was on the catwalk, she would stop.