When she’d first met Miles, at a gallery summer party, she’d expected him to have the indestructible self-assurance of his species. He did. But he was also interested in her. Properly interested. He didn’t just ask about modelling or drop names or talk about money. He asked about where she was from and how it differed from where she lived now. He wanted to know what her family and childhood friends thought of her success. That she was impressed might sound pathetic to some, but his approach was unusual. As a rule, the men who chatted her up asked questions to which they already knew the answers. Then they talked about themselves.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Miles was that he didn’t assume, as so many did, that she was incapable of talking about subjects other than clothes and make-up. Tess wouldn’t have described him as spectacularly good-looking, but he had the type of slanting blue eyes that had always appealed to her. Plus, he was at least four inches taller than her. She liked that.

She soon learned that he’d been married twice before but, as he said himself, the first time didn’t count. He’d been twenty-three, his brain muddled with drugs. Tess felt the same about her own first marriage, although it had been tequila rather than cocaine that had propelled her down the aisle. Thankfully, the wedding, to a long-forgotten singer called Aaron Grace, had taken place in Las Vegas, and once they’d sobered up neither bride nor groom had been keen to stay married. That was the nineties: you could do whatever you wanted without sending Twitter and the Daily Mail website into a frenzy. Miles’s second marriage had been a rather more serious affair, lasting eight years and producing two children.

Initially, Tess had balked at the idea of getting married. Not because she wasn’t in love with Miles or because she was unsure that he loved her back. She reckoned she’d finally found the right blend of comfort and desire, the thousand subtle cues that made her say, ‘Yes, this is the one.’ The problem was her. The high glare of her fame had dimmed, and she didn’t know what to do next. Yes, she continued to get editorial work and, yes, her advertising contracts remained first division. But, with forty edging closer, her options were becoming more limited. Already she was too old to walk for the top designers. Pretty soon the ad campaigns would become less prestigious, the editors less keen. After that she’d be one ropy photo away from the cover of a downmarket magazine. She’d be Exhibit A in Celebs lose the fight against cellulite or Barefaced cheek: the stars brave enough to go without make-up. Even thinking about it made the energy drain from her body.