Oh, Felix Sylvian! My baddest of sexy bad boys was pure devilish desire on my part, in those days very much the single girl clubbing it round London, freshly out of advertising and into a book contract, unable to believe my luck in life, if not on love. Felix was loosely based on a guy I knew at university, the most devastating-looking brooding bastard imaginable, who played the self-same pick-up game described in the book. I’m not sure he was ever redeemed, however. I always based the heroines on friends, and Phoebe was my feistiest, fiercest and flirtiest mate, Lisa. We considered it out duty to research the book as thoroughly as possible via London and Paris’s nightlife.

Trivial fact: My publishers gave away night-shirts with the hardback of the book, which read ‘Snuggle Up with Fiona Walker’. I still have one. When I posed in it for a promo picture – long before spray tans and Photoshop – my legs were deemed so pale and plumptious that someone had to be sent out for a duvet to lob over me.