I’d half imagined Rodeo Drive to be a type of celebrity compound. Almost a theme park that you’d pay an entrance fee into. Instead, like Sloane Street or Fifth Avenue, it was just a road of famous, expensive shops, staffed by those skinny, snotty cows from central casting. I was well out of my league –I’d worn my very best ‘city-girl’ get-up and was ostentatiously carrying my expensive handbag like an Access All Areas badge of accreditation, but I was fooling no one. After the first two or three places I confided gloomily to Lara, ‘I hate the people who work in these shops, they always make me feel like shit.’

‘There’s a trick to it,’ she sympathized. ‘You gotta march in like you own the place, look evil and bored and never, ever ask the price of anything.’

So in the next sparse, high-ceilinged emporium, I picked up a handbag – because handbags are the new shoes – and tried to look evil and bored, as instructed. But I can’t have been too convincing, because the starved, glam-haired assistant dismissed me with a contemptuous eye-sweep. Then her radar picked up Emily, the label babe, and everything changed. ‘Hi there! How are you today?’

‘Good!’ Emily said. ‘How are YOU?’

Do you know, for a minute, I thought they actually knew each other, until your woman continued, ‘I’m Bryony. How may I help you today?’

On the rare occasions when those girls do speak to me, I’m far too intimidated to answer. In fact I usually leave immediately. (And what’s with the ‘today’ thing? When else was she planning on helping? Next Tuesday?)

I replaced the beautiful bag on its plinth. But clearly I hadn’t done it right, because Bryony shot over and, with brisk, angry swivels, moved it half an inch back to its correct position. Then she took a little cloth and polished off my handprints. I felt so humiliated that for a minute I thought I might cry.

‘Just remember,’ Lara murmured into my hair, ‘her clothes are borrowed. She couldn’t buy that sweater she’s wearing if she worked here for a year.’

Meanwhile, Bryony had descended on Emily, who was flicking through the hangers with a trained eye. Then Emily was being led to the changing-room, where she started trying things on, flinging them off again and firing them back in crumpled balls at the snotty cow.

‘You look GREAT,’ Bryony insisted over and over, but Lara kept up a constant stream of ‘Hmmm. Let’s see it in a different colour. What about the longer skirt? Does that come in a cross-over style?’

Bryony was run ragged carrying out her suggestions.

Eventually I tentatively suggested, ‘How about a smaller size?’

‘Yeah,’ Lara praised, when that sent Bryony racing back to the rails. ‘Now you’re getting the hang of it.’

We made Bryony bring different styles and different sizes –even shoes and handbags – until it seemed that Emily had tried on every item in the shop several times. Painstakingly, she narrowed her selection down to a shirt-dress and jacket, then beckoned us both into the huge changing-room and shut the heavy wooden door. ‘I’m skint,’ she hissed. ‘Is it very wrong to spend a month’s rent on a suit?’

I was all for telling her that of course it was and that she could get a perfectly fine get-up in Banana Republic for a tenth of the price – and not just because I didn’t want Bryony to get the commission, I’m not that mean, but out of concern for Emily’s finances – when Lara said solemnly, ‘You’ve got to spend money to make money. Gotta look the part for the pitch.

‘Sorry Maggie,’ she said to me. ‘I’d love it to be like that bit in Pretty Woman –’

‘“Big mistake”,’ I quoted eagerly.

‘“Big HUGE mistake.” Yeah.’

Then Emily understood. ‘Oh God, was Bryony a bitch?’

‘Yes,’ said Lara. Then to me, ‘But Emily’s pitch is totally important and she does look great in these clothes…’

‘Oh-kay.’

‘So what’s it to be?’ Lara asked Emily.

‘I’ll get the suit, but not the shoes.’

‘Your call’

‘Well, maybe the shoes, but not the bag.’

‘Whatever.’

‘No point spoiling the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar, I suppose.’

‘Excuse me?’ Cow-face had returned.

‘I’ll take the lot.’

Just before we left, Lara picked up ‘my’ handbag, manhandled it roughly and put it back all askew and covered with handprints. ‘Thank you,’ she beamed over her shoulder at Bryony.

‘Thank you,’ I said to Lara.

As we wandered along the street, Emily laden with carrier bags, I indicated a man strolling past us. ‘Isn’t he the image of Pierce Brosnan? He could get a job impersonating him.’

Lara and Emily took a look. ‘It is Pierce Brosnan,’ Lara remarked, and they continued up the street, clearly unimpressed.

‘Where next?’

‘Chanel?’

But the Chanel shop was closed because some famous person was inside buying the place up. Madonna, according to a small crowd of Japanese tourists clustered outside. Magic Johnson, a rival group insisted. No, no, a third cluster were adamant, it was Michael Douglas.

Perhaps it was for the best that it wasn’t open, Emily said. She’d done enough damage.

‘It’s five o’clock, let’s go for a drink,’ Lara suggested.

‘The Four Seasons?’ Emily said. ‘It’s close by.’

‘Sure.’

‘Don’t!’ I exclaimed.

‘What?’

‘Don’t suggest going for a drink at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills like it’s not a big deal.

‘Sorry,’ Emily said humbly.

‘Yeah, sorry,’ Lara said.

The Four Seasons had classical art and huge vases, swagged curtains, thick carpets and mucho, mucho gilt. It all seemed very patternedy. My mother would have loved it. As we walked into the bar, a man holding court around a table shouted, ‘Billy Crystal is the best goddam director in the whole world!’

‘Just in case we didn’t know you worked in the movie business,’ Emily muttered.

We found a squashy couch and ordered Complicated Martinis and they brought us a little dish of Japanese crackers. As the drink took hold we got a bit carried away.