And her eyes expressive despite the shadows. It was her idea to meet there – not just the Connaught Hotel, but the bar, though another room had been arranged – and when I was summoned she was already sitting with two men in a booth. She got up to greet me with a distracted, tobacco-scented air kiss and a faint waft of something sharper.

She was tall, in towering black leather wedge boots – Givenchy, she told me as she adjusted one of the gold buckles, and these were the second pair she’d bought. There was a patch of pale leg above them, a long, dark polka-dotted chiffon shirt over a slip, and a well-tended tumble of strawberry blonde hair.

When she sat, she slouched, so that she was all hair and heels, her shaded face conspiratorially close. Among the many bracelets on her wrists was a bangle given to her by Elizabeth Taylor’s nurse – Lohan played Taylor two years ago in a TV movie – and her fingers were decorated with tiny written tattoos, one of which read: “Shhhhhh!”