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I'd be in the third row with my hardback notebook and special pen, sketching the key outfits to shoot for Chic magazine, where I was a fashion editor. Miles would be crushed up with a horde of sweaty photographers taking the shots that would be flashed to news media around the world. And in each fashion city, we would fall into bed together and shag like animals.
Apart from those few crazy weeks in spring and autumn we never saw each other and had no contact except for the occasional coded email, along the following lines.
To: miles@smiles.com.au
From: Emily_Pointer@chicmag.co.uk
'Arriving Milan on Tuesday. Staying at the Principe. Please deliver film after Prada show.'
That's film as in, 'film'. As in 'red hot love rod.' Like I say, it wasn't a relationship, it was just sex. Life-changingly good sex, it must be said. Sex that made the top of my head lift off and kept me smiling for 48 hours afterwards, but no more than that. Just sex.
It wasn't that I didn't like Miles. He was a sweetheart, as well as a love god from Planet Tharg - well, Sydney. He was cute, funny and kind. With an unusually large penis. A great guy for someone, for sure, but it was definitely just sex between us.
Sometimes it's much better to accept the limitations of a liaison right from the start. That's what I told myself when I met him and I stuck to it. You're much less likely to be disappointed that way. There were so many reasons why a full-blown relationship with Miles would never have worked, but the night we met none of them mattered.
It was a wet and windy October day in Milan. I was wearing a sleeveless Balenciaga top, with ultra-tight leggings, a Rick Owens leather jacket and Sergio Rossi shoes with heels so high I felt like I had electric shocks shooting through the balls of my feet every time I took a step. Just normal working daywear for a fashionista at the shows.
I'd been wearing it since nine that morning, when I'd had to leave our hotel - always the Principe, or the 'Princh' as we called it - with my Chic colleagues, to get to the Pucci show, which was being held in an old warehouse way out on the edge of town.
Our limo had crawled painfully through the usual clogged Milan traffic, made much worse by the rain, with Chic's editor in chief Bee Fortess-Smith (nee Beverly Fortess, married to a Mr Smith) barking instructions down her mobile to her assistant, Anoushka, back in London. Most of them seemed to be concerning people she needed to have flowers sent to.
'No, Nushka,' she was yelling, quite a feat with a cigarette clamped between her teeth. 'Scrap that. Send Miuccia Prada the willow tree and send a box topiary to Mr Armani. What? Oh, just put the usual. 'Bella, bella' - that's 'Bella, bello' to Mr Armani, remember - 'Loved it all. Kisses, Bee.'
'Oh, and send Miuccia a separate letter in my writing - you know with the brown ink - to thank her for the coat. Call me back when you've opened my post. And don't forget to collect my dry cleaning. And make me an appointment with Amanda Lacey for a facial when I get back. Oh and NUSHKA...' she shouted down the phone, before the poor girl could hang up.
'Call that bitch Domenica Straciatella and tell her that if I don't have a better seat for the Ferrucci show waiting for me at the hotel when we get back later, I will drop the Cameron Diaz cover and their stupid dress with it. But put it better than that, OK? Make it seem nice, that way you do. Thanks, darling.'
I often thought Nushka's diplomatic talents were a great loss to the United Nations.
Sitting next to me in the back of the car - Bee always sat up front - was the magazine's famous fashion director, Alice, which she preferred pronounced in the Italian manner 'Alee-chay', Pettigrew. Which was pretty funny considering she came from Tunbridge Wells.
Never the easiest of travelling companions, Alice (I always pronounced it the English way deliberately to annoy her), was stuffing stick after stick of sugarless gum into her mouth and silently seething. Bee had been sent the Prada coat she'd wanted as a present and worse still, she was wearing it. All Alice had received was a pea-green ostrich-skin handbag. She was gutted.
Such palpable waves of negative energy were coming off her it was like sitting next to a human Chernobyl. My mouth was as dry as a bowl of pub peanuts, after several glasses of red wine too many the night before, but I knew there was no point in even asking Alice for a stick of her gum. I'd done that once, the first time I'd done the shows with the Chic team, three years before.
'Get your own,' she'd answered, grimacing like I'd asked to borrow her toothbrush. 'I need this.' She was right really. It was just about all she ever ate.
On my other side, the left - not so good for looking at passing shops, which is why Alice always sat on the right - was the more cuddly shape of Frannie McAllister, the magazine's Fashion News and Beauty Editor. As she liked to say, she was too clever to have just one job. I just called her the sanity editor.
Frannie and I took it in turns to have the left-hand spot and the really crap seat in the middle. No way Madame Alee-chay was ever going to sit there.
The seat sharing was just one of many little ways Frannie kept me sane on those crazy trips. They were so intense. The four of us were forced to be together 15 hours a day for the best part of four weeks, twice a year, under constant pressure always to look good, pay attention and generally outclass our rivals on other magazines.
You wouldn't necessarily want to spend that much time with your best friends and as part of my job, I had to do it with one person I seriously detested and one I was seriously terrified of. In that scenario, Frannie was a true blessing - she was so unusually normal.
She was, for example, just about the only member of the Chic staff who ate all the food groups, didn't exercise every day and didn't smoke. As a result she was an average kind of female shape - you know, a bit fat - and of even temper. She had long red wavy hair, perfect skin, a face as pretty as a daisy and a great sense of humour. And another little eccentricity in the fashion world - she always wore flat shoes. I adored her.
I was just wondering how I was going to endure the rest of the car ride with the foghorn in front and the dark star to my right, when Frannie nudged me. She tipped her head in Alice's direction, pulled a goofy face and winked. I smiled and winked back, then I put my head on her comforting shoulder and closed my eyes ...
To read the full extract of 'Handbags and Gladrags', click here.
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