I moved to Rome because my Bulgarian boyfriend had been happy there and wanted to move back. I was the London correspondent of WWD, persuaded John Fairchild to give me the Rome correspondent job, packed up and arrived in the middle of the oil crisis, and the Red Brigades terrorist kidnappings and murders. The Dolce Vita expired immediately; bars closed early, you could only drive on alternate days according to odd or even license-plate numbers and the chic people all had armed bodyguards. I quickly learned Italian and how to look interested when countesses described their shoe collections to me. I hated everything but the architecture — it felt like one big lie, because I hadn’t really wanted to go. Within a year Harald had gone insane and tried to strangle me. The story turned out alright: I ran away to Milan and met the great passion of my life, which led me to want to write fiction. But the notion of career is somehow absent from this narrative …