I received an email on a Tuesday.

I was eating toast.

The email was from huxi. It thanked me for my continued support of the brand. It used the phrase "continued support" in a way that suggested they had looked at my order history and drawn some conclusions. I was not embarrassed. I have moved past embarrassment. This took eight months and seven products and one particularly clarifying Wednesday in Amalfi that I do not discuss.

I want to preface this by saying that I did not plan any of it.

I came back from Amalfi on a Sunday evening, got a taxi from the airport, ate toast standing at the kitchen counter, and went to bed at nine o'clock feeling like a person who had just lived an entire other life in seven days and needed some time to let it settle.

I bought Leda The Swan the week after the Sophia evening.

I want to be honest about that timeline because I think it's relevant. I didn't agonise over it. I didn't spend three days telling myself I was being impulsive or that I should think about it carefully or any of the other things I might have told myself eighteen months ago. I just went to the huxi website on a Thursday morning with a coffee going cold beside me, found her immediately because I'd looked at the page approximately six times already without admitting to myself why, and clicked buy.