Loos: I don't feel guilty

I am window shopping in New Bond Street with Rebecca Loos, whose affair with David Beckham was revealed for several pieces of silver (though not even half, she says, of the reported £800,000) via The News of the World and Sky One.

We are peering into the windows of Dolce & Gabbana, Victoria Beckham's favourite store. "Hmmm," she ponders, all sunkissed hair and tawny skin. "Dolce is a bit too trashy, too showy-offy; all those corsetty things are not really me."

Passers by do a double take when they see her, teetering in wedge sandals and cut-off jeans. Although the 27-year-old former personal assistant had earlier insisted that "nobody recognises me in London any more; I don't go around with bodyguards and stuff; my life has carried on the same as it was before", it's obvious many do, from young mums with prams to City boys in suits.

I overhear one woman muttering, "Well, it's all her fault, isn't it? She put David off." We meet on the day after England's exit from Euro 2004. That morning, the press slated Beckham's performance, and suggested he might lose some of his lucrative sponsorships, including the £2 million a year from Vodafone.

By Sunday's papers, Beckham was quoted as saying that he had overcome "hurdles in my career and hurdles in my life"; the inference was that these had contributed to his lacklustre form. Ergo, Rebecca Loos put him off.

I tell her that she should stay away from Wayne Rooney, and she laughs.

She didn't even watch the match; it turns out she was having dinner with her older brother and a friend, and got home in time to see only the penalties. "Friends have been phoning me, saying, Becca, look at what you've done!" She is obviously not a football fan.

Although she says she wants Beckham to do well, she does not feel anything for him when she sees him on the pitch. Doesn't she think he has changed since news of their "relationship" broke? That he looks all miserable, tarnished by revelations that he invited her back to his hotel room, even speaking to his wife on the phone while Rebecca nibbled his toes ("He was always on the phone to Victoria when I was with him; she called a lot.")

Doesn't she feel just a weeny bit sorry for him? She throws back her head. I can see why David was smitten. "Look, he was the one who did all the running, absolutely! It would be like making a move on your boss when you've got one of the best jobs in the world, who would take a risk like that?"

I was about to say, well, you could always have said no, but, let's face it, what single woman would have turned him down? I tell her that my husband says that any man who is rich, famous, handsome, alone and with access to a mini bar, would do the same. "They are all at it," she says.

What did she think about Beckham when they first started seeing each other? "The night we went to Ronaldo's party, I saw a different side to him. There was that model [Esther Canadas], then there was what people I worked with told me."

So, why did she decide to speak out, when others had not? "Well, there are a lot of things I know that I can't tell you and I can't tell anyone, but that if the public knew they would think, good on her," she says enigmatically.

I ask her to tell me off the record, but she is far too bright for that.

Her intelligence was something that fascinated the England captain.

Brought up in Spain from the age of 11, Rebecca was educated at Runnymede College, has three A-levels, and speaks several languages more fluently than David speaks English. "He was so eager to learn," she says. "He would ask me how I would say something in Spanish, why is that wine good, where is it from. He loved the fact that I was well travelled."

Was Victoria willing to learn Spanish? "Only a couple of swear words," Rebecca says, trying hard not to be bitchy.

Didn't Rebecca find David a bit boring? "He made up for it in other ways," she says saucily. "Maybe if I had spent every day with him I would have got bored - who knows? But we did have some things in common; he loves fast, expensive cars, I love fast, expensive cars."

Was he generous? "He gave me a few things, but not things he had bought," she says.

Were you the type of woman to sit at home by the phone, waiting for him to call? She guffaws. "No, sod that. Many times he rang and I was busy. I don't believe in hanging around."

Rebecca is openly bisexual. David, what with all the nail varnish, the blond highlights and the sarongs, is a bit of a girl. Perhaps that is what she found most attractive.

"Actually, that put me off," she says. "If they take an hour to get ready and you only take 20 minutes, then I've got a problem! I like my men to be masculine - in touch with their feminine side, but to be a man. I also like my women to be butch, to have broad shoulders and narrow hips."

How did David react when she told him she was bisexual? "He was intrigued." When she turned up at a London film premiere after the news of their affair broke, she says she was "in shock, shaking" when the paparazzi were baying her name.

She insists that she thought, having done the two interviews, everything would die down. I tell her that was naive to the point of madness, that she will from now on be known only as the woman who kissed and told on David Beckham.

"I hate that term, kissed and told," she says. "In six months' time, nobody will remember me for that." She is keen that we talk, not about Beckham, but about her future and her new career as a TV presenter.

She has just signed a one-year contract with a Dutch TV station, and the reason she is in London at the moment is to film "along with other celebrities" a " 101 greatest TV moments" programme for Channel Five.

She has been on a few castings for films and recently turned down an offer to pose for Playboy, but says that the one magazine cover she would like to do is British GQ, because it has really good articles.

She says it is not about the money; she wants people to see a different side to her, not judge her on what was, after all, a six-month period of her life. She is most excited that she has made number 12 on Loaded's list of the world's sexiest women; Victoria, she points out gleefully, scraped in only at number 100.

She is a self-possessed young woman who professes not to have been remotely stressed by the tabloid coverage, although she did stop going to the gym for a bit because people stared. (She says she keeps fit by skiing; she has the sort of class that someone from Hertfordshire can only dream of.)

When I read bits of press out to her - that she is "shamelessly bisexual", that her lack of regret was "utterly grotesque", that she had "sold a fundamentally decent man down the river" - she just smiles ruefully and says she is able to "rise above" such comments. That Uma Thurman called her a tramp was, she says, understandable, given that her husband, Ethan Hawke, cheated on their marriage.

The skinned and bleeding rabbit left at her parents' home in Madrid was, she says, probably put there by some fanatical Real fan.

She still lives with her parents in the exclusive suburb of Fuencarral, and puts her level-headedness down to her Dutch father, a diplomat, and her English mother. Despite the fact her upbringing was traditional and strict - "Children should be trained like puppies" - she says that not once did they reprimand her.

It's obvious they are close; she says the only expensive thing she has bought with the News of the World money was a little handicam, so that she can keep her parents up to date with what she's doing.

I ask her brother, who is quiet and shy and works in IT, if he had ever met David. "Oh yes, he used to come and use our pool," he says. Has your sister changed since all this happened? "Not really," he smiles. "She just has more pairs of shoes."

I read somewhere that men no longer chat Rebecca up because she terrifies them. She looks pleased. "I haven't had much interest from men, but a lot more women are coming on to me now they know I'm bisexual. It's great!"

I feel compelled to ask her more questions about David. What did he smell of? "Soap." Did he ever ask her to keep quiet about their relationship? "No, never. It was unsaid."

The reason others haven't spoken out? "People are frightened. Those men are so powerful."

Was he in love with her? "You'll have to ask him that." Does she still have a soft spot for him? "Umm, a little bit."

Does she ever think that if she hadn't come out with her story, they might have got back together again? "I can't go back, can I, but we might have carried on, or I might have met somebody else."

Has she heard from him since the story broke in April?

"No, he has never contacted me. In fact, I've never been contacted by anyone, not his lawyers, his management company."

Does she feel guilty? "Only about his children finding out. He is such a great dad. He was always talking about his boys, how much he missed them."

What did she think about those pictures of Victoria pouting and hanging on to David outside the Royal Albert Hall? "Probably what you're thinking," she says diplomatically.

And Victoria's interview in Marie Claire, where she denies anything ever happened? "Again, what are you thinking?" she asks. Lying cow? She laughs, takes her shades from atop her head, plants them on her elegant nose, and disappears down New Bond Street, brother in tow, seemingly without a care in the world.