After hours: girl talk during tea at Fortnum's

"You've got the biggest boobs so you should be last," I tell Octavia, my Berliner burlesque BFF.

We're choreographing a little show for the press launch of a new Benefit mascara called They're Real.

The event is on at No 5 Cavendish Square in the beautiful Georgian bar. After the beauty editors and press have all bustled in, the organiser hushes them and we begin.

All three of us are seated at the bar facing away from the audience, in corsets, with our hair falling down our backs in curls - mine brunette, Annette's red and Octavia's platinum blonde. A man acting as a detective with a trilby hat taps me on the shoulder and asks: "Are they real?"

I swivel round on my stool to face him and pull the mascara out of my cleavage. I present it to him with a flourish and say, "They're real", batting my lashes. Next up is Annette and then finally the detective confronts the busty Octavia.

"They can't be real!" he screams. It gets a good giggle from the audience.

We gulp down a few Bellinis, get changed and head for Fortnum's. It's Annette's and my favourite spot for tea.

Octavia has just moved to London and has never been to Fortnum's before. She delights in licking lemon sorbet from a silver spoon and offers, keenly, to get the bill. When it arrives, Octavia slaps down a wad of US dollars. Then, realising her mistake, sweeps it back up again and swaps it for sterling.

"Why have you got American dollars?" I pry, and Octavia looks away and giggles, blushing.

"I wasn't going to tell you," she says in her charming German accent. "It's so bad. I got paid for snogging an American."

Annette and I gasp but lean in as she tells her tale in a quiet voice. "Well, I was walking around Liverpool Street when an American businessman asked me for directions to his hotel. I had just walked past it so I took him there.

"He bought me a few drinks at the bar, and then a few more, and I was so drunk by then it got quite flirty. When he asked me if I wanted to come to his room, I would have gone anyway, but I had this idea.

"I haven't been able to find a job in London yet. So I told him I'm an escort. Without a flinch he said, 'How much?'

"I didn't know how much escorts charge so I said, 'a thousand'. But when he said he only had 300 US dollars and £100 I just said, 'That will be fine' and he took me upstairs."