You beauty! Annabel Rivkin's cabinet of wonders

‘Oh my God!’ said my friend Lucy. ‘Oh… this… like… oooh… I feel a bit funny.’ She was sniffing her arm, an arm I had recently sprayed with Estée Lauder’s Bronze Goddess Body Oil as an evil experiment. She had to sit down for a minute. ‘It’s holidays — childhood holidays and maybe my honeymoon. It’s Hawaiian Tropic but expensive. And is it lemony or am I imagining it? It’s making me go all relaxed. But a bit emotional. I think this is special. I think this is very special.’

I’m a bitch. I didn’t give Lucy, my sweetest friend, my bottle of Bronze Goddess Body Oil. I wanted it. As if I don’t have enough scents and unguents, tonics and tinctures. But special things make you mean. And grabby. And I wanted the radiant amber-hearted moisturising oil with its lashings of creamy coconut milk, soothing vanilla and tingly Sicilian bergamot and lemon. I wanted my arm to sing of holidays remembered and hoped for. So I left Lucy there, slightly transported, and put the Bronze Goddess oil back in its faintly psychedelic box.

Because it is special, you see. Lucy never lies. I’m going to buy a second bottle and give it to her. But only so you won’t think badly of me. I’d keep that one, too, if I thought I could get away with it.

Estée Lauder Bronze Goddess Body Oil spray, £35, at debenhams.com