'I don't even know where Rod lives'

"My children aren't like that. I put them above everything but here I am working on this programme and they are in LA and I miss them terribly." Does Rod see them a lot? Hunter looks a tad shifty. "Maybe he'll see them while I'm away." Does he see them a lot? "I think he's touring at the moment," she says.

Why does she work so hard? Surely, as the almost former Mrs Rod Stewart she must be well provided for? "I know this is hard to believe," she says, "but I don't get any money from Rod. He gives me money for the kids but if I had money I just wouldn't have to do any of this." But she seems to enjoy her work. Would she really like to be a stay-at-home mum?

I would love to stay at home!" she says. "I may live in LA but my life couldn't be less starry. I feel like a recluse. I live in this 1930s house and I spend all my time either in the kids' bedrooms or the kitchen. I rarely go out. I'm devoted to my kids and their wellbeing. That's why I don't agree with all these people who cart their kids off everywhere on set with them. My children's life is at home. That's where their friends are. Of course I'm enjoying my career but I would've liked to have had a choice."

Has she told Rod this? "No. We don't talk about that stuff. I only ended up in LA because that's where he lived. I didn't even know that when I met him but then again I didn't even know what soap to use back then!" Hunter got engaged to Stewart three weeks after she met him; he had seen a shoot she did for Sports Illustrated. Hunter started modelling at the age of 16 when she went to New York and signed to the Ford agency. Until then she'd had a life of doing nothing much more than hanging out in surburban Auckland.

"My sister Jacqui and I used to go out in the yard and play with our animals. We had all these dogs and I used to just run around with them." Life wasn't that simple, though. Her father, Wayne, who worked as ground staff at the airport, and his wife, Janeen, an artist, had a pretty exhausting relationship. "My parents' relationship could be explosive," says Hunter.

In the end, they split up when Hunter was 15. She sounds pretty weary when she talks about her childhood. She sounds even more weary when she describes her modelling career. "It was all about flying round the world, working hard, being on the cover of Vogue, making money. It wasn't fun," she says. "It was exhausting but I was young and convinced I knew best. I never saw problems in anything.

When Rod asked me to marry him I just thought, 'Why not?' That's what I was like." What went wrong? "I grew up. I worked very hard in my teens and then, at 21, I married Rod and at 22 I had Renee. Then I was Mrs Rod Stewart and mother of two and, when I got to 28, I wondered who I was. It wasn't Rod's fault. He was supportive but if I hadn't left him I would never have got where I am today. It's taken a long time to say that."

There was an infamous point in her life post-Rod where she kept cropping up in the papers with a new boyfriend every week, one of whom was Robbie Williams. What was going on there? "Let's just say that for a few years I went out to nightclubs and probably drank too much. I used to go to a therapist three times a week and then go out and be wild. Essentially I lived out my teenage years in the space of about three years.

"Then I woke up one morning and realised I'd been hiding behind alcohol. I wasn't an alcoholic but I was concerned enough to cut alcohol right out of my life."

It's a year down the line now and Hunter says she feels contented. She's currently in a relationship with icehockey star Sean Avery, 10 years her junior. "Oh, he's great," she says. "Rod was that much older than me. He knew himself very well. But it's great to be in my thirties and have control over my own life."

But still the Stewart/Lancaster thing has been a minefield, especially when Hunter was chosen over Lancaster for the Ultimo job. Was it a difficult decision to take? "Of course," she says. "But if I hadn't taken the job then someone else would have. Let's face it, if Rod didn't want me to take the contract then he should have given me enough money not to!"

At the end of the interview, she says she really has moved on from the whole Rod thing, so maybe getting divorced is a good thing. Surely she will end up substantially better off financially. "Life goes on. It can throw you a curve ball but I have learned to get on with it. Sometimes, though, I think I am still that fiveyearold girl playing with her dogs in the yard. That's how I see myself."

And how does she see her future? "I'd like to open an animal orphanage in Kenya. I do a lot of work for Born Free," she says. "I'd sit on my verandah and watch the sun go down." Does that vision involve a man sitting beside her? Rachel Hunter looks momentarily stunned but then says, "Well, they can come and visit!" and she disappears off into her closet.

Underwear available at www. ultimo.co.uk. Make Me a Supermodel is on Five tonight at 10pm.