Lily Bailey has one of those feline, symmetrical faces, all angles and cheekbones, lips and teeth, that people surreptitiously stare at. She has the effortless upright posture of a ballet dancer. Her hair is long and brown and thick; her skin translucent.
As a drop-dead gorgeous teenager at a smart, fee-paying girls’ school, she was often tapped on the shoulder by the professional scouts who roam Britain’s cities like urban foxes, and asked if she’d thought about being a model. But, in her own words, she was “a bit of a geek”, a high achiever more interested in doing well in her exams.
Four top A-level grades in English, history, philosophy and politics later, she needed to earn some cash. She walked into a modelling