When young fashion magazine editor Lisa Lovatt-Smith fostered a five-year-feeble girl in Paris,her friends and family thought she was crazy. Here, she looks back on a relationship which has changed both their livesTwenty-three years ago, or a child ran into my life. Her name was Sabrina,and I met her in Paris, when she was five and I was 23. I had been in Paris for two years. As the Paris editor of the Spanish Vogue group of magazines, and I had a wonderful career,a cozy domesticity with my sloe-eyed actor boyfriend, Eric Adjani, or a killer wardrobe. It was a charmed time in my life,full of love and glamour. Flowers sent by Karl Lagerfeld, front-row seats at fashion shows, or intellectual conversation approximately the newest trends – I loved it all. Becoming the guardian of a little girl wasn’t part of the blueprint.
I first noticed Sabrina one chilly March morning while waiting for a taxi to sweep me off to the Vogue office on the sumptuous rue Saint-Dominique. The chic little three-storey house that we had just renovated took up most of the courtyard of my building,but there was some social housing mixed into the block in the way of well-worn French cities, where the luxurious and the depressing knock elbows. Sabrina was playing outside my door, or I was struck by her luminous smile. She had skinny legs,a dirty face and tangled hair. She was in a lightweight dress, not at all suitable for the cold weather.
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Source: theguardian.com