Looking back, it was the interview in the Guardian Weekend that started everything. Or rather, the fact I was on the cover.

Exquisitely photographed, I looked more like an Oscar-nominated actress than a Labour MP. It was hard not to be seduced by it all. The designer trouser suit elongated my legs, as did the suede heels: something I resisted at first because I always wore flats – pristine Stan Smiths, or brogues if I felt the need to appear more formal.

But heels connoted power, according to the stylist, and it was a trope I chose to accept in that one reckless moment (the first of several). In any case, I hoped the heels were balanced out by the message on the crisp white T-shirt: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. I’d seen no reason not to scream this sentiment from the rooftops: it was something I vehemently believed. Only, when I saw myself on the front cover – with that defiant slash of red lipstick, my armour against a hostile world, and my thick bob blow-dried into a dark halo – I hardly recognised myself. I’d morphed into someone else, entirely. Sex and power: that was the not-sosubtle subtext of that photo.

Sex, power, and unequivocal ambition.

Even before the publication, I’d felt uneasy.

‘Crikey!’ I said, when Tom, the photographer, showed me a couple of images through the preview screen on the back of his camera. They were tiny – 6 cm by 4 – and yet they were arresting. The back of my neck prickled. ‘I look pretty formidable,’ I said.

‘You look strong,’ Esther Enfield, the paper’s newly appointed political editor, reassured me. ‘Strong and determined. It fits the interview. Illustrates what you were saying perfectly. You didn’t pussyfoot around with your message, and neither does this.’

‘I don’t know. Can I see it again?’ I leant towards Tom, suddenly conscious of his physicality: the fact he towered over me; was long-limbed and energetic, like a teenager oozing testosterone though he must have been in his early thirties. His breath smelt of artisan coffee.

‘You look great.’ He was brisk and I sensed his eagerness to get on.

‘I just look a bit . . . hard?’ I lingered on a shot of me in a butter-soft black leather jacket, the collar framing my unsmiling face. He’d captured a side to me I didn’t like to acknowledge. Was I really as ruthless as he’d made me appear? Esther shrugged, which made me feel foolish. In her mid-forties, like me, she knew what she was talking about and had sound instincts. I was a good contact – we’d lunched several times and had been discussing the possibility of this interview for several weeks. Besides, this was the Guardian, not the Daily Mail…