MARLA Maples, the second wife of Donald Trump and mother to his younger daughter Tiffany, 30, glides into Claridge's. Her blonde locks bounce, and a toned body offers no hint that she celebrated her 60th (or "turned 30 again", as she puts it) last October. At first, her all-American charm masks some seriously staunch beliefs as well as a fierce desire to help her ex-husband win the US November elections.
Because Maples, in from Florida, is still on small talk, cheerily recounting her morning spent at the Hillsong Church in Soho, following a blow dry in a Chinatown salon. Everything is seasoned with Stateside-superlatives. London is "magical". Her "message" is one of "unity and light". Ignore a few spiritual one-liners, though, and her initial impression is charming.
During a photoshoot, wearing the Ibiza-boho uniform of a vest, swinging yogi necklace and kick-flare jeans which suit her life as a "spirituality and wellness advocate" running the marlamaples.com blog, she proves herself a pro: game to straddle a sofa to catch the light and launch into leg-flaunting poses. "Make me look good-I am still looking for Mr Right!" she says.
Trump was not The One. Maples met the then businessman as a homecoming queen from Georgia's Bible Belt, when she moved to New York in 1985 to work as a model and actor. By the end of the decade, their highly publicised affair would end Trump's first marriage to the late Ivana in 1990 and see the tabloids blow up Maples's life.
As she relives it, taking a seat on an outdoor terrace, her Kate Moss Cosmoss zen fades. "I had no idea what I was stepping into. I watched the lies. It was heartbreaking to me. I would find myself just crying," she says. "I saw first hand what really could be twisted."
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