The breakfast spread at the Crowne Plaza hotel on the outskirts of Istanbul is vast, but I am advised to eat lightly. Everything is gleaming: the marble walls, the polished fruit, the cereal dispensers, the bloody wet crowns of the male guests, fresh from surgery.
I sit at a table in the corner with a dollop of strained yoghurt and have a good ogle. At least half of the guests are post-op guys. Two are with partners who bear longsuffering looks. A group of three have the mid-treatment horseshoe bandage. And one guy is alone, examining his red scalp in selfie mode while he devours his smörgåsbord. A woman pauses at the threshold of the restaurant, agape, and meets my eye. I smile apologetically by way of an explanation, for I, too, am part of this cult. The reborn. The second-chancers. I pat my breast pocket for the umpteenth time. Still there. The biggest wad I’ve ever carried: £4,800, withdrawn from a cash machine on a bleak December morning in east London three days earlier.
