David Bowie's secret reunion with the middle class beauty who broke his heart 

Amid the endless flow of words that streamed from David Bowie’s fathomless imagination, one hauntingly simple couplet always aroused speculation.

‘It’s a god-awful small affair, for the girl with the mousy hair,’ he sang in his 1971 hit, Life On Mars, a lament to a misunderstood teenager who storms out of her house after a row with her parents.

Many assume he was writing about his first love, Hermione Farthingale, a beautiful dancer and actress who stole — then broke — his heart in 1969.

Hermione’s father was a well-heeled solicitor, and when his prim, 19-year-old daughter left home to live with Bowie, then just a would-be pop-star from a working-class family, he is said to have bitterly disapproved.

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Heartbreak: A beautiful and clever ballerina and actress by the name of Hermione Farthingale (pictured with Bowie and drummer John Hutchinson), stole — then broke — his heart in 1969

Much to his relief, the romance lasted barely a year. When Hermione landed a part in the musical Song Of Norway, and went to Scandinavia to shoot the film, she jettisoned the cloyingly intense — and serially unfaithful — Bowie.

Ironically, within a few months, Bowie was tapping into his angst with the songs that brought his fame; meanwhile, after landing a few more stage and screen roles, she slipped into obscurity.

During the intervening 46 years, little has been heard of the statuesque, 5ft 10in Hermione, and unlike the countless Bowie acolytes and dubious ‘friends’ who have emerged to pay homage to him since his death was announced earlier this week, she has maintained her silence.

She is now a 66-year-old grandmother and this week I found her living in a small, terrace house in Bristol, where she supplements her pension by teaching yoga and Pilates, and selling her impressive artwork.

Hermione had no wish to discuss her relationship with Bowie, she said, ‘and certainly not now, with this whole wave of people desperately trying and wanting to be heard. Our time together was very precious and . . . it’s nobody’s business except ours.’

She added: ‘I have spent all these years not speaking about me and him, so why should I start now? I want to remain true to what he always appreciated about me, which was that I never spoke about him and never kissed and told.

‘He was a lovely, kind, original, sweet person of whom I was — and still am — incredibly fond, and that is how I will remember him.’

She added, with a touch of hauteur: ‘I’m not interested in rock ’n’ roll as a form of music and I’ve never liked the bling style which was Ziggy Stardust. David was an extraordinary songwriter and sometimes that gets lost behind the outrageous characters he created to sing them.’

When it was suggested that she was the girl in Life On Mars, she bristled with indignation. ‘I have not got mousy hair and I have never had mousy hair,’ she sniffed. ‘I am a redhead — and that’s what made David adopt his red hair.’

Doubtless Bowie’s first wife Angie, would not concur. She claims to have created the spikey red look of Ziggy Stardust.

Whatever the truth, I have uncovered an intriguing, and touching denouement to the story of David and Hermione. She and Bowie secretly met again for the first time in three decades during the late Nineties, when he discovered she had attended his concert in Manchester and invited her backstage to reminisce.

They swapped fond messages as recently as 2013, after Bowie appeared in the video for his Where Are We Now single in a T-shirt with the words ‘Song Of Norway’. Bowie’s biographer and archivist Kevin Cann said this was pointed out to Hermione when she accepted an invitation to the opening of the David Bowie exhibition at the V&A Museum.

Taking it to be Bowie’s way of reaching out to her, as he drew the threads of his chaotic life together, Cann says she used him as a conduit to send the singer a sweetly phrased note.

Bowie would have been delighted to hear from her, the author says. But he was so afraid their resumed contact might leak out, hurting the feelings of his wife Iman, that it is doubtful that he ever told her.

Loss: Hermione was not prepared to share him with other women, let alone men, and dropped him, while pursuing her own acting career. She is pictured here, with Tony Visconti, last year

‘David adored Iman, and his marriage meant everything to him,’ Cann told me this week. ‘The last thing he wanted was to do anything that might put it in jeopardy. By the same token, just to send a gentle, friendly message to someone who had meant so much to him would have been such a sweet, innocent thing.’

Bowie was a 21-year-old nonentity drifting between pop music and acting when he met Hermione on the set of a BBC drama called The Pistol Shot early in 1968.

They were immediately infatuated and soon after set up home together, renting the top floor of a three-storey, Victorian house in South Kensington. Bowie later described it as the happiest time of his life.

There was talk of marriage, yet Hermione had reservations —– not least because Bowie was an unreconstructed chauvinist who demanded his meals on the table and shirts ironed.

More than that, however, she may not have been prepared to tolerate his rampant promiscuity. Then there was her artistic ambition, which was equal to his.

So she left him, whereupon he retreated tearfully to his parents’ house in Bromley, Kent. The break-up saw him spiral dangerously into heavy cocaine abuse and ever-more casual sex.

But many critics believe it was also the catalyst for his finest work, and it inspired several memorable songs, including the poignant Letter To Hermione.

Bowie said later. ‘It’s what I wish I’d said. I was in love with her and it took me months to get over it.’

Hermione took a very different path. During the mid-Seventies she married a leading academic, anthropologist Professor Stephen Frankel. They had two children, but the couple are no longer together.

Kevin Cann said:‘I don’t think she ever really lost her love for David, just as I’m sure that his affection for her remained undiminished,’ the author told me.

‘That was why he had that T-shirt specially made with its message to Hermione — and why he was so touched to hear from her.

‘He knew his time was finite, and now you look back on things, this was him saying goodbye.’

Additional reporting: Simon Trump