When Virginia Giuffre first produced the dog-eared photograph from an envelope, she had little idea of the international furore to come – that the picture would help unmask a billionaire sex predator and force a prince of the realm from public life.

Or that she would be driven to take her own life amid the shadows of a scandal she feared would drag her down for ever.

Virginia had only kept the now-notorious snap as a memento of what she still half-believed were enviable years as a human sex toy.

‘I’m not sure that I should be showing this to you,’ she said when we met in 2011. ‘He’s a British prince.’

Taken in London a decade earlier, the photograph showed Prince Andrew standing next to her, one arm skimming her bare waist beneath a cut-off top while his friend Ghislaine Maxwell grinned proprietorially in the background.

Virginia blushed with embarrassment as she recalled this first encounter with Andrew, who was then aged 41.

‘Ghislaine served tea from a porcelain pot,’ she recalled. ‘She asked Andrew how old [he thought] I was. He guessed 17.’ He was right.

I’d met Virginia in the garden of her modest Australian bungalow under the watchful eye of her husband, Robert Giuffre, as she described how this first encounter with Andrew had been arranged by another of his friends, American financier and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Virginia Giuffre, with a photo of herself as a teenager, when she says she was abused by Jeffrey Epstein

Ms Giuffre claimed she was forced to have sex with UK Prince Andrew with her evidence including a photo (pictured) of her posing with the royal at Maxwell’s London home

Giuffre's brother Danny Wilson (left) paid tribute to her on social media by posting a photo of him and his sister

Epstein had hired her as his personal ‘sex slave’ after Maxwell spotted her at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, where Virginia worked as a $9-an-hour changing room assistant.

Virginia served coffee as she recalled how, in March 2001, she had been flown to London on the financier’s personal jet, the so-called ‘Lolita Express’.

‘I’m telling you things even my husband didn’t know,’ she said.

Indeed, the expression on Robert’s face changed from shock to rage as she detailed how Maxwell assigned her a bedroom in her Belgravia townhouse and told her: ‘You’re going to dance with a prince tonight!’

‘She said I needed to be “smiley” and bubbly and very happy to be around him and give a lot of energy to him because he is the Queen’s son,’ Virginia recalled.

For his part, Andrew says he has no recollection of meeting her and has always denied wrongdoing.

The photo was taken by Epstein himself on a cheap Kodak camera belonging to Virginia – and at her request, she said, because she was thrilled to be introduced to Andrew. She told me she expected the picture would be a memento, ‘something to show my Mom’.

Her naive explanation rang true yet until the day she died, Virginia endured a campaign alleging that this picture of them together involved digital trickery, but no credible evidence has been produced.

Meanwhile, she was bombarded by accusations that she was a ‘gold-digging prostitute’ who betrayed her family when she gave the Mail on Sunday permission to reproduce the photo in February 2011.

The emotional burden was enormous.

Virginia buried her face in her hands as she told me she was still mortified by memories of the sexual encounters for which she was paid by the hour.

I hoped her ordeal had finally ended when Andrew agreed to pay her a settlement reported to be £12million in February 2022 (although the true figure might well be lower).

Victims of Jeffrey Epstein, from left, Sarah Ransome, Ms Giuffre, and Marijke Chartouni find support in each other after having met in August 2019 

She took a sedative, Xanax, to calm her mounting anxiety and ‘forget about what I had to do’ but all too soon she was taking up to eight pills a day

By then, Jeffrey Epstein had been found dead in his New York City prison cell. Ghislaine Maxwell, high-society daughter of press baron Robert Maxwell, had been found guilty of sex trafficking in December 2021, and sentenced to 20 years.

Perhaps now Virginia could enjoy what she believed would be a peaceful new life with her husband and three children.

She acquired a farm and a beachfront mansion in Perth, Australia, and became a tireless champion for other survivors of child sex abuse. While Andrew denied all liability, his reputation was in the gutter.

He was cast out from the Royal Family and stripped of his titles and patronages.

The prince was just one among the men with whom Virginia said she was ordered to have sex, including married tycoons and politicians who still feature daily in the world news.

And so the strain that her revelations put on her relationship with Robert was probably inevitable. Her marriage broke down and she was locked in a messy fight over their children, two sons and a daughter, when she took her life on Friday.

In recent years, Prince Andrew’s defenders have continued to attack Virginia and her testimony.

But claims she was a fantasist are ridiculous. She didn’t seek me out. I found her after I began investigating a mysterious lawsuit in which a woman named only as ‘Jane Doe 102’ alleged she was hired by Epstein when she was a ‘vulnerable young girl’ and assigned duties that included being ‘sexually exploited’ by his male peers, ‘including royalty’.

Eventually, Virginia agreed to waive her anonymity and talk to me. She explained how Epstein had introduced her to his acquaintances as his ‘travelling masseuse’.

‘A lot of it was very glamorous,’ she recalled. ‘Jeffrey bought me jewellery – diamonds were his favourite – and watches and perfume and makeup and wonderful furniture.’

He rented apartments for her in Palm Beach, but she often stayed at Epstein’s residences and shared a bed with him when they travelled. He sometimes introduced her as their daughter.

‘I felt that he and Ghislaine really cared for me,’ she said. ‘We’d do family things. We’d watch Sex And The City, we’d pop popcorn. Have normal dinners. Drink normal drinks. But all of a sudden it [would] end up in a gigantic foursome with Jeffrey and Ghislaine and other girls.’ I still have a copy of 24 pages of notes that she kept along with the photo.

In her childish, looped handwriting they record how some men liked her to take part in role-playing, in which she would dress as a maid or schoolgirl in knee socks, with her hair twisted into pigtails.

‘Ghislaine sent me to a dentist to have my teeth whitened and I went for waxes. (Epstein) wanted me to look pre-pubescent,’ she said. ‘I was frightened,’ she said.

‘But I knew I had to oblige every one of his whims. I knew he was someone of great knowledge, great power and influence, and I knew he had to be well-respected. I felt I couldn’t deny him.’

She took a sedative, Xanax, to calm her mounting anxiety and ‘forget about what I had to do’ but all too soon she was taking up to eight pills a day.

As for Prince Andrew, her handwritten manuscript concludes that she blamed only one person for allowing ‘J E and Ghislaine’ to turn her into a ‘little disposable play toy’ for ‘a royal’.

And that person was Virginia herself – a heart-breakingly false verdict she has now taken to the grave.