Britney spears should have been having a peak moment. Her movie Crossroads, a rites-of-passage chick flick, had just been released. Her novel, more rites-of-passage stuff co-written with her mother, called A Mother’s Gift, was selling well. And 17 million copies of her new CD had already been shifted. The life of the world’s most famous virgin icon, the most luscious Lolita, all girl yet all woman, looked as hot as ever. But then it was suddenly all over for her and boyfriend Justin Timberlake.

The couple have known each other for a million years. They met on a Disney TV show, The Mickey Mouse Club, in 1993 when they sang and danced in matching rodent ears. It all seemed perfectly set for the pitter-patter of tiny mousefeet. She confessed a few weeks ago that even though she wasn’t engaged, she’d say yes if asked. The wedding would be "outside, something beautiful, and a really big party afterwards". Hectic tour schedules kept them apart so much she wished she could "crawl down the phone wire and into his face" because she missed him so much.

Then, apropos of nothing, it seems, Justin dumped her, joining a long line of callous bastards who are more famous for their dumping than for themselves. Remember when Daniel Day Lewis dumped Isabelle Adjani by fax and when Matt Damon split up with Minnie Driver live on Oprah? Justin opted for a brief phone call during which it was impossible for her to clamber down the wires, even with her special rolling-around lithy-writhy routine. And then the 21-year-old N’sync singer swiftly headed out on the town in Hollywood, dancing and smooching with some brunette and offering words of wisdom to a male fan: "Girls are trouble. Just stay away from them."

A girl could well be trouble if she was a multi-million-dollar industry and I imagine Britney’s pretty high maintenance. But that can hardly have surprised him. The truth is, no one really knows what happened. It’s easy to blame it on their schedules, "which made it too difficult to continue". Yet anybody can continue if they want to. So a bunch of insiders have been conjured up to talk about how "she thought they would get back together but now she’s been knocked for six". Or, as she stood tearfully outside the French première of Crossroads, how "her world has collapsed and she’s in tatters. Her fairytale life has turned into a nightmare."

Another "friend" explained that Justin felt the public was making fun of him because he couldn’t have sex with Britney. That, when it was announced the couple were planning to marry some time in the future, it basically meant he was going to have to do without sex for what is an eternity in a young man’s life. All these reasons are plausible (assuming, of course, that the world’s most famous virgin actually is a virgin).

Since she hit the big time, Britney’s never really been allowed to have any kind of adolescent moment or chill time between being a kid and a grown-up. Her album even has a song called Not

a Girl, Not Yet a Woman and another called Overprotected. Well, you would be overprotected if you felt you weren’t a woman when you were 20. But that’s what growing up in public does for you. The Britney child is flirting with the Britney woman. The silly totally girlie-girl knows exactly how to play the shopping mall ingenue/bible-belt chastity vibe which is entirely at odds with the whole reeking-of-sex package - the low-cut jeans, the belly-dancer tops, the taut, tanned abdomen, the tattoos. Lolita on aerobics, sniffs Camille Paglia.

Perhaps, then, it’s obvious that this little boy from her past might have to be shed along with the little girl. It’s all part of the process. How else can we explain the virgin’s interest in the book she was spotted buying at Borders in Los Angeles? It was called Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm. Well, you could say that it was written by Kim Cattrall, the actress who plays the liberated Samantha in Sex and the City and who also stars as her screen mother in Crossroads; maybe Britney just wanted to get a copy to have signed. But you could also explain that in that movie, the character Britney plays (a young singer on the road with her girlfriends) is herself at a sexual crossroads. Anyway, apologies for giving the ending away if you were planning to see it: she’s finally deflowered on Santa Monica beach by a bad boy in denim fresh out of jail. Their frisson is consummated on a foamy thrash of beach. As he rips off his shirt and spreads himself over her, we see his qualifications for the task: he has a pair of wings tattooed on his back. A supernatural art-meets-life moment? The Baptist babe only can give herself to an angel so she doesn’t really lose any of her innocence, yet at the same time she gets to have sex.

Much has been made of Britney’s strict upbringing, her evangelical parents and her own prayer journal in which she apparently writes every day. Justin seemed perfect for the job of diary fodder. "He’s a very spiritual person and it helps that he comes from the same background as I do," she said. "He’s ambitious and motivated and loves life and he makes it fun for me. Ten years from now I can see myself being married and having kids." Ten years does seem rather a long time, though. And when you’re floating with dangerously tattooed angel-winged people and having fantasies about crawling onto your boyfriend’s face down the phoneline, it seems even longer.

Perhaps she’s going to stop being so girlie-whirly and totally childlike all the time. Perhaps that’s why Justin had to stop. At the moment, though, she doesn’t see it that way. She can’t drown herself in vodka - ice-cream’s supposed to suffice - and her mother chirruping, "We can always shop," was probably not doing it as she pulled out of more and more appearances.

Perhaps she’ll beg and beg and beg and become less of an industry, less of an icon and even more of a little girl and then he’ll take her back. But I think that he too is probably confused over whether he wants the girl in the mouse ears or the girl on stage who can wrap herself in only a python and set alight worldwide fantasies and get away with it because she’s proclaimed herself totally virgin. n