Brangelina: Mr and Mrs split

It's 10pm in the award-winning Alto restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, and the world's most famous showbusiness couple have already been there for four hours. They've sunk five bottles of wine and eaten a four-course dinner, while the friends they were discussing charity work with have long gone.

Now, as fellow diners including actor Alec Baldwin look on, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are struggling to keep their emotions in check. He looks close to tears as he tells her that she needs to get psychiatric help or he will leave her. She hisses back to Pitt that she's bored with him, she considers him "toxic" and wants him out of her life.

It is said to be this dinner, earlier this month, that finally sealed the fate of the Brangelina story which has fascinated the world ever since Pitt left Jennifer Aniston six years ago to be with Jolie, his co-star in Mr and Mrs Smith.

When the pair left the restaurant an hour later, Jolie looked grim and determined. Pitt wore an expression of deep concern. Were their strained looks an indication of what was going through their minds? For it was reported on Sunday that a few days later the pair walked into a Beverly Hills lawyer's office to finalise the terms of their split. Although they never married, they have six children, a £205 million (Dh1.2 billion) fortune, and several homes.

Jealous Jolie

Pitt was noticeably absent at the Screen Actors' Guild awards on Saturday night, despite his film Inglourious Basterds winning a prize for outstanding cast of a motion picture. But perhaps the most telling sign of things to come took place the night before when Brad, 46, attended the internationally publicised celebrity telethon to raise funds for Haiti with his former wife, Aniston.

Jolie, 34, is notoriously prickly about Aniston, and Pitt has only ever been seen publicly at the same event as his ex-wife on one previous occasion last year's Oscars and then he had Angelina at his side.

Although, until now, Jolie has always seemed to have had the upper hand in the famous love triangle which has so fascinated the public, she has never got over the fact that Pitt's family, and the public at large, has always preferred Aniston to her. Her jealousy about Aniston, 40, has always been hard for Pitt to fathom particularly as Jolie is still close to both her ex-husbands.

As for Aniston, she has struggled to find lasting romance since her marriage broke up, and has often admitted she still loves Pitt. Only a year ago she spoke of her hurt when Jolie confirmed what had long been suspected — that the pair's affair started before Aniston had split from Pitt.

A few weeks before their Alto dinner, Pitt and Jolie had a furious row over her jealousy — and according to one magazine she physically attacked him when he admitted he had been in contact with his ex-wife. He has denied allegations that he has actually spent time with Aniston, but numerous sources say she has, very ironically, been a shoulder for him to cry on as his relationship has crumbled.

Once half of the sexiest couple in Hollywood, Pitt, who used to be so fastidious about his appearance, now looks little better than a tramp, with his ridiculous greying beard and growing paunch. Jolie, meanwhile, is frighteningly skinny.

Living separate lives

Although sources close to the family deny the separation is happening, there is every indication that, in reality, the pair have been living separate lives for a long time. Pitt recently bought a house in the same development of their Los Angeles base so they do not have to sleep under the same roof on the rare occasions when they are both in town. When they stay in hotels they sleep in separate bedrooms, with her in the main suite and him in a bedroom next to their children.

Sources say there is little doubt about what Jolie is going to do now. First, she will move the family to Chateau Miravel, the couple's lavish home in Provence, which she will use as a base while she films her next movie, The Tourist. Because of strict privacy laws in France, she will be able to mourn her relationship in peace.

Once free of Pitt, she also plans to fulfil her dream of adopting yet another child; it is her determination to continue to adopt children that has been one of the couple's biggest sources of aggravation.

All Pitt and Jolie's rows have served to show the pair just how ill-matched they are. While the couple may initially have been bewitched by an extraordinary sexual magnetism which saw them spending whole days in bed together, those differences have since come to the fore.

Both are tired of the rows and the unhappiness. One question arises from the collapse of the Pitt-Jolie household. Does it mean Brad doing a lot more charity work with a certain Jennifer Aniston as he was on Friday night?

We'll all be looking for answers on Saturday, when Pitt is slated to present an award at the Directors' Guild Awards.