He shrugged. ‘I thought I had. It was some time ago, for the investment.’

‘Well, I’m sure it was a good idea,’ I said, revising my previous estimate of how much he was actually worth in an upwards direction. Then I got back to the engrossing matter of what to have in the new conservatory. ‘I think we should go tropical, don’t you? Warm and lush and exotic …’

A bit like Sergei himself really.

My evident delight with his surprise made him even more pleased with himself than he was when I arrived, but instead of trying to lure me into the bedroom, which I expected, he swept me off by taxi to shower me with yet more expensive diamonds in the form of earrings to match my pendant, so his book advance was clearly rather larger than mine have ever been, though, actually, it was Sergei’s unpredictability that had always formed a major part of his attraction for me.

He bought himself another ring, although his hands sounded like clashing cymbals already if he clapped, and then we had lunch at the Café Royal, so I was glad I was looking quite smart, because you never knew where you would end up with Sergei when he was in this sort of mood.

Over coffee I wrote him out a list of all the plants and palm trees and so on that I thought he should have in the conservatory. He said he had seen a wicker daybed and matching reclining chairs that would complete the look, he thought, if the cushions were re-covered in the fabric of his choice (and just imagine the sort of thing his taste runs to – bizarre isn’t in it). It was all great fun.

On the way back he stopped the taxi long enough to get out and buy the most enormous bouquet of roses, which was romantic even if they did unfortunately remind me of Valentine’s Day. Then he held my hand and said he must have been insane not to have asked me to marry him before I found out his true nature, though actually we’d both have been insane soon after the ceremony if we’d done anything so stupid. But I do love him really, and he loves me and I did know what he was like right from the start.

We were both exhausted with shopping and emotion by the time we got back to his flat, and so retired to the baroque splendour of Sergei’s bed to recuperate; and while he soon seemed fully recovered I felt even more exhausted and it was getting terribly late, and the thought of going inside my quiet little cottage and shutting the door on the world (and even Sergei) was exerting its usual magnetic pull, so I left him sitting sipping tea from a gilded green glass among his heaped-up silken pillows like a pasha, and headed home.