Then I asked him if he knew she was pregnant, and there was a short pause before he said no, but if she was it was nothing to do with him, he was careful and had learned that lesson early in life. ‘Besides, Tsarina,’ he added tenderly, ‘you know I would never do anything that might hurt you.’

‘What did you think sleeping with my best friend would do, make me happy?’ I demanded. ‘Sergei, this is the absolute end and I never want to see or hear from you again!’

Then I slammed the phone down, and I think I spent the entire night crying because the next morning my red eyes made me look like the advance party from a Martian invasion and my throat felt husky.

It seemed like half my life had suddenly been cut off, which it had actually, but it focused me on the book wonderfully well, and I threw myself into it over the next few days and didn’t answer the telephone at all, just played back my messages from time to time.

There were several tearful and remorseful ones from Linny, and one from Tershie saying although he knew we’d had a little tiff, it was upsetting Linny just at a time when she shouldn’t be upset, so couldn’t I make it up with her? But there was no way I felt I could speak to him just then, or in fact to anyone. I just felt too raw and betrayed.

Anyway, what sort of explanation could I possibly have given him? However awful Linny’s betrayal, telling him the truth was not an option.

So I deleted all of the messages, including the ones from Sergei, which were mostly deeply grieved, not to mention put out by my attitude and, latterly, suggesting that I would be sorry when I realized to what lengths my cold heart had driven him. But I was not worried, because unless you can overdose on Russian tea he was unlikely to do his beautiful body any harm.

Then Linny started emailing me, but I just put them straight into my junk folder without opening them. There was no magic formula of words that could exorcize the pain of what she had done.

I only wished I could pour my heart out to Jackie, who had lots of common sense, despite all her wacky ideas, but even though Linny had so totally betrayed our friendship I still couldn’t do it. Jackie could see I was deeply upset about something, though, and came round to do a cleansing ritual with lots of metal bowls and a bunch of smoking twigs, which set the fire alarm off.