I wore my Titania blue beaded outfit for the SFWWR party, and Linny wore something slightly tented in beige, which was not a colour that went well with her rather Mediterranean complexion, but I didn’t like to tell her, and actually when I took off the retro blue-and-pink-spotted chiffon scarf I was wearing, which I didn’t really need with all that bead action, and tucked it into her neckline, it brightened the whole thing up no end.

I drank too much, talked too much, but didn’t eat too much, since Linny had to get a passing waiter in an arm-lock before he stopped wafting past with trays of finger food held tantalizingly high above our heads, though we had time to grab only a handful before he struggled free. He gave us a wide berth after that, but these places are all the same when it comes to the catering at functions, and so uninspired when it comes to nibbles that I can’t help feeling it would be much better if they just sent someone down to Marks and Spencer’s with a trolley.

My book was climbing briskly up the paperback charts and doing brilliantly on Amazon, and I seemed to be everywhere … not to mention when the next somewhat steamy bit of Sergei’s memoirs came out (I must have missed that part when I was looking through the manuscript!), in which he had gone into our relationship and habits in a lot more depth …

So then there was a bit of scandal among the tabloids again, only neither of us was married so it wasn’t exactly illegal, was it? (Although, come to think of it, I thought having sex in your garden may well be against the law, and what a lot of spoilsports if so!)

And it was quite wrong to say Sergei ‘seduced newly-wed Tina Devino from the arms of her husband, Tim Hollins’ because I realized ten minutes after the wedding that I’d made a major, major error, and so if anything I used Sergei as an excuse to get out of it, and who wouldn’t?

Then Mel asked me if she could start a Web fan club! She said she loved my books, which I knew, and she thought she could make some money out of it since everyone would have to pay to join and then she could flog them Tina Devino official souvenirs and so on … and Minnie the mouse is going to be the official mascot with a big photo – the Melinda Moussenger of the Web world.

Dark, Passionate Earth climbed to number two in the paperback charts!

Was I famous at last?

Twenty-Six

Mixed Signals