It was amazingly clever of the Post Office to track me down eventually because, due to Sergei’s habit of writing half his letters back to front and turning all his Ss into Ws, the address was illegible even to me.

I made a cup of coffee and then settled down to read my way through them in date order, although as evidenced by the address, his handwriting was hard to understand, but I certainly got the gist – especially the last one saying he was going to send me a pearl a day as a symbol of his tears until I forgave him!

All was now explained, and it was the sort of lavish thing he would do, too, though actually I rather thought he’d shot himself in the foot with this one, since even if I did ever forgive him I was not going to say so until I had enough pearls for a decent-sized string, was I?

But naturally I felt much happier knowing how Sergei felt about me, and clearly he was missing me … so I could at least phone him and thank him for the pearl, couldn’t I?

I did, and he seemed absolutely overcome to hear my voice, even though I was not ready yet to talk about forgiveness, but had rung merely to say that I had only just received his letters due to their having gone astray.

He clearly had been watching the progress of Dark, Passionate Earth because he knew how well it was selling.

I asked him how he was, and he said that as well as sinking into a deep decline so that he was the despair of his friends, he had this strange pain in his arm, with tingling, and did I think he was going to have a heart attack? And he told me all about the trouble with his feet, and how he thought the poison from the Botox had got into his system and was slowly killing him, so if I ever brought myself to forgive him he could safely promise never to have that done again.

Other women were as nothing compared to me, he said, and without his Tsarina Tina his life was empty and meaningless, and he would never even look at anyone again if I took him back.

I said not to press me yet because he had hurt me very deeply and wounds like that took a long time to heal. (But to keep sending the pearls.)