Linny rang and I was just going to tell her all about the lost letters and talking to Sergei on the phone again when she blurted, fast, ‘Tina, I’ve just done something that was really, really hard, but that I hope will help you and Sergei to heal your rift.’

‘Oh God, what have you done now?’ I said ungratefully.

Linny said she’d just had a meeting with Sergei at a local coffee shop (from the sound of it, both were wearing dark glasses and raincoats and looking suspicious), during which interesting conversation they had agreed that the whole butterfly incident never happened at all, or even if it did, it had nothing to do with them, it was two other people entirely, and therefore none of us need take any notice of it, and we could all meet together in a friendly fashion as before.

This had a certain mad logic to it, and Linny certainly surprised me with that one, but I pointed out that it wouldn’t be easy, would it, pretending we’d all imagined it?

She said Sergei had found it perfectly reasonable, and actually when she met him she found it quite easy too; clearly it wasn’t her who had done those things, so now it was just me who would have to rearrange my memories a bit and then we would be all right, wouldn’t we?

‘Yes, I suppose we would, but what about the baby?’

‘I’m not entirely stupid, you know,’ she said. ‘I’m positive it’s Tershie’s.’

I hoped she was right.

After that I brought her up to date on Sergei’s letters going astray, and the daily supply of small but perfect pearls, which she thought very, very romantic. She said I should forgive him because clearly we were made for each other.

‘Only don’t do it yet, because you can’t do much with only a few small pearls.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I said. ‘And Nathan’s still ringing me. How come he is so warm and flirty on the phone, but all businesslike when we meet, except for the odd, small lapse, and then he retreats back instantly into agent mode? What do you make of that?’

‘Maybe he’s a tease?’ she suggested. ‘Or he fancies you like mad, only he’s a bit scared of you too, so he backs off when he’s actually with you?’

‘Linny, pregnancy has addled your brain. How can he be scared of harmless little moi?’

As I expected, she couldn’t think of a good answer to that one.