Of course Tershie and Linny were there, and Jackie and Mel, plus a sprinkling of writer friends, a ballet critic, a couple of Cossacks (Sergei said he didn’t remember inviting them, and anyway they were ejected halfway through the evening for being drunk and trying to dance on the tables), and Nathan, with Rachel clinging possessively to his arm looking smug, an expression that turned to envy when Sergei gave a short speech paying me compliments of the effusive, blush-making kind and then presented me with a most beautiful ring.

Thank goodness he has such good taste in these things, because I’ll have to wear it all the time, like my other decent jewellery, due to the lack of security in my cottage. At this rate I would soon be decked out like a Christmas tree everywhere I went.

At least the pearl string was still a work in progress.

Every time I looked up during the evening I caught Nathan staring rather intensely at me, Rachel looking suspiciously from one to the other of us as if we might be making secret signals, and Jinni gazing adoringly at Nathan, so clearly Rachel would be better employed in watching her back than me.

There were no members of either family present, apart from the unacknowledged Grigor, since Sergei hasn’t got any others, and the Devino contingent were thankfully still in Wales … or so I thought until I looked up to find my brother, Tony, had suddenly appeared and was standing looking belligerently at Sergei.

So then of course I had to introduce them, and Tony announced loudly that he’d come to give the family blessing on my engagement, and to Sergei he said that for the honour of the family he had to agree to the wedding, and it was right that Sergei make an honest woman of me.

I could see he was really throwing himself into the role and enjoying it, though the fractured Italian accent was a bit thick at times. ‘Since the untimely death of our parents, I have been as a father to her,’ he said brokenly, which he hasn’t, just a bossy older brother who always thought he knew best and was dying to see me married to someone respectable. Sergei did not quite seem to fit that bill, but Tony obviously despaired of my tying the knot with anyone else.

Sergei, deeply moved, sprang up, kissed him on both cheeks and said he respected his viewpoint entirely and Tony could be sure his sister was in safe hands. (And it was quite true that he had never dropped me.)

‘We are to be brothers – let us drink to that!’ he said warmly, and pressed a glass into Tony’s not unwilling hand. Then they had a conversation that sounded like War and Peace crossed with The Sopranos, while the rest of the guests, the excitement over, began to take their leave.