Grigor kissed me enthusiastically as he left; a pleasure somewhat spoiled by the realization that I was only one rung below the level of being his stepmother, which was very odd to contemplate: only of course it wouldn’t actually come to that.

Eventually it was just me, Sergei and Tony.

‘I’ll drive Tina home to Shrimphaven,’ Tony declared with a challenging look at Sergei, though actually I was going to splash out on a taxi home anyway: I’d had enough of people for one night, even people I love. And if poor Tony thought he was removing me from temptation he was closing the stable door so long after the horse had bolted that it wasn’t even a dust cloud on the horizon.

So I kissed Sergei a loving goodbye and Tony and I headed off to my cottage, where he spent a hideously uncomfortable night on my little sofa, but it was all his idea to take me home, after all.

He creaked off back to Wales at the crack of dawn, leaving me a message of complaint in the kitchen, including his opinion that pet mice in the house were unhygienic, though in my view not as unhygienic as dumping used tea bags in the sink and scattering toast crumbs everywhere, but I expect he was just peeved because Minnie kept him awake all night running round in her wheel. Mary obviously has a lot to put up with.

Husbands: you can’t live with them – but you can live without them.