My book was now firmly lodged at the top of the bestseller charts and everyone wanted a piece of me – or me and Sergei, since the ‘engaged and living miles apart’ angle seemed to be a strange concept to everyone, even though creative people marrying and living apart had been done already by several couples, as I recall, and worked very well. And anyway, it was our own business, although the party placed us more in the public domain, I suppose. There was by then such a feeding frenzy over Sergei’s memoirs that it wouldn’t surprise me if they shot up the non-fiction bestseller charts as soon as they were out, so we may be occupying the tops of adjacent charts. It may surprise the readers to find that actually, despite a tendency to hyperbole when describing his own performance, Sergei wrote quite well.

He was pleased with the photos, in which he said he looked very young and fit, and I also looked beautiful, and he was buying us each a new cuttings book since both of ours were now full. He had been approached about doing a new edition of his SergeiYoga exercise DVD and book.

Ruperta had been shown the first chapters of The Orchid Huntress and had made an offer for it, as had Tim the Suit at Salubrious for rather more than my last one with them, but not enough to tempt me and so I signed with Ruperta.

Nathan kept looking at me with a sort of sad resignation whenever we met, but the thought of his cut from the advance should have cheered his heart, and if he was sad because he didn’t make his move before I got engaged, tough; and if it was because he didn’t want to marry Rachel any more, tough again, he should have done something about it.

Flushed with success and money, I had a tiny safe installed in my cottage and a burglar alarm, though whether they are a good idea I don’t know, because when alarms go off no one ever takes any notice, so it’s just a beacon screaming that there’s no one there, burglars welcome, isn’t it? Still, at least now it was reasonably safe to leave some of my bits of jewellery at home, rather than carry my spoils of war around with me all the time.

Otherwise, life resumed its normal even tenor, except that sometimes Sergei and I accepted invitations to things and went out together as an official couple, and when I took him to an SFWWR meeting it took me ages to extricate him afterwards. I nearly gave up and left him there, surrounded – and no one ever presses free copies of their steamy novels into my hands.