‘Why must you do this work – this drudgery?’ he demanded, as though I’d been gulagged into the salt mines. ‘You have a soul above these things, my darling.’

‘I don’t have a soul above paying the mortgage, though,’ I pointed out. ‘And actually, I’m good at it. It will be ironic if I help someone become a bestseller while I’m still languishing in the midlist, won’t it?’

‘To me, you are always a star,’ he said simply. ‘Tsarina Tina!’

You have to love a man with a beguiling accent who makes bad jokes.

Monday morning came round, and I was sitting in Sergei’s basement flat wondering how our red-hot passion had dwindled down to a once-a-week habit followed by Russian tea from his samovar and accompanied by caviar. He’s definitely a bit Nureyev. Mind you, although he was teaching only SergeiYoga and the odd ballet masterclass by then, rather than performing, he could still jump with the best of them. I’d be deeply unwilling to think the worst of him even if he did wear eyeliner in bed and was as vain as a budgie: give him a mirror and he’d be happy for hours. Besides, in so many ways he’d never given me cause to suspect he was anything other than one hundred per cent heterosexual male.

But how did we get to this stage? And what was he doing the rest of the week, other than overseeing SergeiYoga classes at his studio in Primrose Square, going to the ballet, and hanging out with his dancing chums and various dubious-looking arty Russian émigrés until all hours? Maybe it was better not to know.

Of course, when we were apart he still phoned me at least once a day, with a bulletin about his imaginary ailments and all his little troubles, but he had been distracted lately. Well, I say lately, but it had been about a year, actually, and it did make me speculate about whether there was someone else in his life – or even several someones. I’m sure Linny would have loved to be one of them, despite having a perfectly good husband of her own. She found Sergei a little scary too, even though I told her that although he had a beautiful body, his feet look like loose bundles of old rope knotted around twigs.

When we did go out together he was always being recognized, because not only was he famed for his years of leading roles with the Royal Ballet, not to mention the success of the SergeiYoga DVD and accompanying book, but he also had an exotic face and a magnetic personality. This was good for my Brilliant Career too, because I tried to plug my books whenever I got a chance; and quite frankly I was tired of being a hanger-on at the fringes of London literary life. I wanted a piece of the action.