However, I was still deeply fond of Sergei, despite his vanity and deviousness (or possibly because of them?). We understood each other better than anyone else ever could, so although Nathan was attractive, temptation was not going to be allowed to come to anything, even if he showed willing. Anyway, the complications if I ran both of them simultaneously would be hideous. Besides, Nathan was probably married to that skinny girl in the photo – and I was positive I’d seen her modelling underwear in catalogues.

No, bearing in mind my habits, not to mention Sergei’s, Nathan was better kept as an inspirational dream – and just how bright was he if he hadn’t recognized himself in my books yet?

In the end, I suggested to Sergei that I would love to see some videos of his earlier starring roles, which cheered him up no end. Normally you would have to fill me so full of wine I couldn’t move before I’d sit through more than half an hour of that kind of thing, but we curled up on the sofa together while he pointed out his brilliance and I worked out the plot complications for The Orchid Huntress.

Watching ballet is more exhausting than sex.

Staggering round to Linny’s later I found her ankle-deep in babywear catalogues, swatches of nursery wallpaper and snippets of soft furnishings. It beats me why so many baby things have got clowns printed on them, which I always find horrendously scary and very strange, all those weird men with red noses and white faces and stuff.

There were paint charts full of cloud pinks and bunny-tail beiges, and a scattering of books with ominous-sounding titles like Get and Keep the Perfect Nanny!, which she said were all Tershie’s doing. He was already sorting out the nursery arrangements and has registered with the best nanny agencies. Linny felt like a dubious starter in the motherhood stakes, especially the idea of actually giving birth, which was so gross it didn’t bear thinking of and it wasn’t like you could pay someone else to do it for you. So she said she’s not going to think of it, she’s going to have an elective Caesarean under total anaesthesia and perhaps tell them to wake her up when it goes to school.

But there were compensations, because her complexion, which was normally a bit oily and sallow, was glowing and so was she. She had a sort of sparkle about the eyes, and in fact the general effect was like she’d fallen in love. She said much the same about me, only of course I had neither fallen pregnant nor fallen in love, only into sheer, crazy, inconvenient lust with a perfectly ordinary man … Well, ordinary except for being extraordinarily attractive, that is.