‘Just what the Germans said before they invaded Poland.’

‘Oh I just thought of something else,’ Sharon chips in. ‘If you do get back with him, you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren, “If I hadn’t stalked your granddad and acted like a complete mentaller, then none of you would have ever been born.”’

‘Can you both please stop using the word stalking? I’m not sure how comfortable I am with it.’

‘Well what else would you call it?’ says Maggie. ‘I assume your crackpot master plan is to camp out at the front gate until he shows up?’

‘Or maybe you could scale a ten-foot-high wall to get in?’ Sharon asks hopefully. ‘You know, dodging past hordes of salivating rottweilers and alsatians. Then you could break in through a window and try to dodge the alarm’s laser beams. It’d be cool, wouldn’t it? Like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.’

Actually, what I’m slightly too shamefaced to admit is that right up until late this afternoon, that was my plan. Like a good cat burglar, I even had it all worked out, right down to which was the best point of entry into the house. Through the French doors round the back, because half the time Sam forgets to lock them…sure I’d be through them in two minutes.

Then it dawned on me. I still have a set of keys.

Ten minutes later and I’m pulling up to the huge iron security gates outside Sam’s house. Sorry, make that Sam’s palatial mansion. I hit the zapper button on the remote and seconds later the gates glide elegantly open. Sharon’s awed into silence, but Maggie’s not.

‘So, if you lived here, how far away would your nearest neighbour be?’

‘About five miles.’

‘Feck off! So what happens if you have to run next door for a cup of sugar or a jug of milk? Does one just send one’s butler in one’s helicopter?’

The driveway is so long that the house isn’t even visible for a while; all you can see are vast, rolling, immaculately kept, well-manicured lawns on either side of us.

‘Don’t know if Ma would be much into this,’ says Sharon, head out the window like an over-eager puppy. ‘It’s all a bit too under-decorated. Not a pretendy Grecian urn or a statue of a naked angel in sight.’

Then I turn a bend and there it is, glinting in the evening sunshine: Casa Sam. For a second, I see it through Maggie’s and Sharon’s eyes, thinking back to how wowed I was the first time I came here too. It’s the approximate size of a country house hotel, but an uber-posh, five-star one with plenty of room for a golf course in the front garden. In fact, it’s so huge that I remember when Sam first took me here, I debated whether I should leave a trail of breadcrumbs after me so I wouldn’t get lost.

I’m not messing, it looks like a mini-Versailles, right down to the fifteen-pane, full-length sash windows on each of its double-fronted, mock-Georgian sides. There’s even an elegant water feature in front of the main door, which isn’t switched on, but still looks so mightily impressive that Sharon actually starts taking photos on her camera phone.

‘Ma will get great mileage out of these,’ she says to me, by way of explanation. ‘You know how much she loves laughing at other people’s crappy taste.’

There are two cars in the driveway, a Porsche and a BMW Z4, but I still know just by looking that Sam’s not home.

‘So who do those cars belong to?’ says Maggie, hauling herself out of the back seat. ‘The staff?’

‘No, they’re both Sam’s. On weekdays, he always takes the Bentley into work with him.’

‘For feck’s sake. What is he anyway, a rapper?’

‘He’s an entrepreneur,’ I say proudly.

What’s weird is that, even though I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen to bring Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee along with me for the ride, I’m kind of glad that they can see for themselves first hand the life I actually do lead. OK, so at the moment, I may spend most of my day scrubbing floors and picking up empty pizza boxes, but as a matter of fact, here’s my natural habitat. Sleeping on sofas and washing their dirty knickers isn’t my normal thing, this is. To the manor born. Funny, but Sam tends to role play a bit when he’s down here too, effortlessly slipping into the part of the country squire, right down to the Burberry checked jackets and wellies that have never seen as much as a drop of mud. He doesn’t like too many people knowing this; far preferring the world to think he was born and reared in this mock-Georgian mansion, but the truth is he only bought it about four years ago, when he’d made his first €5 million.

The house isn’t even period either; it was only built about ten years back by a property developer, who spared no expense in getting the best interior designers to fully kit the place out. So although everything is made to look like it’s about 200 years old, it actually comes with all mod cons like underfloor heating and a highly anachronistic indoor swimming pool. And if Maggie and Sharon think this is a sight to behold, wait until they get a load of the place inside. The stone hallway so massive that you could almost have a party in it, the basement wine cellar, the entertainment room, with its own private cinema, Sam even has a bar that serves Guinness on tap. As it is, the pair of them are sauntering around the front forecourt, with Sharon snapping away on her camera phone as Maggie does her best to look nonchalant and not a bit intimidated at all. While standing on a helicopter landing pad.

‘You know what? I could reallyget used to this lifestyle,’ Sharon laughs over to me, from where she’s wandering around behind the fountain. ‘I mean, I know Sam dumped you and everything, but I still don’t blame you for trying to get him back. I’d do the same myself, even if he was a three-foot-high dwarf with breath like owl droppings.’

She means well, I remind myself, so I force a weak half smile.

‘You OK?’ she asks, suddenly concerned and picking up on the nervous tension that’s practically hopping off me.

‘No,’ I say back to her in a tiny voice. ‘I’m about as far from OK as you can get.’

Thing is, I’m frightened and don’t even know why. Which is ridiculous. I mean, this is Sam,for God’s sake. My perfect boyfriend. Who, granted, may be acting a bit weirdly right now, but who will no doubt return to standard Prince Charming behaviour when this little blip we’re going through is sorted out.

Anyway, another deep, nerve-calming breath and I trip up the steep, stone steps to let the three of us in through the huge, heavy oak door, mentally reminding myself of his alarm code. It’s an easy one to remember because it’s the month and year of his birthday; 081975. Leo, wouldn’t you know it? High achieving, driven, successful and doesn’t know his arse from his elbow when it comes to women.

I push the door open and the three of us clamber into the hallway, so vast it could easily double up as a cathedral. As the warning alarm beeps, I head for the security box, which is just to the right of the cloakroom as you go in the door, knowing that I’ve about ninety seconds to punch in the code and deactivate it.

Meanwhile, Maggie and Sharon are strolling around the hall, gazing upwards like tourists in the Louvre museum.

‘Get a load of the ceiling,’ says Maggie, looking weirdly out of place amid all this neo-Georgian splendour in her favourite Hubba Bubba neon pink tracksuit. ‘What did Sam do anyway, have it imported directly from Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad?’

If they think that’s impressive, I smile smugly to myself as I punch in the alarm code, wait until they get a load of the kitchen, which is so huge, you could have a sit down dinner party for twenty people in it with plenty of room over for dancing on tables later.

I wait for the beep beep warning noise to stop. But it doesn’t. Which is a bit odd. I try again. Same code, except this time I do it slower in case I made a mistake the first time. I’m positive I did it properly, but for some reason now a computerised red message is flashing up on the alarm box, saying ‘Incorrect code, please retry.’ I know you only get three goes at getting it right, so I take a deep breath and really concentrate this time.