‘Lieve looked like she wanted to run for her life before the AK-47 came out of Stefano’s trouser leg’

Sadly, I was being over-optimistic when I declared that if all went well with the builder boyfriend I would never need Stefano the Albanian again. It turns out that  I never stopped needing Stefano. I needed him while I was dating the builder, because builders never do any building work in their own lives — a case of ‘builder, renovate thyself’ — and I need him more than ever now that the builder and I have decided it is really not working out.

When I had to move furniture to the new country place it was Stefano, therefore, who transported the items from London to Surrey. As we made our way down the farm track, Stefano following my little Fiat in his white van, I pulled over to chat to the gamekeeper. Stefano got out of his van, blinking as he emerged into the bright sunlight of the open crop fields. It didn’t take long before he spotted the huge gun in the gamekeeper’s Defender.

‘I like guns,’ said Stefano. ‘In Albania, I shoot AK-47.’

The gamekeeper, who has seen and heard everything, took this in his stride. ‘Oh, you do, do you?’

Stefano insisted on posing with the gamekeeper’s gun for a picture, which he made me take with his iPhone as he grinned like a maniac. I made a mental note to ask about the exact circumstances of his AK-47-firing days later because while I’m all in favour of Eastern European migrant labour, even I have my limits.

I didn’t have to wait long. After we had stashed my belongings, I took Stefano for a slap-up lunch at The Black Swan. We arrived to the din of a helicopter landing in the car park, bearing the Lottery winners who fly the 350 yards from their mock-Tudor mansion to the pub every Sunday. Makes you proud to be British.

Stefano pulled out his iPhone and took a series of incredibly invasive pictures of the man and his wife as she tottered out of the chopper on her Gucci wedges, which must have pleased them a lot and made all the Lottery ticket buying worthwhile.