I’ve just had an email. ‘Make this Valentine’s Day all about good food and good company.’

Oh, bugger off! Everyone is always disparaging when we hear something is ‘triggering’, but Valentine’s Day emails for me are triggering. If I hadn’t set detectives on the nasty b*****d, I’d still be on tenterhooks. Will I get a delivery? Will he have booked that oft-promised mini break? It’s better to know, to not have expectations. I’m thinking of following in Justin Baldoni’s footsteps – in my case, publishing his messages on X.

I’ve found out more, on top of spotting the Foetus’s dazzling engagement ring in the detectives’ footage of their date. I wasn’t going to publish but, as he has gone silent since 7 January, I’m thinking, what the hell? Here goes.

The first time he failed to turn up for the weekend – we’d met two weeks before – he sent a text at 10pm on the Friday, saying, ‘I guess you’ve been wondering about my silence all week. I am supposed to see you tomorrow. There is nowhere in the world I would rather be. I have been stopped by a horrible issue that is burning a fire. Explaining it will worsen my persona. I should have shared, but I didn’t want to spoil the moment. But I am so sure about us, and I need to talk. This is a relationship that finished in November 2023. In June, she contacted everyone, including my adult kids, painted an incredible story. The allegations are sickening. I knew her in the Middle East for two years.’

He told me she went to the police, accusing him of coercive behaviour. He told me, and I quote, ‘I am being formally investigated.’

So just two weeks after we met, there was a red flag, flapping away in a hurricane. I was shocked, told my best friend Andrea in Belfast and Nic. They said I should block him. Andrea: ‘By telling you, he is making himself out to be the good guy. It’s all about control.’

But, having fallen in love at first sight, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. There are vindictive, manipulative women out there; I should know, having been the victim of one. He’s so handsome, apparently worked in such a glamorous industry, that he must attract gold-diggers. In my defence, he was convincing. I told him I believed his innocence.

And yet on the first Saturday of the new year, six months after he told me she went to the police, here she is again, cosy in a bar, holding his hand, drinking wine, spending the night in his rented attic flat.

Here’s something else I haven’t told you, clinging on as I have been to the faint chance the other women would indeed be dumped, that he would profess his undying love. I have to return to Istanbul in March to have my gum stitches out. This time, I’m booked at Soho House with its rooftop bar, spa and private cinema, housed in a building that is centuries old. And I’m thinking, how romantic it would be to have a man join me there. To share it. Could we, should we?

But as I realise there’s no chance, let me tell you my detectives also looked into his finances. And there, for most of 2024, is application after application, month after month, for anyday loans and credit cards; the sort of credit card I used to apply for in desperation, such as Capital One.

And it all slotted into place. The fact he always wears the same clothes, never paid for even a glass of fizzy water. The day after we met at that party, I sent him photos of my collies. They were playing on the lawn of the stately home where I rent parkland and stables for Swirly. There’s the ha-ha, the helicopter parked on the grass.

He must have thought it was my home. That was the reason he came to visit, for just 24 hours (he left after breakfast on Sunday). He was on stakeout! He thought I have money as I’m famous! There was me thinking my vicarage was something to be proud of. Oh dear, what a disappointment I must have been.

The Prada bag and skirt, too, doubtless fooled him; he didn’t know they were bought 20 years ago and are the same vintage as his fiancé. I should have listened to my gut. Cut my losses. Not endured six months of gut-churning anxiety, empty promises, lies.

Jones Moans… What Liz loathes this week 

• Bossy men on planes. Claiming the window seat, like toddlers, when we know a man will go to the loo four million times. Telling me where to put my case in the overhead locker. ‘I don’t take well to men telling me what to do,’ I said, sternly. His girlfriend, laughing: ‘He tells me what to do all the time.’ ‘You choose to be with him. I don’t.’
• Why, when I get an odd job done am I asked to pay as they leave? A huge company just told me it has a ‘90-day payment policy’. Three months!