Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans. If tonight doesn’t end up being a bloodbath, it’ll be a bonus.

Sam continues with his policy of pulling out all stops imaginable, arriving in a white, chauffeur-driven stretch limo to collect the whole lot of us. The car even attracts a crowd of the local kids, all clustered around it demanding to know whether someone’s getting married? He steps out of the back, in black tie, laden down with red roses. You should see him. It’s like James Bond just arrived into a council estate.

We’re all present and correct, except for Sharon and Steve that is, who left about five minutes ago. I was upstairs getting ready, to a stony silence from herself, when the doorbell rang. She stuck her head out the window, didn’t tell me who it was, didn’t even say goodbye, just raced downstairs and was gone. I looked out the bedroom window just in time to see her zoom off on the back of Steve’s motorbike.

I’m the last one into the car, mainly because I’m wearing a cheapie pair of faux-crystal sandals that cut the feet off me and which I’m practically hobbling in, hence it takes me ten minutes just to get downstairs. But I bought them anyway, a) because they were on sale in Dunnes Stores for an astonishing €8 and b) because at least they go with my dress, which is a silver, glittery strappy number, also bought in Dunnes Stores and also on sale at €24.99. I know, all Sam’s pals will be head to toe in designer gear and I’ll be the only discount shopper there, but Credit Crunch Jessie doesn’t worry about crap like that any more.

Sam, true to form, does notice, but then he misses nothing. We’re in the back of the limo and he’s doling out champagne to the assembled company; Joan, her date Jimmy Watson, Maggie and myself, to toast his birthday.

‘You look…well, OK, babe,’ he says to me. ‘Where did you get the outfit?’

‘All from Dunnes Stores,’ I say proudly, delighted with my bargains. ‘Total cost: just under thirty-three Euro.’

‘Do you want us to wait for you to change into something a bit more suitable?’

That sounded like a casual suggestion, but his tone was more like an order.

‘No thanks, I’m happy in this. Besides, I don’t have anything else.’

‘But, it’s from Dunnes Stores. And you can be sure the press will pick up on it too.’

‘Not a problem for me,’ I say firmly. ‘I’m comfortable in this.’ And a glare from me tells him to drop it, which he does.

Then Jimmy, already so red-faced that I’d swear he’s been on the gargle for the whole afternoon, actually starts pitching the famous IPrayForYou.com idea to Sam, trying to get him on board as an investor.

‘Yeah, great, whatever, call my assistant Margaret and we’ll set up a meeting,’ says Sam dismissively, the way he always is whenever he’s trying to give people the brush-off.

Then, when we arrive at Bentleys, he says crisply to the others, ‘OK. The photographers will want clear shots of Jessie and I arriving alone. So we’ll get out of the car first, and if you can all just wait in here until we’re well and truly inside? No offence, but we don’t want to spoil all the pap shots with unknowns.’

I don’t even have time to berate him for treating my family like a shower of anonymous Z-listers because next thing, he’s out of the car and propelling me out alongside him. Bloody hell, you’d think we were going to an awards do instead of a shagging birthday knees-up. It’s only a few paces from the limo to the door of the restaurant, but you’d swear it was the Kodak Theatre on Oscar night, between the red carpet and all the assembled press, lined up with cameras popping into our faces.

‘Smile, Jessie! Over here, Sam! Can we just get a shot of the two of you together? Side by side?’ is all you can hear as we both step out into what feels like an electrical storm.

‘So you’re back together again?’ yells out another journalist and Sam and I both answer at the same time.

‘Yes!’ he answers back, having to shout over all the noise.

‘No. I’m…I’m really just here for the birthday party,’ I say, but no one even hears me. Impossible to in this crowd.

Then he automatically slips his arm around my waist and twirls me this way and that, beaming his mega-watt smile into whatever lens happens to be shoved into his face. It’s completely surreal. There’s about a dozen people roaring out questions at me and of course I can’t hear them all in the cacophony of noise. So I’m acting like a mute puppet, going through the motions with Sam prodding me towards even more cameras, all while I feel I’m silently screaming inside and no one can hear.

And that’s when it happens. A reporter from Channel Six, who I know of old, taps me on the arm and thrusts a mike under my nose, while a camera whirls right in front of me, almost blinding me with the overhead light. ‘Hi Jessie,’ she says, ‘I only have one question for you, if that’s OK? This big reunion with Sam Hughes. Why now after all this time? Do you think it’s a coincidence that you broke up after you were fired from Channel Six, but now that you’re reinstated and the cloud of suspicion over you has been lifted, suddenly Sam is back in your life again?’

Her question completely stops me in my tracks. Because it’s an exact mirror of what Steve said to me last night. The facts are right there, staring me in the face. If I were still a disgraced has been, would I ever have heard a peep from the likes of Sam ever again? Of course not, not in a million years. Suddenly I have to get away from this circus. Like, now. Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve broken away from Sam and am teetering inside on my too-tight heels, almost ready to fall over, they’re that sore to walk in.

Got to find Steve. And Sharon. Got to apologise and tell them that both of them were right and I was wrong. Because Sam hasn’t changed a bit, not a single bit. He thinks I’m a winner again and so I’m allowed back into his rarefied world, but that’s the only reason why. I don’t think he even loves me, or possibly ever did love me. I was just an asset that turned into a liability that’s now miraculously transformed back to being an asset again. But before I speak to anyone else, first of all I somehow need to find the words to say this to his face.

The thing about Bentleys is that it’s actually a hotel as well as a restaurant, so the party is being held on three different levels simultaneously, Sam having taken over the entire building for the evening. It takes about six goes to get his attention, mainly because every time I try to collar him, someone drags him off for a photo. The place is packed out, but it’s typical of any shindig Sam organises: fifty per cent media, forty-nine per cent business contacts and the remaining one per cent are friends and well-wishers.

At one point, I manage to manoeuvre him into a corner, telling him I need to speak to him urgently. But just as he gives me his attention, a barman comes over with a trayful of drinks and asks us what we’d like. Champagne for both of us, Sam orders.

‘Do you have any Bulmers?’ I ask, desperately dying for a drink. Anything to get me through this.

‘Bulmers? Did you just ask for Bulmers?’ Sam repeats, as stunned as if I’d just asked for a pint of kitten’s blood.

‘Yeah, that’s what I drink now.’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Woodsie. That’s a knacker drink. Stop embarrassing yourself, you’re in Bentleys now, you know. Not some scobie bar in Whitehall.’ Then he says imperiously to the barman, ‘She’ll have champagne.’

I don’t even get a chance to have it out with him, to say no thanks, these days cider is my drink of choice and he knows where he can shove his champagne, because just then a photographer from Social and Personalis over wanting a picture of him, so off he goes.

Nor can I even see any of my family, who are probably up partying in the bar at the very top of the building. Sharon and Steve included.