There's going to be a murder. A horrible crime of passion. An ugly, headline-grabbing front-pager. And the victim will be my own dearly beloved's friend up north: she of dubious moral standing - Her Incorrigible Lowness, the Princess Ina. Reports will probably gloss over the mitigating circumstances. But, without wanting to prejudice the forthcoming trial, I can tell you that she has had it coming.

The whole macabre tale stems from a gross error of judgment. Ina's slightly deranged beau suggested she might like to house-sit at his immaculately maintained maisonette while he undertook a prestigious research assignment on foreign soil. Paddy may have an impressive degree in medical science, but the poor trusting Irish eegit clearly hasn't an ounce of common sense in his frail, little frame. For he misguidedly believed that installing Ina on the premises would protect his property.

Ina needed no persuasion to fly her family nest and set up temporary residence at Paddy's place. But, no sooner had Paddy driven off to the airport than Ina was on his telephone inviting all and sundry to come on down and party the night away in the inoffensively bland bachelor pad.

The beige carpeting and cream, cotton upholstery are now a disgustingly stained testament to 12 weeks of aggressive social interaction. Which is why my beloved has spent this past week entreating Ina to get the place properly cleaned up before Paddy's imminent return.

''Oh, it's just wear and tear,'' Ina has repeatedly replied. ''If Paddy had any sense at all he'd never have chosen beige carpets and cream sofas.'' In my view, he should never have left Ina unsupervised in his home for more than a nano-second.

Ina has repositioned the sofas to cover the huge, red wine stain which the sitting room carpet sustained one evening during a spirited game of spin-the-bottle. Paddy may have some difficulty in convincing the officers who call to investigate Ina's murder that this menacing, dark-red pool is not evidence of a previous grizzly crime at the same residence.

As yet, Ina hasn't thought up a means of disguising the damage to the coal-effect electric fire. Admittedly, the plastic simulation was never convincing. But Ina didn't improve things by encouraging guests at her Russian-themed party to smash their drained vodka glasses into the grate. As the evening wore on, some of those smashing glasses may have been less drained than others. Consequently, when Ina lit up cigarette number 212 and carelessly tossed a not entirely spent match into the fireplace, a very real blaze rapidly reduced those artfully moulded imitation coals to molten lava.

Ina seems sure Paddy will like the authentic ageing which this mishap has given his bijou, maple-esque fire surround. But I really can't imagine that he'll understand why the electric fire is now topped by something closely resembling a mis-shapen pizza marguerita.

Similar devastation has occurred in Paddy's kitchen, where there is now unequivocal evidence of a chip-pan fire. A large section of ceiling has been lost, and there's a spectacular burn mark nine feet in circumference on the wall behind the hob. Ina, who is afflicted with Scotland's worst known case of Compulsive Immorality Syndrome, additionally sustained a number of personal scars as a result of the rough and tumbling close encounter which she had with one of the lusty young fireman who attended the incident. If his colleagues hadn't thrown all Paddy's blackened saucepans out, she'd have been staging further chip-pan fires on a weekly basis.

Paddy's glassware stocks were, of course, severely depleted by the vodka party. And his cutlery drawer, which once held a plentiful array of Habitat's brasserie-style eating implements, now contains nothing but a fork with a badly bent prong and one solitary soup spoon. This extraordinary edit occurred one morning when Ina made an uncustomary attempt to clear up something approaching 10 weeks of filthy dishes. Into the bin she carelessly scraped dozens of half-eaten mouldy samosas, vile vestiges of take-away chicken korma, the rubbery remains of her culinary speciality - beans on toast . . . and all the bloody cutlery.

Damage to the bathroom? Not too bad. An intense blast of napalm will probably restore it to an acceptable level of cleanliness - although Ina has broken the toilet seat (please don't ask how), and pulled the towel-rail off the wall. Oh, and the shower doesn't actually work anymore, Ina having fractured the flexible supply pipe.

Thanks to the ease with which Ina forms short-term romantic attachments (and the generosity with which she shares her charms) it's inevitable that Paddy will be inundated with calls from the many men to whom the old slag has promised (and in several cases given) her all. The domestic devastation will seem minor compared with the scale of telephone bill Ina has clocked up by phoning all those marvellous chatline numbers.

Bad enough that Ina has proved to be to housekeeping what the Klu Klux Klan is to race relations. Horrible to think that any half-hearted, twenty-two-timing paramour would turn her own boyfriend's bachelor pad into a bordello. But the real reason that Ina's life is now in mortal danger? She actually expects her house-sit to be rewarded with a nice piece of jewellery.