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It's set to be the sale of the century: Russian oligarchs, Arab sheikhs, rappers and heiresses are all lined up to bid for ''The Improbability of Love'', a small Antoine Watteau oil painting depicting a courting couple overlooked by a clown. The painting was missing until six months ago, when Annie McDee bought it from a junk shop for £75 as a birthday present for an incompatible fellow she met through Internet dating. When he didn't show for dinner and the junk shop mysteriously burnt down so that she couldn't ask for a refund, the painting became hers. Thirty-year-old Annie had been in a rut: after a painful break-up from Desmond, with whom she ran a cheese shop and café in Devon, she moved to London and was working as a PA to randy Italian film director Carlo Spinetti. She also acquired an unwanted roommate: her alcoholic mother, Evie.