Saturday also meant the chances were much higher that her plans would take her somewhere suitable for their meeting. Somewhere he could follow the first steps of the carefully worked-out plan to make her his perfect wife. Whether she wanted that or not. But then, what she wanted was irrelevant.

Third box ticked.

He took a long slow shower, savouring the sensual delight of the warm water on his skin. If she played her cards right, she’d get to share it with him, to make a pleasant experience even more rewarding for him. What could be better than starting the day with a blow job in the shower? That was the sort of thing that a perfect wife would be thrilled to perform for her man. It had never occurred to him before, and he happily added it to his list. It had never occurred to the first one either, which was typical of her many failures to meet his high standards.

New tick box added to the mental list. It was important to be organised.

He believed in organisation, in preparation and in taking precautions. An outsider, looking at how much time had passed since that bitch had thwarted him, might have thought he’d given up on his quest. How wrong that outsider would have been. First, he’d had to deal with the mess she’d made. That had taken a ridiculous amount of time and he begrudged her every second of it. Then he’d had to be clear about his objectives.

He’d considered trying to buy what he wanted, like his father had done. But pliable though the Asian women were, it sent the wrong message to turn up with one of them on your arm. It screamed inadequacy, perversion, failure. The same went for mail-order brides from the former Soviet empire. Those harsh accents, the chemical blonde hair, the criminal tendencies ingrained like grime – that wasn’t for him. You couldn’t parade one of them in front of your workmates and expect respect.

Then he’d looked at the possibilities of internet dating. The trouble with that was you were buying a pig in a poke. And he didn’t want to poke a pig. He sniggered to himself at his cleverness, his skill with language. People admired that about him, he knew. But the even bigger trouble with internet dating was that there were so few options if things went wrong. Because you’d left a trail a mile wide. It took effort, skill and resources to be truly anonymous online. The risk of exposure with one split second of inattention or error was too high for him to take. And that meant if it all went wrong, he had no way to make her pay the proper price for her failure. She’d simply retreat to her old life as if nothing had happened. She’d win.