Ugh. I resented every beige word coming out of my mouth. I wanted to stand up and scream THERE IS NO BRUCE. HE HASN’T GOT THE SHITS AT ALL, I MADE HIM UP! I’M HERE ALONE, ON THE RUN, HAVING CHOPPED A WHOLE-ASSED WOMAN TO PIECES. AND SHE AIN’T THE ONLY ONE!

But I didn’t, obvs. Or this would be where my story would end.

Gabriel started laying the table nearest us, sex vibes coming off him in waves. It was a boost to realise I could still have that effect on a guy – I’d figured after childbirth nothing would want to come near my vajoodle again, even doctors. But now the after pains had subsided and my tits no longer felt like pulsating zeppelins, a new vista had opened up. I hadn’t had a crumb of dick in months and it felt like feeding time.

‘You wanna stick close to yer husband when you go on these excursions, Hilary,’ interrupted Ken, meaty clods between each of his lower bicuspids. ‘Especially the closer we get to Africa. Who was that lass we know, Glo, who ran off with a porter at that hotel?’

‘Oh yeah, Dick and Daphne’s daughter. Went to Ibiza on holiday, met this chappie, never came home. Got trafficked. Last Dick and Daphne heard she were living with a tribe, wearing togas and drinking ox blood.’

Lynette sniffed. ‘It’s awful, isn’t it? Women aren’t safe these days.’

‘I think you’re pretty safe,’ I said but she pretended not to hear me.

Gareth and Bardot weren’t riveting company either. He was clearly a former incel, liberated from his mother’s spare room, who looked like the kind of guy who’d give you some depressingly vanilla sex but you could always rely on him to put the bins out. He’d look at Bardot every time he offered an opinion, conditioned to check what he’d said was OK, like she was some kind of human autocorrect. I imagined her as Cleopatra in Ancient Egypt and him as one of her lowly servants, covered in honey to keep the flies away from her. They’d been on my bus to the Drach Caves – the awful day I shat myself and killed that skinny bloke. I wondered if Gareth needed liberating. Perhaps it was time to jump into my phone box and twirl into my blood-stained cape. I tested the water.

‘So tell me, Gareth, have you done any of the shows yet?’

Bardot answered for him, of course. ‘Yeah we’ve done Cats and the Anchors Aweigh pirate show on deck the other night, that was good.’

‘Have you been on any excursions, Gareth?’