After clearing customs at record speed, the Glamazonian clattered her way along the gangplank to the waiting speedboat. I leapt the rope barrier, ignoring a raucous ‘Oi! You!’ from a customs officer, and trotted along beside her. ‘The man I love is on that ship,’ I said mournfully. ‘Please, will you let me hitch a ride?’ I let out a choking sob. It was all too much. Since I had turned fifty a month ago, my life had gone from calm, ordered mundanity to reckless, perilous insanity, and I wasn’t quite sure how.

The trophy wife peered over her saucer-sized sunglasses. ‘Well,’ she adjudicated, ‘you’ve got that jaundiced, ill look, which means you’ve either just eaten a bad oyster, you’re comin’ down with the flu or that you’re truly, madly, deeply in love.’

‘It’s love, unfortunately, which is the worst affliction on that woeful list.’

‘Ain’t that the bloody truth!’ She laughed and gave her shrugging consent. ‘Hey, it’s no skin off my nose job.’

Which is how, moments later, I was bouncing and jouncing across the harbour at speed, in hot pursuit of a disappearing ocean liner. Our plucky little boat skimmed past the Opera House in a hiss of spray and then zipped at a loose clip past Shark Island, towards Manly. The cruise ship now loomed before us like a huge white whale.

The trophy wife, it transpired, had met her future husband while working at a ‘skimpy’ bar in Kalgoorlie – so called because waitresses work in their smalls. Having ascertained the details of my doomed love affair, she asked the water taxi skipper to call ahead to request the presence of the ship’s doctor in the docking area.

‘Sorry, no can do,’ he growled.

The trophy wife gave him a laser death stare. ‘Don’t play dumb with me, mate. I’m much better at it.’

‘But . . .’

‘I’m also wearing a G-string two sizes too small and feeling mean as fuck, so if you like your scrotum attached, just do it!’

The water taxi skipper promptly radioed the bridge. As he relayed the message, I wondered what kind of cruise was currently heading out. Brody had told me of the many different themed, niche cruises on offer on the high seas. ‘Bare Necessities’ swingers cruises, with dress code ‘clothing optional’, or the ‘Walking Dead’ cruise, with zombie-related activities, or the ‘Star Trek’ cruise with Klingon pub crawls for die-hard Trekkies. Looking at the gold-plated, diamond-studded couple before me, I couldn’t quite see them opting for the knitting and crochet cruise, or the ‘Meow Meow’ experience for dedicated cat lovers.