Maybe he’s dead, I reflected on day four. Obviously, he must have fallen off the ladder as he was topiarying our front hedge to read ‘I love you, forgive me’, and accidentally whacked his head on the driveway and died. Tragic but touching.

On day five I thought, He’d better be dead, because otherwise I am going to kill him.

Clearly, while I was out of town, my husband’s cock had become a heat-seeking missile that wasn’t reporting to mission control. The low-down, lying scumbag.

Yes, yes, I sobbed into one of my six goose-down pillows – pot, kettle, black. Believe me, there’s truly no need to point out my hypocrisy. I’d lied so much of late it was a wonder my lips hadn’t fallen off. When I thought about how and when to tell my sisters that I’d fibbed about the cancer diagnosis, I just adopted the position of a defensive echidna, rolled tightly into a ball, and willed myself to think of something else. But the lie I’d told my siblings was accidental, whereas Harry had blatantly deceived me.

Abandoning all thoughts of sleep, I leant on my balcony railing, looked down into the dark water and listened to the hiss of the sea against the side of the ship. As the warm wind whipped through my hair I crossly cross-examined myself. Had I ever lied to him? Well, yes, but just little white lies. Off-white, even. Maybe beige. But that was normal. I mean, how terrible would life be if couples told each other the complete truth all the time? There’s a word for couples who tell each other the truth all the time – divorced. Complete honesty is not always the best policy in marriage. Surely it was perfectly fine for wives not to showcase their flaws and foibles. How many women does it take to change a light bulb? None: on certain things, it’s best to keep men in the dark.

Shoes, for example. Has any woman ever fessed up to a partner about the true cost of shoes? One of the biggest differences between the sexes is that men only need one pair of shoes the whole year round, and maybe only four pairs for his entire life. Consequently, they just don’t understand that it’s genetically impossible for most women to walk past a shoe sale and not buy something irrational and strappy. Sometimes Harry would ask how much I’d spent. I usually dodged the financial truth bullet by fobbing him off with a little jest – ‘Hey, my foot’s so often in my mouth, it simply has to be well-shod, right?’ while surreptitiously hiding the receipts. Well, don’t you?