The Meredith Festival was five or six weeks away, and Biddy had bought two passes: one for her, one for … I had to draw a line, tell her I couldn’t accept her charity, even though she’d been practically begging me to commit. It was the principle. End of.

‘This one’s nice.’ I held up the phone. A selfie in our car, in black and white. Sophie’s arm was visible behind Sarah, but we could crop that out.

‘Hmm, I don’t like it …’

‘I do …’ Scrolling. ‘And look, there’s this one.’ The shot I’d taken of her in her Russian-red bob, hours before she boned Valentino and changed our lives forever.

Sarah screwed up her face. ‘You think guys will like that?’

‘I like it.’ I put my hand on her thigh.

‘Yeah, but other men.’ She shifted slightly.

‘I’m a man, Sarah. Just because you don’t fancy me, doesn’t mean –’

‘OK, I get it, Chris. Let’s just use that one.’

‘And the black and white?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘OK, let’s move on.’

‘What age range of men are you interested in?’

‘Oh, I don’t know … Maybe twenty-five to fifty?’

‘Twenty-five to fifty?’

She laughed. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing.’ I set the slider between twenty-five and fifty. ‘And then, your tagline …’

Zac’s was a source of great pride: That song you can’t stop singing, in a language you don’t understand. It had just come to him or whatever, and had brought him great success.

I held up the phone. ‘What about Make it fun and we’ll see where it goes from there?’

‘Hmm … That doesn’t really say “sex”, though, does it?’

‘It’s implied, Sarah. They’re not going to think you mean a date at Luna Park.’

‘I guess …’

I started keying it in, angled the phone towards her. ‘What do you think?’

‘Hmm, not sure.’

Was there anything more emasculating than not quite nailing the messaging around your wife’s sexual availability to everyone with a Y chromosome in a 25-year age bracket?

I said, ‘At least guys might propose something fun to do. Even just going for a drink.’

She shifted, settled. ‘Yeah … But it’s more the physical side I’m interested in, to be honest.’

‘Is it? I thought you wanted more than that. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying?’

And Zac – he’d been saying it too, whispering in my ear about Sarah’s desire to find someone who could go the distance, a new me.

‘Yeah, OK, that’s fine, then … Oh, I don’t know, Chris. So, is that everything, or do I need to do something else?’

She hadn’t done anything.

‘I think that’s you, yeah. Now you just need to get swiping. Look, it says to swipe left if you’re not interested, right if you are.’