It had therefore hit her like a landslide the first time she and George had kissed. They’d gone for dinner in Martino’s and somewhere between the risotto verdure and the peppermint tea, he had leaned forward across the table without warning, his mouth grazing hers, and it was as if her body had woken right up following its years-long state of coma, shocked into life by his touch, like someone on an operating table receiving the 500-volt defibrillator pads. Stand clear! WHAM!

Just a kiss, and yet she’d experienced this physical force of lust that had swept through her entire body like a randy tornado. His mouth felt urgent yet confident against hers, as if he knew exactly what to do (and oh, he did know what to do, he really did). There had been stars in her eyes afterwards, like a dazed cartoon character. Hello, brave new world. I like the look of you.

‘Sorry,’ he’d murmured, seeing her stunned expression as he leaned back, although he was smiling as if he wasn’t actually all that sorry. ‘I couldn’t help myself. You just looked so pretty and lovely. Was that outrageously presumptuous of me?’

‘No,’ she’d said, blinking. Pretty and lovely! she repeated to herself rapturously, storing up the phrase to bask in later on. She collected compliments with the avidity of a miser hoarding pennies; her own private Greatest Hits moments that she could replay in times of low morale. ‘Not in the slightest. In fact why don’t we do it again?’

Her friends, of course, couldn’t believe what they were hearing. They were so used to her being Poor Em that they struggled to get their heads around this glittering new version. After all, they’d known where they stood with sad old divorced loser Em, who was doing her best but had such a tension about her jaw, bless her, it must be hard. (And didn’t we always say that Dom was a bastard? Cheating on her all that time with that fake bitch Michelle. We never liked him in the first place.)

Yet look at Em now: getting her nails done and buying skimpy knickers in her lunch-break, blushing like a teenager at the drop of a hat. Her body, which had resembled an abandoned field in recent years, with numerous unpleasant weeds sprouting here and there, was now waxed and plucked, smooth and scrubbed. Alive and kicking. She walked down the street and felt her bottom swing with a new jauntiness. She looked in the mirror and arched an eyebrow at her own sassy reflection instead of ducking her head away to avoid eye contact. Poor Em had been banished, replaced by Delighted Em, this fabulous new edition who couldn’t believe her luck.

‘Have you lost weight?’

‘Have you had your hair done?’

‘You look different!’ her colleagues commented in surprise.