Connie felt a pang of disappointment. She just wanted to connect with him again, to be close. They had barely spoken all evening, except to catch up with trivial domestic news – such as the flush button coming loose in the downstairs loo and Rees, the gormless plumber’s apprentice, coming to fix it. If she went to bed now, she would be dead to the world by the time he crept in beside her. Then in the morning, he would still be asleep when she got up.

‘Please … come with me,’ she said quietly, and saw his face go still for a moment. Then he sighed and nodded.

‘Sure, OK,’ he said. But his reluctance was evident, and she was upset.

Does he worry I’m after sex or something? she wondered wryly, as she climbed the stairs to their bedroom, placing her glass of water and specs on the bedside table. But she’d stopped having expectations in that arena after a number of humiliatingly unsuccessful seductions on her part during the previous two years.

The last, months ago now, had been the worst – and such a sorry cliché. She had put on a slinky silk camisole in delicate lilac and matching knickers – saved at the back of her drawer from years ago and barely worn – then waited for him to finish in the bathroom, heart knocking as she sat on the bed, hair fluffed and loose. When Devan had seen her, he’d stopped short and stared, eyes wide, as if a woolly mammoth had landed on the duvet. From his twitchy, but resigned expression, he might have been anticipating an unwelcome appointment with the dentist.

He’d recovered sufficiently to force a smile and come over to sit beside her on the bed, picking up her hand and kissing it. But she’d seen the effort it took and she’d snatched it away, leaping up from the bed and shutting herself in the bathroom. She’d felt so utterly mortified – so unsexy, unattractive – that even the thought of it now made her cringe.

Although there had been many wonderful times in the past when they’d made love in this very bed, over the thirty-three years of their marriage. They’d always been good together, their attitude to sex one of relaxed mutual pleasure. No bells and whistles or swinging from the chandelier, neither of them trying to prove anything. Just a light-hearted lust for each other – which she sorely missed.