As time passed, however, I fancied coming out of hibernation. I was no longer a solitary, feral woman, and had rejoined the human race. Besides, I was curious about my friends’ reactions. What would they make of Calvin? Would they like him? More to the point, how would he behave in their company? Like an internet date, I had no context for him, only his own word.

And I wanted to show him off. Look! I could still pull, even at my age. Tragic, I know.

In late May I got an email from Bethany Graham. We’d been friends for years, ever since our children’s primary school days. I’d liked her the moment I saw her at the entrance. Her little daughter was burbling on about something or other and Bethany briskly pushed her through the gates—‘Just go in and get educated!’ I’d liked her partner, too. Alex was a stay-at-home Dad so I’d meet him at the end of the day. My first sight of him was leaning against a lamppost reading The Diary of Joe Orton. Any man who read about anal gang-bangs outside his daughter’s primary school was a man after my own heart.

They lived in the next street. Greg liked them too and for the next few years we were very close—children’s sleepovers, supper parties, a lot of wine and some heavy flirtation. We were young and in love—with our children, with each other; there was an adulterous John Updike frisson to those golden days. We never used our front doors; the children ran through the alley into each other’s gardens. We had our own secret world. We had fun.

Then Bethany trained as a psychotherapist and lost her sense of humour. They moved to Oxfordshire and we only saw them inter­mittently. But now she emailed to say that Alex had died. ‘Brave to the last, after his long battle with motor neurone disease.’ I hadn’t even known he was ill. The funeral was in three days’ time.

Calvin suggested we fly there in one of his helicopters. He said it would be diabolical on the M40 and traffic jams were for wimps.

So I removed my little black dress from its polythene shroud. It smelled musty. Months had passed since I had worn it, in an-other life.

‘Phoar,’ said Calvin. ‘You’re a dead ringer for whats-her-name, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’

‘In the book she was a prostitute.’

‘So, what’s not to like?’

He drove me to Elstree in his glorious car. It no longer met with my disapproval. I wondered how Angie had come to terms with such a planet-polluter. I knew that Calvin had coarsened me, but what the hell. Safe in its creamy leather womb I gazed down at normal people, huddled at bus stops as we slid past. They looked at me the way I’d looked at people like me.