Have you ever been on a diet, one of those calorie-counting ones? First week or two, you’re as strict as anything. Half a potato: 37 calories. 100 grams of etiolated Quorn: minus 7 calories. You lose half a stone, then a whole one. But then disaster strikes! You’ve already used up your 39-calorie-a-day allowance, and someone offers you a four-cheese pizza with extra Gorgonzola, and you can’t resist! You guzzle it down and exceed your calorie quota to the tune of 17,000.

We’ve all been there. Question is, what do you do then? Most of us give up. We’ve failed. No more diet for us, only failure and shame and Gorgonzola pizzas every night from now on. Whereas if we could think to ourselves instead, ‘Oh, well, it’s only one slip-up – back on the thin broth tomorrow,’ we could continue to starve ourselves quite successfully, until we’re no more than bags of bones covered in fine downy hair.

I digress. The point is: that’s how I feel about loyalty. So a stranger’s fingers are exploring my private parts – I’m the first to admit it – but does that mean I have to give up altogether on being loyal to my husband? I believe that if we all practised as much loyalty as we could, the world would be a better place. To this day, I’m glad I never bitched to Liam about Gabe.

Liam didn’t care either way. He said so. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. I was only asking to be polite. I don’t care.’

‘I just need to get out of the house sometimes,’ I explained. ‘Well, often. Actually … whenever I’m in the house.’ It was true and it wasn’t. No one understands about the true-and-not-true thing that you have if you’re a real person with an on-stage persona that’s a different version of you.

‘Are you going to put that line in your next comedy show?’ Liam asked.

‘Maybe,’ I said. (Update: yes, Liam, I am. I’m going to put it in a book too.)

‘Are you married?’ I asked him. ‘I’d need an X-ray to see if … ah … if you’re wearing a wedding ring.’

‘No, I’m not married. And I don’t care that you are,’ he said solemnly, as if nothing had ever mattered more to him than not caring.

I laughed and admitted to myself that I found him interesting. What kind of creature is this? I wondered. He was nothing like me – nothing at all, mentally or physically. I’m medium height with dark brown hair, brown eyes, olive skin, a longish face. Liam is a tall, well-built strawberry blond, with ivory skin and eyebrows that look, under the light, as if they’ve been added with gold highlighter pen.