Ness was utterly incredulous that he didn’t know how to use the machines. I wasn’t. I saw it as a deliberate ploy. Karl was a grand master of lethargy; he’d made uselessness a tool in his bid for idleness. Most insultingly of all, he must have thought I didn’t see through it. How, after years, could he still not manage to load the dishwasher with the plates at the right angle so the branch didn’t get stuck? (Can Si Hubby do that, Dr. R?) Or take the washing out of the machine immediately, so that it doesn’t smell of old drains, and hang it out on the line in such a way that it won’t need ironing? How could he not master these tiny, simple things when I have mentioned them four thousand times? I’ll tell you why: because his overriding aim has been for me to have to redo everything, so that he can throw his hands in the air, flagellate with hurt and despair, and cry, Whatever I do, Connie, it’s never quite good enough for you, is it? As if it were my fault for wanting our fucking clothes to be clean and for him not to stink like a damp dog. He and I had always brought equal amounts of money into the house. At what stage during our relationship did I sign up to be the domestic slave?

You asked me if I was ever jealous? I’ll tell you what makes me jealous: the sharing of domestic tasks. Imagine this: walking past the chest of drawers where you’ve left a pile of clean laundry and to find that someone else has put it away! That is foreplay in my book. To return home to a wiped table! That is nigh on orgasmic. You know what? Leah doesn’t leave pee on the toilet seat, she tidies up the sofa before she goes to bed, and she reads the fucking news on the BBC. Yes! I’m jealous!

I’m working myself up into a state but you must understand, Dr. R – maybe you do: it is these little slacknesses that kill relationships; that are the steady crunch of the woodworm, eating away at what might have been a sound structure.

We carried on drinking beer, ate a hearty meal – interestingly, Ness and I (unlike you, with your horse-food calorie-controlled nut bars) are in that minority of women who have never weighed ourselves or been on diets, which automatically eliminates an awful lot of those deeply tedious conversations I hear other women have – and crashed out, bloated and bulging, in the pillow-plumped four-poster bed.