In a way it’s an invasion of privacy in the most intimate style, but I suppose if I asked a doctor to check my blood for hormonal activity, he or she would, and the end result would be the same. Getting there would take much longer, and entail a lot of waiting around in neon-lit, lino-floored rooms on horrible chairs, plus needles and a good dose of patronising nonsense. Winifred just asks the nanobots, and tells me the answer.

‘Your hormone levels are appropriate for a woman of your age,’ she tells me. ‘I’m interested, though, in what you said. Why don’t you want your hormones “stirred up”, as you put it?’

‘Have you any idea about sex?’

‘I know it’s essential for reproduction, and it gives pleasure to humans, who spend a lot of time – I might say an inordinate amount of time – thinking about it, writing about it, singing, making art and generally obsessing about it. As well as pursuing opportunities to have it.’

‘I think you’ve answered your own question,’ I say. ‘Look at how much time I get back in my life without sex playing any further part. I enjoyed it, mostly, once upon a time. But then again, there was a time in my life when nothing was more exciting than a balloon.’

‘A hot-air balloon, or a dirigible?’

I burst out laughing, because her face is so serious when she asks. I can tell she has no idea why I’m laughing, as usual, and she’s about to list other kinds of balloons.

‘Neither – a toy balloon, I suppose you’d call it. Children love to play with them. It’s one definition of being a child – loving balloons. You grow out of it. Same with sex.’

I watch her as I speak, and I can almost hear her brain whirring away as she locates somewhere on the internet the facts about toy balloons. I expect her to tell me something about their manufacture next.

‘Oh yes, I see now. But sex is not at all like playing with a balloon.’

‘I don’t know, my dear. One good prick and it’s over.’

Now she looks confused. She really does. I remind myself she’s a machine, once again, and marvel at the way she’s designed. Her brain, whatever it’s made of, is unable to make sense of what I’m saying, and it’s telling her face to register this fact. Like a human, of course. I have mercy on her.

‘That was a joke. A rude one, and quite unnecessary, and out of character. Let’s drop the subject for now. I have another question for you. What’s it like to meet your maker?’

Winifred looks confused again, for a moment.

‘Meet your maker? I think that’s an expression you use for dying, isn’t it?’