Having found the app, I hold up the phone, marvelling at the way it names Betelgeuse, Venatici, Perseus; what beautiful decorative names they have. Ooh, there’s Mars! This is brilliant. I must get this app. It’s a lot more fun than my fitness one that reminds me – scathingly – that I have only done 397 steps out of the recommended daily 10,000.

Ping! That’s a text from ‘Estelle’, which I know means something celestial (I find out later that it’s Latin for star) so I assume it’s to do with the app. I open it, expecting it to say something like, Look out for incredible shooting stars tonight!

Darling baby, it reads, missing your sweet kisses so much xxx.

I frown at it. How very weird. Perhaps the app is malfunctioning? Or has someone messaged my husband by mistake? A moment later, there’s another:

Aching for you sweetheart xxx

Something clenches inside me as I see that it’s one of a string of messages. I scroll up and read the conversation:

Andy: Soon I hope xxx

Estelle: When can I see you darling? xxx

Andy: It really was baby xxx

Estelle: Last time was so special xxx

The fact that I am reading it from the bottom up makes me wonder again – momentarily – if my brain has tipped upside down and I am misinterpreting the situation. Could this be another menopausal symptom? I’m aware that I can be a little oversensitive, even verging on paranoid. I read on: I love you baby (from Andy). Is this some kind of joke? Or – I realise I’m clutching at straws here – could someone have hacked into his phone?

Sweetie, reads another of her messages, that was the best ever!!! What was the best? It can only mean sex, can’t it? Which means he’s done it with someone who isn’t me. My heart is pounding hard and I feel dizzy and quite sick. I try, desperately, to think of other things that might be described in that way but can’t come up with anything except, perhaps, ‘cake’. And I don’t think she was referring to cake.

‘Evening, Viv!’ The voice makes me jump. I swing around to see Tim, our next-door neighbour, beaming at me.

‘Hi, Tim.’ Please go away and let me quietly freak out.

‘Everything okay?’ Tim – a short, tubby quantity surveyor who’s as bald as an egg in his late thirties – gives me a concerned look.

‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks,’ I say, forcing a smile.

He looks up at the sky. ‘Aren’t the stars amazing tonight?’

‘They are, yes.’