At one point I pick up a board game of Izzy’s and throw it at him. The lid falls off and tiddlywinks fly out. Both of us scrabble to gather them all up. As dawn creeps into the living room I consider going out for cigarettes. However, as I haven’t bought any in twenty-four years, I’m not sure where I’d go. Plus, the alluring shiny gold packaging has been replaced by pictures of diseased mouths and babies on respirators, which would hardly make me feel better about anything, and I seem to remember that they did away with packets of ten so I’d be stuck with twenty, and I’d feel obliged to smoke them all and become addicted again: fagging it up in the back garden, horrifying Tim and Chrissie and their little darling, Ludo, next door. That would be more alarming than a few rats!

By the time it’s properly morning – we have been up raging and crying the entire night – I have started to grasp at fragments of positivity: like, thank God Izzy was invited to a sleepover at Maeve’s last night (how would Jules set about life coaching me out of this?). And: at least Andy seems genuinely sorry.

‘I suppose I was just flattered,’ he murmurs, ‘that a woman like her seemed to have feelings for me.’

A woman like her, i.e. several notches above his slightly overweight, menopausally sweating wife back at home?

‘I just got sucked into it,’ he adds.

‘Could you possibly use a different turn of phrase?’

‘Sorry! I’m sorry!’

I glare at him, my nerves shredded, utterly exhausted, yet simultaneously wondering whether I will ever sleep soundly again. ‘You said you loved her. Remember, I read the texts.’

‘I lost my mind for a bit,’ he says, trying to hug me. I push him away. I’m not ready for hugging. It’s bizarre to think how much I craved his arms around me, and his kisses, before I found out. ‘I’ll delete her number,’ he adds. ‘You can watch me do it.’

‘Do what you want. It won’t make any difference to what’s happened, will it?’

‘But it will, Viv.’ He holds his phone in front of me, trying to make me watch as he deletes her. ‘Look, the number’s gone. I swear on my life I’ll never contact her again.’

Still Sunday, properly daytime

After our night of madness, naturally I am the one who has to patch up my face in order to try to look normal when I go to pick up Izzy from Maeve’s. ‘Are you okay, Viv?’ Jules asks, registering my puffy eyes and ravaged complexion as Izzy gathers her stuff together in Maeve’s bedroom.