‘Yes, something like that,’ I say dully.

‘And then,’ she adds, brightening, ‘when you’ve hit rock bottom, you can set about building yourself up again!’

I muster a smile, grateful now to her for being here, for marching in when I didn’t answer the door. It’s a trait of hers that used to drive Andy crazy: ‘What makes her think it’s okay to just barge in like that? We could be doing anything!’

Like what? I’d shot back at the time. What, actually, might we be doing?

‘That’s not the point, is it? It’s bloody invasive, that’s all.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ I say now.

‘Of course I am. I always am! Now, come on, put that laptop away.’

‘In a minute,’ I murmur. ‘Look, let me just show you something else. If I do another search, just for comparison, this comes up—’ And here it is: the sole picture of me that’s floating about in the ether. There are no glossy headshots, no pictures where I’m exuding glamour and authoritativeness at conferences. Instead, I’m looking fat in a sweat-stained vest, a ripped tutu and mud-speckled bunny ears at the school fun run last year.

‘Dear God, what’s that?’ Penny exclaims.

I slam my laptop shut. ‘Nothing. No one. Oh, you’re right, Pen, I’ve really got to stop this. Come on, let’s go out.’

As we catch the train into town together, the world immediately feels a little brighter. One of the many positive aspects of having Penny as a friend is that she refuses to indulge wallowing. It’s precisely what I needed today – to be taken in hand and marched out of my house.

There are other benefits, too, in hanging out with an older woman, in that she can reassure me that the menopause ends eventually, and you come out the other side, and everything is all right. The anxiety abates. The sweats disappear. You stop being a carb-guzzling maniac and emerge as a calm, thoroughly emboldened woman, freed from periods, no longer a slave to your mood swings or worries about how you’re perceived.

‘You no longer care about anything,’ Penny has assured me on more than one occasion. ‘You just do whatever you want.’ This might explain why, as we arrive at our favourite bookshop café, I choose a small brownie (with all these books around it feels like a fairly low-risk option) while Penny goes for a whopping cream horn (potentially messy, I’d say, if I were performing a risk assessment).

‘Pen, tell me honestly,’ I say, nibbling my brownie primly. ‘Did you ever fixate on someone like I’ve been doing? Like the way I’ve been googling Estelle Lang, I mean?’

‘There was no internet then, thankfully,’ she says.