When Roddie answered, she’d say, ‘I have no pants on’, which wasn’t any less true all these years later.

No answer.

Mary topped off the third glass while FaceTiming, phoning, texting, voicemailing and emailing her beloved, who was obviously in bed with a Comic Con groupie. After years as a struggling artist – i.e., one who struggles to make art – Roddie had unexpectedly (to Mary) taken the graphic-novel world by storm with his amazing colouring-in. Today he was being gang-tagged on Facebook by girls with nose piercings, tattoos, cleavages and an apparently genuine interest in comic books.

Half recalling the only Zen class she’d ever done, Mary owned the ugly feeling she had by saying it out loud: ‘I am jealous!’ and flung her jealousy to the universe, where she’d also recently hurled anger, rage, hatred, self-loathing, hunger, lust, and (last week) a sudden urge to steal a car.

8.35 p.m. What should she do before trying Roddie again? Eat some liquorice allsorts? Mary had bought liquorice allsorts once a month for the last thirty-five years and had only recently realised why: they fed her period monster. As she hadn’t had her period monster for some time, there were none in the larder, which was fine because Mary didn’t feel like them anyway, apparently because she’d dried up. Liquorice allsorts: another casualty of menopause.

She could eat a Thai green curry, and/or, (probs and) some duck spring rolls. There were twelve of those in the freezer. No, no food, not till she’d won Roddie back from his Comic Con groupies with a flat stomach and a willingness to be filthy.

How to fill the time … Bath? Walk? Read? Ring Mum? (She really should ring her mum). Sing? Stand-up practice? Guitar practice? (She should learn a fifth chord.)

Wank!

Each week, Mary scored the sexual preoccupation of her Nasties, as she called her seven sex offenders. Not to their faces. To their faces she called them Jimmy, Mick, Nick, Robert, Rob, Robert 2 and Michael (Mick 2 if he was being less of an arsehole). Each week she was required to ask them how many times they’d masturbated since she last saw them, and each week the Nasties replied with one of two responses:

1. Never (of which there were the following sub-categories):

a. Five of her seven registered sex offenders said they had not managed an erection for decades and therefore not since Mary last saw them.

b. Three of the five of the seven said they hadn’t come since they committed their unforgivable offence.

c. Two of the three of the five of the seven said they’d injured themselves trying in the past and didn’t go there for that reason.

Or…

2. Two to three times per week while fantasising about consenting adults, like any normal person. (Two of the seven told this lie.)