If Mary herself answered the same question honestly, she’d probably be arrested. Masturbating more than three times a week was a red flag, which scored one on the ‘acute’ risk assessment; not a good score, but not as bad as two. Even with dying ovaries and a parched canal, Mary still wanked daily and was therefore officially sexually preoccupied. Since Jack moved out, the availability and ease of this low-calorie activity surprised and overjoyed her each evening. It was like finding a tub of praline-and-cream Häagen-Dazs in the freezer when you know you did not buy it.

Mary closed the bedroom curtains and took off her lace teddy. Lil said she always walked round her flat naked and that it was great, but Mary just felt cold, and sorry for Lil. She jumped under the duvet, inserted a giant syringe of gel into her fanny to keep her menopausal minge moist, added a tad of KY to the outside and buzzed away at her drowsy clitoris.

Sober, Mary could muster and hold elaborate lady-horn scenes that required minimal manual labour and ended in a grand mal.

After one large glass of red, Mary required a vibrator and absolute silence in order to come.

Two glasses and she needed aggressive equipment as well as reasonably dodgy porn (she found the search term ‘reluctant’ worked every time).

Three glasses of red wine required a miracle. One time, Mary pretended to herself that she’d climaxed just to get some sleep. But she was determined tonight. It’d make her feel better. Which meant she’d also score a one on the ‘sex as coping’ ‘acute’ risk assessment item. Basically, Mary was dangerous and should be locked up – not like Steven Netherhill, who’d filmed and watched his wee girls in the loo for three years but never touched himself while alone, he told Mary each week, because that would be dirty. Netherhill liked seeing his kids shitting, though – loved that.

I must not! Every pleasure had become infected by her job. Mary tossed her frustration and her vibrator into the imaginary river, where she’d also thrown something else recently: her jealousy. That was it: her jealousy. Where was Roddie?

Mary put Roddie’s boxers and t-shirt on and tried him again, and again. She poured herself a carefully measured fourth glass (carefully measured = being unable to fit any more alcohol into largest available receptacle, which is why quite a lot of it spilled on the duvet), and put on a sad song for no reason. It wasn’t like she decided to listen to a sad song, it wasn’t conscious; not like she wanted to be sad. Who’d choose that? She turned on the bath taps, poured half a bottle of bubble bath in, and waited for UK plumbing’s best to fill the tub.