Seven minutes later, Mary considered getting in but decided against it. Too many times she’d been impatient – a trait she would address during week one of her newly gained freedom; and too many times she’d got out of the bath even angrier than when she got in.

9.47 p.m., fourth glass un-had, party over. Time to perform a huge number of grooming rituals, such as removing food from broken molars, taking an assortment of vitamins to improve her personality and trimming her nose hairs with the Phillips Precision Trimmer she had pretended to buy for Roddie. Even alone, she could not look as she let the trimmer slip from her nose to her upper lip and chin, gathering downy fluff in its wake and leaving her face silkysmooth and female. In the bathroom mirror (the bathroom was a mirror, floor to ceiling) Mary pulled at her cheek with her fingers and counted the seconds it took for her flesh to return to its original position. One … two … three…

FaceTime calling! Mary raced to her laptop in the bedroom. Without donning one of the many pairs of reading glasses dotted around the house, she pressed the button that would make Roddie appear and yelled at a fuzzy screen: ‘Are you fucking someone else? Where have you been?’

‘Um, Mary?’ The voice was deeper than Roddie’s.

Mary moved back several feet until Macdowall came into focus. He was calling from the Cuck Facebook page she should never have joined. Idiot. Mary dropped to the floor, out of sight.

‘So sorry, I’ve been ringing you all night,’ Macdowall said.

‘Well, it’s inappropriate to ring me all night,’ Mary yelled from ground zero, ‘even more so after 10.00 p.m. and on private video.’

‘I’m really sorry. I’ve been trying since eight. I didn’t see anything.’

But he was looking at the bed. Shite, the vibrator was on the mattress. Mary reached for the keyboard to turn the video off and looked up at the mess she’d made of the super-king-size mattress she and Roddie turned over every five years. It was stained with red wine and littered with crumpled linen, Just Ears, vaginal gel and syringe, KY, egg whisk, and lace teddy.

‘I’ve been calling and calling your work mobile. The video’s off now. It’s safe for you to come up.’

Mary did not take his word for it. She crawled into the hall and switched on her work mobile. Twelve missed calls, seven voicemails, three texts. She always turned it off at home.

She shuffled back into the bedroom. ‘I told you to call the emergency line out of hours.’

‘But, it’s very delicate. And urgent. And I believe you’re the only person who can give me permission?’ Macdowall was slurring his words; he was obviously under the influence. There was music on in the background and a woman was laughing.

‘Permission to do what?’

‘I’ve met someone.’