I was watching it because you always wanted me afterwards. I think it was the episode where Samantha says: ‘Women are for friendships. Men are for fucking.’ Or was it on the one when Charlotte could not stomach an uncircumcised penis, but her adoring potential beau understood because all other women hated it too, and he asked her if she would wait till he healed, and she said yes. It might have been that one. She waited, and the sex was better without the disgusting skin God had put on it, and the beau loved it so much he dumped her so he could share it around. Yes, it was that episode. You and I had watched the whole thing, start to finish, no loo or kitchen breaks, and then I kissed you. You stiffened and said: ‘I don’t feel connected with you.’ So I made every effort to connect with you, but failed, by which time your need for connection had become mad. I said, ‘Fine, forget it,’ and had a long bath, which was the exact thing that makes unconnected wives very mad indeed. Holly saw you kick at the bathroom door until your foot bled. If I had called the police or the neighbours, they would have found a small woman with a bleeding foot and a large naked man who could not think of an explanation he would be happy to relay.

10

Mary woke to the opening credits of season six, episode five, and smiled. She was lucky. Her partner loved Sex and the City. She stretched, and found she was frowning.

Hey babe, she messaged Roddie. Out of ten, how much do you love Sex and the City?

No reply, and she had to get to work.

Home visits were a good way to start a hangover day. Most of Mary’s guys would still be asleep at nine-thirty, and kind of sober, and if her incessant knocking managed to rouse them it’d only be for a minute, as they’d be desperate to take whatever to get through the morning. Jimmy McKinley’s 1979 and 2017 crimes were the only things worse than his person. It took him a few minutes to Zimmer to the door and, like last week’s shorts, Jimmy’s Y-fronts failed to cover him. Mary shielded her eyes – ‘Go and put your trousers on!’ – uncovering them when she heard the bedroom door close, then using the seconds to snoop about. The living room was a shrine to Jimmy’s wife, who’d had a stroke the day of his arrest for ‘historical incest’ – a term that angered Mary. The only incest that wasn’t historical was happening right now, and that was historical now too. After they arrested Jimmy, they looked at his PC and he was also done for ‘child pornography’. Don’t even get Mary started on the term ‘child pornography’.