I wept on the number 11 bus as it worked its way through the Leith traffic. When the stranger came over to comfort me I listed all my woes: I was always getting lost on public transport (especially trains to Edinburgh), I never got to see my family, my colleagues were unreliable, and I had no friends.

The main cause of my loneliness, however, was that my husband was rarely at home due to his demanding work as an international assassin. Most recently he had taken out two terrorists in Italy. On a rare trip home he showed me the tiny corpses. He’d packed them in layers of cooked rice to keep them fresh.