I had been a faithful wife for almost three decades and now I’d blown it after a brief (but fun) encounter with XY (also married) in the marital bed while TPR was fast asleep along the corridor in the spare bedroom. I reckoned that TPR would never discover my infidelity provided that (a) I kept my mouth shut and (b) I hadn’t caught anything nasty from XY (who, unfortunately, had a bit of a reputation for promiscuity).

XY scrunched up the covers on the futon in the study to give the impression that he had slept there, so I thought our night of passion would go unnoticed. However, my sisters were suspicious. To prove my innocence (or guilt) J forced me to take a test of her own invention. This required me to identify next year’s Christmas cards from a box in the study. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I did know that there was another box of cards (of which she was unaware) elsewhere in the house. I fudged an answer that kept her quiet for some time.

After all this faffing around I was late. I needed to get to work for a meeting at Craiglockhart with MB about her photography practice. I rounded everyone up (XY included) so that we could jump in a taxi for the ride across town.