Susan wants another husband. Which comes as a shock to the current one.

'But not instead of you, Alan, my sugar – as well as. You see?'

Yet once Susan has brazenly commandeered her boss’s rich, elderly hand, Alan finds himself curiously cherishing the company – sharing wife, whisky and other, odder peccadilloes. Indeed Susan is forced to root out alternative amusements – and with their teenage daughter copying her disintegrating moral code, the complex machinery of their lives soon begins to break down.

Joseph Connolly plunges the reader into a tumultuous medley of inner monologues with keen, unabashed relish; exposing marital bedroom and male bonding in this biting, excruciatingly funny observation of men, women and adolescent girls.