Step 1. Kissing, flirting or just rampant sex?

What?! You’re seeing someone? Mum that’s disgusting.’

 I’m whatsapping my 19 year old daughter who’s studying anthropology at Edinburgh University.

I’m a bit taken aback. Then her messages come thick, fast - and outraged.

‘Who is he?’

‘How old is he?’

‘I hope you’re just flirting?’

‘Not kissing?’

Mum?’

‘I’m freaking out here.’

‘Muuuuuuuuum!’

Yikes. I’m having the best sex of my life with the builder but how do I tell Alex that?

‘Just flirting’ I type, and bite my lip.

I can understand her. But I can understand me too. I was widowed when she was 9  (her sister and brother were 6 and 3) and six weeks later trotted off to a ‘Widows are Young’ meeting in a vast kitchen in Wimbledon where we all sat around on high stools and discussed replacements. I kid you not. I just hope there’s an anthropological excuse for that. Within a matter of months I’d hooked up with a lovely businessman and we moved from London down to Chard in Somerset but let’s not go there. (No really; don’t go there.)

A few years down the line he decided it was time to start playing the field again but forgot to tell me. When I walked in on him a few months ago and found him romping on the sofa with a lusty Devon Dumpling he came clean and walked out. And that’s when the builder came to fix the roof. And the tv and the door off its hinges. And me.

I’m not a slut but I’ve only had two men in my life and when a gorgeous hunk with stubble, twinkling eyes and dusty jeans pushes you up against the credenza and kisses you hard but soft it’s just a no-brainer.

‘Hmmm’ Alex whatsapps back. ‘Well just don’t go getting involved!’

Too late of course. I’ve fallen disastrously in love. What 45 year old woman wouldn’t when plunged into an erotic fantasy come true? As someone who generally lies back and thinks of the laundry, having a man who has a million ways to make you orgasm, each better than the last, in forests, fields, the back of his white van and his one-up one-down council house - not to mention er.. tools so massive you won’t see them outside of Africa -  I was a total mid life goner.

‘Passion usually lasts six months’ he said one day a few weeks ago as we were sitting on a beach gazing out to sea at the sunset. He should know as he’s my age (well, okay a few years younger) and never been married. ‘So let’s make the most of it.’

As it happens I was well up for that but he wasn’t. Passion lasted three months for him and then he was always either ‘out watching my boys play footie’ or forgetting to make our dates because ‘got totally wankered with my mates.’

In the end I couldn’t stand the agony of waiting for his non-existent texts so I called him and ended it.

‘Mum’ said my 16 year old Daisy when she found me sobbing into the flowerbed. ‘The best way to get over a man is to get under another one.’ (Daisy and Alex are not alike.)