Good Material: THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, FROM THE AUTHOR OF EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE

‘But do I ever think about what my life would have been like had I been brave enough to not become a mother? Had I been brave enough to even imagine what that life could have been like?’

‘Thirty-five is the youth of middle age,’

‘I love my son,’ she said. ‘And I don’t say this as his mum, I say it as a woman who’s got twenty-six years on you. Everything you want to do in your life, you can do without a man, Jen.’

‘Getting dumped is never really about getting dumped.’ ‘What is it about, then?’ I ask. ‘It’s about every rejection you’ve ever experienced in your entire life.

I held her and rocked her gently and she wept and wept and wept. And I was reminded that you should really want to have a baby if you’re going to have a baby.

Closer to fifty than twenty.

This baby’s life would rely on my maternity leave, my savings, my body, my career. I would have to make all the sacrifice while Andy’s life could continue mostly as normal. He disingenuously offered to give up comedy and be a stay-at-home dad. We both knew that would never happen.

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Andy kept telling me that no one is ever ready to have a baby and that it will always feel terrifying. The more he said this, the more resentful I became. The risk felt so much higher for me and it wasn’t something he would ever truly acknowledge.