Every good night out hinges on discontent.

My family were surprisingly upset by the news. It turned out that, in my mum’s eyes, a skint comedian who she didn’t like was a better prospect for a nearly thirty-five-year-old woman than no boyfriend at all.

It was like my career was my bad boyfriend – it sensed every time I was going to leave it and, at that exact moment, would promise me all sorts of things to make me stay.

anguished expression and her tone of judgement and her statistics that were meant to terrify me into handing over all my bank details and filling out a form. And I felt rage like I’d never felt before.

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.

Andy and I lived separate lives as I prepared for the interview and presentation, and he filmed Ask or Task. I made him dinner when he came home. I’d run his lines with him before bed.

In one brief exchange, the entire, exhausting day that feels like it began a month ago is almost worth it.

likes. Why are you allowed to do that and I’m not allowed to make generalizations about women? I’d bellow. WHY? And then I would be met with a convoluted barrage about the pay gap and illegal abortions and FGM and the biological clock and childcare systems and the fact that every three days in this country a woman is killed by a man.

And their scattering has an air of deliberate ritual, ancient and necessary.