Wednesday, 1 March

It’s Jane’s birthday. I can’t believe my baby girl is twelve! Twelve somehow seems so much more grown up than eleven. I know it’s such a cliché, but in some ways it doesn’t seem that long since we were celebrating her first birthday. In other ways it seems like forever. I was looking at photos of her first birthday last night, and Simon and I were so young (and so thin, in my case), it feels like a lifetime ago, not eleven years. Though I suppose technically it was Jane’s lifetime ago.

It’s true that Mother Nature somehow erases your memories of the worst parts of dealing with babies and toddlers. After yet more rows with Jane about her need for inappropriate clothes, over-priced make-up and ruinously expensive electronics for her birthday, I rather longed for those simpler days when one could just do a smash and grab round the Early Learning Centre, flinging anything that looked vaguely age-appropriate and quiet into your basket, safe in the knowledge that it didn’t really matter what you bought anyway, as the birthday child would really only be interested in trying to eat the wrapping paper and playing with the boxes that the presents came in. One forgets, of course, the mind-crushing daily tedium of it all – the tantrums because their sandwich is too sandwichey and the crisps too crispy and the blue plate, the blue plate that they screamed for and could not consider eating off anything else. Well, the blue plate is now just too fucking blue. Those long, long days with Peppa Pig being your only hope of getting to go for a piss in peace, and where every cup of tea was a potential death trap, determined as your precious moppet was to hurl it over themselves, which basically meant you never got a hot cup of tea, ever.

Sarah is still struggling with Baby Orla and ringing me nightly in the misguided belief that I will be able to offer wisdom. What does one say? ‘Well, Sarah, yes, this bit isn’t much fun when they scream and scream and you don’t know why they’re screaming, because despite everyone telling you that you would know what all your baby’s different cries meant, it turns out that most babies only have one cry, and that is screaming like a fucking banshee, so you have to run through the full list of potential problems – too hot/too cold/wanting a cuddle/wanting to be put down/hungry/wind/needing to be changed every bastarding time they squawk. So you think it will be better when they are a toddler and they can walk and talk a bit, but that’s when the fun really starts because now you spend your days chasing around after Conan the Destroyer of Houses, and, oh, yes, it’s amazing when they say their first words, especially when it’s “Mama” or “Dada” (and by the way, Sarah, hopefully Orla will be more communicative with her first words than Jane, whose first word was “No” and whose second word was “Bugger”, which was more than a little mortifying and I have no idea where she got it from). But the thing is, then they never fucking shut up, not ever, they babble and babble and really, although you want to be interested and fascinated and hang on their every word, the truth is that toddlers talk a load of bollocks, and very dull bollocks at that. But hey ho, you have to hang in there pretending to listen, because Important Development, and then you think, well, when they start school, that will be easier, and then you end up spending every morning screaming yourself hoarse about SHOES, TEETH, PUT YOUR COAT ON, GET IN THE CAR, and arguing about long division and losing letters from the school, and then you have to deal with them being teenagers, which will probably be a whole new bundle of laughs, but luckily sometimes they do go to sleep so you can look at them lying there, all rosy-cheeked and innocent and pure and think, “Ahhhh! They’re perfect! I wouldn’t change anything!” Until they wake up and you just want to lock yourself in a cupboard with a bottle of gin. But the bits when they are asleep are pretty good.’ Oh, Fuck My Life! I’m going to have a teenager next year! How did this happen? Never mind Sarah’s wails about Orla, I am going to be the mother of a teenager. I’m not sure whether that made Sarah feel better or worse.

Anyway, I am not going to think about my last year before teenagerdom. I’m sure it will be fine. I was a teenager once, so I’m certain I’ll cope. Oh God, I was an awful teenager. Please don’t let Jane be a teenager like me!

Having been denied every single thing she wanted in the world, Jane did hold me to my promise of getting her ears pierced on her birthday. So after school (I claimed another dentist’s appointment at work, after even Ed had suggested that perhaps I needed to see a specialist when I tried Women’s Problems. Alan has offered me the number of his private dentist, who apparently will fix my dodgy crown in a jiffy, so I think I am going to have to have had a miraculous cure from all ailments), off we trotted to a ruinously expensive jewellers to have holes punched in my First Born’s ears.

Juliette had been hopeful of coming along with us for the Great Piercing, I suspect planning on adding some bits of metal to herself, and was quite sulky when I told her that she needed to pick up Peter. Also, I was quite looking forward to a bit of time just Jane and me, and was planning hot chocolate and cake extravaganzas for afterwards.

I reminded Jane all the way there that she was getting one hole in each ear and no more, while Jane scoffed and said she would definitely be getting more when she was older, and that she fancied a lip ring like Charlotte Baxter, who babysits for me sometimes, and maybe she would get a tattoo as well. I tried to persuade her that tattoos aren’t something to be taken lightly as you have them for life and people quite often regret the stupid things they have tattooed on themselves as teenagers, and Jane scoffed more, for she is TWELVE now and thus knows EVERYTHING!

A nice lady in the jewellers made me fill in many forms absolving them of all blame should Jane get septicaemia or her ears fall off as a result of the piercings, and finally Jane was sitting in the chair ready for the momentous event. As the ladies approached her, piercing guns in hand, bearing down on her from either side, Jane turned pale.

‘Mummy! I’m not sure I want to –’

THUD! It was done. Jane had turned green. ‘Can we go home?’ she whispered. ‘I think I’m in shock!’

‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ I said brightly. ‘You can’t possibly be in shock, you’ve only had your ears pierced. Don’t you want to go for hot chocolate?’

‘I need to lie down,’ sniffed Jane. ‘That was horrible. They put metal through my ears and I don’t feel well.’

‘How did you think they were going to pierce your ears?’ I said in confusion.

‘I don’t know,’ sniffed Jane. ‘I thought it would be nicer. I think I’m going to be sick!’

‘So how do you feel about that lip ring and tattoo now?’ I asked. Jane retched.

‘Please can you just take me home, Mummy, and give me a cuddle?’ she whimpered.

Before we left the shop, in addition to the eleventy billion pounds I had already paid them to poke holes in my daughter’s ears, the nice lady insisted I buy a special bottle of stuff for cleaning the piercings, as apparently TCP no longer is deemed good enough, despite it being fine when I had my ears pierced, and indeed being my preferred cure-all for most ailments. It was worth every penny, actually, to have Jane for once stop pretending that she was about twenty-seven and starring in an American soap opera, and instead go back to being the little girl that she was for a while. I made the most of her wanting to be cuddled, as I suspect it will be a long time before I get the chance again.

Jane spent the rest of the evening doing an excellent impression of a dying swan, though she did manage to rally to eat her birthday pizza. She definitely gets her hypochondria from Simon.

After the children went to bed, I finally managed to summon the strength to deal with the many, many emails for the PTA. I am at least spared organising a Mother’s Day Pop-Up Shop, which apparently was very successful last year, as a mother took umbrage over this and made such a fuss about wanting a homemade gift, not marked-up Poundland tat, that I announced we would simply not fucking bother. But there was the usual barrage of messages from parents who still could not comprehend the difference between the PTA (fundraising) and the Parent Council (school policy), and felt the need to bombard me with emails complaining that they were very upset that Emilia’s class had watched a DVD on Friday afternoon, and why was there not a police officer on permanent duty outside the school, patrolling for inconsiderate parkers and dog-shit offenders? It seems that it is frowned upon to reply to these messages with a simple ‘Fuck off, I don’t give a rat’s arse.’

Friday, 3 March

I am starting to wonder if Juliette is the angel from above that I first thought her to be. She is very good with the children, of course, but the issue of her helping out a bit in the house is still ongoing. Not only does she not actually do anything all day, but she is now actively creating mess – tonight I came home to crisp packets and yoghurt pots strewn around the sitting room, and the load of laundry that I had put in the machine this morning and politely asked her to either hang out or pop in the tumble drier, depending on whether or not it was pissing down, had been removed from the washing machine and dumped sodden in a basket, while she washed her own stuff.

I gently attempted to raise this with her, and she gave a Gallic shrug and pretended she didn’t understand, despite her excellent English at any other time.

She remembered her English in time to appear in an extraordinary lack of clothing and announce that she was going out ‘with friends’ tonight, and that she would be back late, and we were not to wait up for her. I assume she is allezing à la discotheque, but she just gave me a withering look when I asked that, and made vague noises when I asked how late was ‘late’.

Should I have just let her go off into the night wearing hardly anything at all? We are responsible for her, after all, but then again, she isn’t a child – technically she’s an adult. And at what time do I decide it has gone past ‘late’ and she’s now officially missing, and call the police to admit that I let an eighteen-year-old girl with a selective grasp of English go out to an unspecified location with unknown friends and no set time to return without looking like a very callous and uncaring person? Also, if she gets herself murdered, it will really fuck up my lovely new childcare arrangements. No, no, of course I’m not even thinking that. I’m just concerned for Juliette’s welfare. The childcare is the least of it. Well, it’s not all of it, anyway, although I found a banana skin under a sofa cushion just now and am feeling slightly less concerned for her welfare.

Saturday, 11 March

Oh God, oh God, oh FML. There is not enough booze in the world to numb the ringing in my ears or the aching of my head or the black void where my soul used to be. Today was Jane’s birthday party. A birthday party should be a relatively simple thing to organise. Some balloons, a cake, a game of pass the parcel, a few rounds of musical chairs – jolly good, here’s a party bag with a mini Mars Bar and one of those squawker things. Now fuck off home, kid!

Oh no. No. Firstly, Jane decreed it must be a disco party. Disco parties are the thing this term. You are no one if your party is not a disco party with Disco Dave the DJ on the decks. Despite my attempts at suggesting maybe it would be fun for Jane to do something different, nothing would do but Disco Dave in the Church Hall.

I was a good mummy. In fact, I was a bloody excellent mummy! I booked the hall, I booked Disco Dave, I nobly refrained from asking Disco Dave if he would also be bringing Black Bess when he told me the iniquitous price he charges for his services, I toyed with baking a cake, I ordered one from Asda instead with ‘Jane Is TWELVE’ printed on it and some butterflies, I got cramp in my hand spending an entire evening writing out invitations for the whole bastarding class on the basis I might as well get my money’s worth out of Disco Dave, and then the texts started coming in in reply to my invitation:

Hi we always go swimming on Sat afternoons, could u have party on Sun? x

Hi Ellen, Tilly would love to come but can you pick her up and drop her off because I’m busy? Xxx

Oscar can’t come at 2.30 he will be there at 3.30 x

Hi, is it OK if I bring Milly’s brothers too? They love parties! Xxx

Olivia doesn’t like disco parties, what about getting a magician instead?x

And so on. And so on. And so on. WTAF? What is wrong with these people? Either your child can come to the party or not! When did it become acceptable to demand that the party is changed to suit you, or to bring extra kids or make conditions for your child coming? Do I not have enough to fucking do trying to juggle my own life, doing a trolley dash round Sainsbury’s after work last night envying all the bastards with their baskets of wine and artisanal bread as I hurled armloads of frozen pizzas and chicken nuggets in the trolley, before getting home in time to let Juliette go out before she had a massive French hissy fit at me? Bah fucking humbug was my view on the world by the time we actually got to the hall for the party itself.

Disco Dave, it turned out, in my opinion should be renamed Deviant Dave. A most dubious-looking gentleman. I resolved to make sure he was not left alone with any of the children. And then the children started to arrive. There had been several rows with Jane about the amount of make-up she was allowed to wear for her party, and about the party outfit itself, as apparently my idea of a party frock was nothing short of ruining her life, whereas her idea of a party frock wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Marseilles hooker. (I assume. I have never actually seen a Marseilles hooker and I may be unfairly maligning them, but it was my own mother’s favourite accusation about some of my more daring clubbing outfits in my youth.) We eventually found a compromise (I said, ‘You can wear this or I’ll cancel the whole thing’), Jane muttering darkly that it was not fair and everyone else was allowed to wear stuff like that, while I poo-pooed her and told her not to be ridiculous.

As it turned out, Jane was right. The boys were fairly ordinary in chinos and shirts but the girls! Oh my God, the girls! Fake tan, heels, fake eyelashes, make-up put on with a trowel, hot pants and boob tubes. One eleven-year-old had stuffed the front of her boob tube with so many tissues she looked like a tiny Dolly Parton. Part of me felt very judgemental, but part of me also felt very sad that these little girls felt the need to smother their peaches-and-cream skin with fake tan and foundation and totter around in heels while they were still getting their feet measured at Clarks. What made it even sadder was that once the party got going, they were quite obviously still little girls, as they kicked off their heels and screamed over Musical Bumps. Milly Fortescue was sick after too many chicken nuggets, Olivia Johnson cried because she lost at Pass the Parcel, and Jack Williams got locked in the lavatory and had to be broken out. The noise levels were unbelievable, and Disco Dave’s patter was distinctly dodgy. It is done for another year, though, and next year I am going to put my foot down and insist on something small and intimate.

Thursday, 16 March

I came home from work tonight to find Juliette had actually tidied up, including putting the hoover round, and as well as feeding the children, she had made a casserole for Simon and me. I had had a long and shit day at work, and I could have kissed her when I walked in to find a clean and tidy house, with delicious smells bubbling away in the kitchen, instead of the swamp of crisp packets that is her usual habitat.

‘You look tired, Ellen!’ she said. ‘Sit down and I will get you a glass of wine! Simon got in about twenty minutes ago. He looked tired too. You both work so hard!’

‘What an angel this girl is,’ I thought dreamily. ‘What are a few crisp packets and late nights?’ (Having failed to be murdered thus far, I have stopped fretting quite so much when she disappears on a Friday night in a skirt up to her unmentionables, trying to remind myself that after all, we were all young once.)

We were tucking into a frankly delicious boeuf bourgignon, while Juliette hovered, asking if we wanted any more wine or bread or salad, when she suddenly announced that she would like her ‘boyfriend’ to stay over tomorrow night.

Simon choked on a chunk of beef, and I inhaled my wine.

‘Err, I didn’t know you had a boyfriend, Juliette,’ I said. ‘Is he a friend from Limoges?’

‘Non!’ said Juliette. ‘I met him at a bar. His name is Harry!’

Harry. A terrible part of me thought it could be worse. Harry is quite a middle-class name.

‘And what does he do?’

‘He is at college.’

‘And what is he studying?’

Juliette gave one of her shrugs. ‘So it is OK, yes, Harry can stay tomorrow?’

‘I’m really not sure, Juliette. I’ll need to discuss it with Simon. And also, how would your parents feel about you having a boy to stay over?’

Juliette snarled something that sounded like a French version of ‘OMG, you are RUINING MY LIFE!’ and stomped out of the kitchen.

‘Fucking hell, Simon. What are we going to do?’ I wailed. ‘We are supposed to be in loco parentis. Can we just condone her shagging some random in our house?’

‘She’s eighteen, though. Not a child.’

‘I know, but even so. I’m not sure I want sweaty teenage sex going on in my spare room, those are 300-thread-count sheets.’ (I could hear my bloody mother coming out of my mouth.) ‘And who is he? What if he steals things? And if we let Juliette have this boy to stay, how are we going to refuse when Jane wants a boy to stay? Or Peter wants to bring a girl home? Or you know, vice versa!’

‘I can’t talk about this, Ellen. I can’t discuss an eighteen-year-old girl’s sex life, it’s wrong. You’re going to have to sort it out.’

‘Me? Why me? Why do I have to sort everything out?’

‘I just told you. It’s not appropriate for me to get involved.’

‘Oh, that’s just such a fucking cop-out! What about if it was Jane? Would you leave me to sort it all out then, too? Oh, don’t bloody answer, I know you would!’

I eventually plucked up the courage to go up to Juliette’s room and explain that we weren’t entirely sure about her having a house guest just yet (house guest. Ha! Like I didn’t know he was a fuck buddy), but she was more than welcome to bring Harry round for dinner and to meet the family.

Juliette looked utterly appalled at this and muttered ‘Merde’ to my suggestion, which I took to mean that she wasn’t keen on the idea of Harry joining us for a delightful dinner en famille instead of the rampant shag fest she had planned.

She is sulking, and I fear there will be no more boeuf bourgignon forthcoming.

Monday, 27 March

I swear to God that right at this moment, I might fucking kill Simon. Literally kill him, possibly with my bare hands by tearing off his head in a Hulk-style fit of rage. The fury began with a casual email around lunchtime.

Hi sweetheart,

I’ve just found out I’m going to have to go to Singapore for three weeks, leaving on Thursday. We don’t have anything planned, do we?

See you later xxx

‘We don’t have anything planned?’ WE DON’T HAVE ANYTHING FUCKING PLANNED? No, Simon, no, nothing planned, ONLY THE TWO FUCKING WEEKS THAT THE CHILDREN ARE OFF SCHOOL AND JULIETTE IS IN FRANCE AND THAT YOU PROMISED ME, THAT YOU ACTUALLY SWORE TO ME, THAT YOU WOULD BE TAKING THE FIRST WEEK OFF, TO COVER CHILDCARE! OTHER THAN THAT, HEE FUCKING HAW!

Anger pulsing through me so strongly that I could actually feel a vein in my temple throbbing, I almost broke my keyboard hammering out my reply, which nonetheless, I felt, was extremely restrained under the circumstances, if only because both our work email servers filter out obscenities.

You can’t go to Singapore, the kids break up for the holidays on Friday, and Juliette is going home to see her family. Two weeks, I was taking one week off, and you were taking the other. They can’t ask you to go away when you’ve got annual leave booked.

He replied:

Hi Babe

Thing is, I didn’t actually book the time off yet, because I thought Juliette would be there. And I have to go. Steve Parker was meant to be going, but he’s got shingles and there’s no one else to go and oversee this part of the project. Really sorry, but I’m sure you’ll cope. Maybe you could work something out with Sam?

Xxx

FUCK OFF SIMON! He’s ‘sure I’ll cope’? That’s nice, isn’t it? I’ll just magic a fucking childminder OUT OF MY ARSE, will I? Because obviously it is super easy to just book last-minute childcare for the holidays, because it’s not like any other fucker needs holiday childcare, is it? And maybe I could ‘work something out with Sam’? Yes, Sam and I often help each other out with childcare, it’s true, but it’s still not Sam’s responsibility to step into the bastarding breach and save the day because my own twatting husband is too fucking busy and important to look after his own children! And anyway, Sam’s taking Sophie and Toby to Fuerteventura for the fortnight.

Since I couldn’t express my true feelings in an email, I waited till Simon got home and pointed all this out to him. Foolishly, he didn’t seem to think it was such a big deal.

‘Well, can’t you just take a few extra days off, or book them into a sports camp or something?’ he suggested.

‘NO,’ I shrieked. ‘I can’t “just book them into a sports camp” because all the places were filled weeks ago and I didn’t think I needed to book any slots due to us having a long conversation about how I would take one week and you would take the other. So now I can’t get a childminder or a camp or any kind of cover at all. Because you were supposed to be looking after your children!’

‘Why do you have to make everything such a drama?’ complained Simon. ‘Is it so impossible for you to take a few more days off? I really don’t see what the big deal is. Other people’s wives seem to cope with the holidays.’

‘You don’t see what the big deal is?’ I hissed dangerously. ‘Why don’t you take the time off then, if it’s not a “big deal”? For years I turned down promotions and sacrificed the chance of a proper career so I could be there for the children, because we agreed, we discussed and we agreed that if we could manage financially with one of us working part-time, then that’s we should do. So that’s what I did, and now the children are older and I am FINALLY able to work full-time in a job I actually QUITE ENJOY, and that gives me some small sense of FUCKING FULFILLMENT, you still expect me to drop everything and just cover for you because you still think YOUR job is SO MUCH MORE FUCKING IMPORTANT THAN MINE?’

‘You’re overreacting, darling. All I’ve asked you to do is take a few extra days off and all of a sudden you’re ranting about how I’ve ruined your life!’

‘Because you say it’s “just a few days” but it’s always me who has to take those few days. Like it’s always me who has to arrange the childcare, keep track of the birthday parties, take time off for concerts and assemblies and sick days, while you blithely swan around like none of this is anything to do with you with you whatsoever, but THEY ARE YOUR CHILDREN TOO!’

‘For fuck’s sake, you are just ranting at me now. Just discuss things rationally.’

‘Discuss things rationally? We agreed that when I went full-time that we would share the childcare, NOT that you could abdicate all responsibilities as a father and just fuck off to FUCKING SINGAPORE at the drop of a fucking hat whenever you felt like it. We’re SUPPOSED to be a team, but you seem to think it’s only about facilitating you, because do you know, not once in all these years have you EVER taken any time off in the holidays to cover childcare. Not once!’

‘That’s not true. You’re twisting things to suit yourself. I took half-term off, remember? Half-term, so YOU could go back to work and leave me on my own to deal with the kids all week, and then I had to cope with getting the kids back from France by myself, which was a bundle of fucking laughs, let me tell you!’

‘Oh, please! It’s hardly the same. For a start, you didn’t take half-term off to help me out. You took it off to visit your parents, and THEY looked after them all week. Much like you would probably have expected me to look after them if I’d been there. And they’re not exactly toddlers that taking a car journey and ferry ride with them is such an insurmountable problem. But yes, I do know you found it very challenging because you whined like a bitch for weeks afterwards, and now you actually think your voluntary trip to see your parents, even knowing I couldn’t take the whole week off, is somehow equivalent to you trying to land me with this whole shit-show?’

‘Oh, it’s always about you, isn’t it? It’s always about how hard done by you are, how difficult you find things, how much you have to juggle, isn’t it? And what YOU want, and what YOU need? What about ME, Ellen? What about what I want?

‘NOTHING IS ABOUT ME!’ I screamed. ‘THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT! NOTHING IS EVER ABOUT ME, IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU JUGGLE? If I want to work late, I have to ask you if you could possibly pick up the children and you act like you’re doing me a FUCKING FAVOUR, but if you want to work late, you just do it and assume someone will accommodate you! So are we only to think about what YOU want? And what DO you fucking want?’

‘I want a wife who supports me! I want a wife who is FUCKING THERE FOR ME AND ACTUALLY PUTS HER FAMILY FIRST, NOT HER FUCKING JOB!’

‘How DARE you say I don’t put this family first! When do you put US first? Or do you not have to bother because you are a MAN? Is it only a woman who is supposed to be a good little wife, and stay at home in her pinny, making sure her lord and FUCKING MASTER’S dinner is piping hot on the table when he gets home? Lipstick freshly applied and welcoming smile in place? And no fucking matter what SHE wants, BECAUSE SHE’S ONLY A WOMAN! So I am not allowed to have any ambitions, then? Is being a wife and mother supposed to be ENOUGH? Is “supporting your career” meant to take the place of having a career of my own? And I DID support you. I still do. I have been supporting you in your chosen career for years, and what fucking thanks do I get in return?

‘Maybe if you had ever been a bit more flexible, I could have got much further in my own career by now, instead of all those years of having everyone glaring at me because I’m leaving at lunchtime again because it’s Sports Day or I’ve had to miss a meeting because one of the kids is ill, but it’s never ever you who picks up the slack, is it? And maybe my whole career would’ve been fucked up anyway because I had kids because I wouldn’t be paid as much and I would have missed promotions while I was on maternity leave, or been passed over for fear I might go off again, but isn’t it bad enough that society is trying to fucking screw mothers over anyway, WITHOUT THEIR OWN HUSBANDS DOING IT TOO?? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, is it any wonder that I let my colleagues think I didn’t have any children after all the years of seeing how mothers are treated in the workplace?’

‘Ellen, I’m not sure how we’ve got from me going on a business trip that I really can’t get out of, to society’s oppression of women on maternity leave, but – hang on! You’ve LIED to your employers about having children? What the fuck? You can’t do that! Why would you do that? HOW could you do that, why would you deny your own children? What if you get sacked?’

‘Why would I “deny” my own children?’ I said furiously. ‘You pretty much do. You don’t let them interfere with your working life, so why should I? You’re every bit as much a parent as I am, but nobody judges you, do they? So why should they judge me? And I won’t get sacked, because my boss knows I have children, but he doesn’t like people so he mainly hides in his office and only communicates by email unless he is absolutely forced into a meeting, and then he goes back to hide again. He’s actually literally the most perfect boss you could ever have. And HR know too, but they never come down to our floor. It’s only my immediate colleagues I OMITTED to mention the children to, and I’m not FUCKING SORRY, because people treat you differently when you’re a mother. They shouldn’t, but they do!’

‘And what about me?’ yelped Simon. ‘Have you airbrushed me out of the picture too? Are you some sexy single lady now?’

‘THIS ISN’T FUCKING ABOUT YOU!’ I yelled. ‘This isn’t even about whether or not people at work know about the children. This is about YOUR fucking attitude to OUR LIFE and your assumption that I will just MAKE EVERY FUCKING THING HAPPEN and all you have to think about is yourself! It’s like the way I am still doing almost all the cleaning and laundry and housework, even though we were meant to share that too when I went full-time, but you still don’t fucking bother!’

‘So get Juliette to do it!’

‘See? SEE? Why do I have to get Juliette to do it? Why can’t YOU get Juliette to do it?’

‘Well, if you don’t want to ask Juliette, get a cleaner!’ said Simon.

‘I don’t WANT a fucking cleaner!’ I shrieked. ‘Well, that’s not true, I would quite like a cleaner, but I worry I’d feel guilty about exploiting someone, and anyway, I’d still have to clean before they came so they didn’t judge me, but that’s NOT THE POINT! The point is, if we got a cleaner, it should be because we’d both decided that there was just too much for us BOTH to do with looking after the children and the house and working full-time. We shouldn’t have to get a cleaner just because YOU can’t be arsed pulling YOUR weight. And you STILL assume that it is something that I will arrange because that’s “my job”, you fucking arrogant arsehole.’

‘I really don’t understand what your problem is. You complain about childcare, we get an au pair. You complain about cleaning the house, I say get a cleaner, but that’s not good enough. What the fuck do you want, Ellen?’

‘I WANT you to take an equal responsibility for this family!’ I howled. ‘I WANT you to take responsibility for your children and share the childcare, I want you to pick up your own festering pants instead of leaving them lying around for me, I WANT you stop acting like you are somehow above all the petty fucking little trials and tribulations of life, just because you’re a fucking MAN. And I WANT you to stop assuming that you can just do what you like and I will just somehow cope. All you had to do was listen to me and book a bastarding week off work. But you fucking didn’t!’

‘No, I didn’t, did I, so it’s too late to complain about that now. If it was that fucking important, YOU should’ve made it clearer to me. I really don’t know what else you want me to do. And if I’m such a terrible parent, how come YOU’RE the one going around LYING to people about whether you even have children!’

‘Oh, go fuck yourself!’ I snapped. ‘Right now, I wish I didn’t have children. OR A FUCKING HUSBAND!’

‘Be careful what you wish for, Ellen,’ he said coldly. ‘It might just come true.’

Arrogant bastard.

It’s a strange thing, marriage, isn’t it? You meet someone, you fall in love with them, you realise you can’t live without each other, you stand up in front of all your friends and family to vow to spend the rest of your lives together, and you know that on one level, a part of your heart and soul would be wrenched out if this person were no longer in your life, but on another level, you have seriously considered googling ‘how to kill someone with a tube of toothpaste’ should the inconsiderate TWAT continue to squeeze the toothpaste in the middle instead of rolling it up neatly from the bottom LIKE A NORMAL PERSON.

I once thought that the longer we lived together, the less Simon’s ‘little foibles’ would annoy me, but if anything they have become more irritating over time. Not to mention that part of being married is knowing someone so well that you know exactly what buttons to push to wind them up, like when Simon tuts and rolls his eyes and makes his ‘I am a saint to put up with this’ face, when I ask him for the eleventy fucking billionth time to take the bins out and I contemplate where in the woods behind the park would be the best place to dig a shallow grave.

Maybe it’s just that all the little things add up – all the unreplaced loo rolls, all the overflowing bins, all the pairs of pants left tangled up inside the legs of his jeans for me to remove, because I obviously have no other fucking things to do. So many little things, over the course of a lifetime, that mean the love of your life is also the most annoying fucker you have ever met. No one told me it would be this hard, skipping up that aisle, ready for a life of married bliss, completely unaware that most of marriage consists of trying to remember that prison is not very nice, and you are probably too middle class to ever make ‘Top Dog’ and be allowed the trouser press.