I never thought of myself as smug. That’s the really humiliating bit.

I didn’t plaster a BRIARWOOD: INDEPENDENT AND OUTSTANDING sticker on our car’s back window. (‘Not everyone needs to know where you go to school, darlings.’)

I wore my engagement ring – of course I was going to wear it – but my wedding band was as discreet and unassuming as a lightswitch.I was careful never to mention how easily I fell pregnant (yes, all three times) or that, after twelve years of marriage, Stuart and I still had sex at least once a week. I didn’t say things like, ‘The kids are doing long-haul so much better these days’ or, ‘My dermatologist is excellent, but I’m too much of a scaredy-cat for filler before forty’. (Those are actual quotes from the school gate, by the way. You can see where my baseline was.)

I thought I was way too humble and sensitive and grounded for any of that sort of talk. And anyway, I felt the opposite of smug. I felt like someone who had to try really hard just to manage the minimum.

But I was smug. Insufferably.

Lots of people probably think I got exactly what was coming to me.

And I agree with them…

Continue reading the extract here…

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