I began to feel hemmed in, that I was losing my independence and my space. Richard didn’t want to do Christmas at Pete and Marcia’s. He wouldn’t wear the antlers’ horn headband they gave him; he couldn’t let go of maintaining the proper image. He never accepted any of my friends, and soon I was reluctant to have them round for fear of him criticizing them later. Although I thought Marcia had some whacky ideas, I didn’t like hearing Richard call her and Pete a couple of old hippies. He just didn’t get them, and was jealous of anyone who took my attention away from him. He even thought something was going on with Stuart, and watched him like a hawk if he ever dropped by the house. As if. I realized that what Richard really wanted was a stay-at-home wife who was there to cook his meals, keep his (my) house tidy and sweet-scented, plan his social diary, be there for him and him alone. I got bored with the predictability of our life – a G and T at seven, supper at seven thirty, a concert midweek, a theatre outing on Fridays, a proper roast lunch and walk on Sundays. The stability I had craved was suffocating me, and I began to feel like rebelling, not that I ever did. I toed the line and, with it, shrank inside from my true self.

When Richard sipped at his one, and only one, glass of fine wine with supper, I started to feel as if I’d like to polish off the whole bottle, then dance on the table. Anything to evoke a reaction. He disapproved of smokers, which made me want to go out and buy a pack of Marlboro and smoke the lot. He insisted on regular exercise and a long walk on Sundays, which made me want to slob about in my pj’s, watching trash TV, instead of one of his high-minded documentaries. I wanted to eat crisps and marshmallows instead of his only allowed TV snack, which was a bowl of olives from a deli in Kensington. And I was pretty sure his mother disapproved of me. She never thought I was good enough for her golden boy, though helping myself to the potpourri – thinking it was a bowl of crisps – when we first met, didn’t help improve her view of me. In the last year we were together, the cracks had begun to show in our relationship, and I was slipping down and through them. When Richard started telling me what to wear and advised me to cut up my credit card, I’d decided that was enough. I wanted my life back.