Before I met Daniel, we used to spend almost all of our time together. We rented a flat together, we’d shop together, lunch together – we’d enjoy wild nights out and girly nights in. Of course, all that had to change when I met Daniel – it’s just all part of growing up, right?

Making more time for my boyfriend meant less time for my friend, but no less than your average person would have taken for their friends. And while Ali didn’t mind that I had a boyfriend, she did mind that it was Daniel. I figured they just weren’t really each other’s cup of tea. Ali is a wild-child party girl with a penchant for short skirts and shorter relationships. Daniel works in recruitment and spends his spare time playing golf or watching football. Perhaps I should’ve trusted my friend’s judgement when she said he wasn’t right for me. That just because he was safe and didn’t mess me around, he wasn’t a smart choice for marriage. But life isn’t a rom-com. I didn’t expect to have everything in common with him, or for him to come home from work with massive bouquets of flowers, or to whisk me away on romantic weekends. That’s not reality, is it? I just loved him, and that was all that mattered to me. It doesn’t sound as if Dear Daniel was as content as I was; he had to go out and find more.

I stuff the banner into the wheelie bin and push it to the end of the drive. As I get there, I curse myself. Why did I do that? I mean, I know why I did that, and it was definitely on autopilot, but I did it because in the back of my mind I know that I’m going away and that the rubbish collection is this afternoon, and that Daniel will forget to put it out, because he clearly forgot this morning.

I shake my head as I walk back towards the house, a house that was supposed to be my dream house.

We bought our cute little semi in the suburbs with big ideas. We were going to extend it, which would usually come up when we talked about having babies, when we’d talk about what names we liked and laughed about what kind of parents we’d be. Daniel said he’d turn one of the rooms into a massive office for me, where I could hang my book covers on the walls and glide around on my ergonomic desk chair to reach the different ends of my massive desk. We haven’t got round to it yet, because after we bought the place (spoiler: buying houses is expensive) and started doing up the rooms we already had, like the kitchen and the bathroom that were both in desperate need of work, my office wound up quite low down the to-do list.

I pause for thought.

We hadn’t got around to doing my office yet, not haven’t. I forgot to change the tense because in all the crap buzzing around in my head, I temporarily forgot that, as well as no longer having a fiancé, my home situation is going to drastically change too. One of us needs to leave, and I don’t want to give up my home that I’ve been working so hard on, but then again, I don’t know if I can handle the financial burden of a house still in need of renovations, a mortgage, all the bills – not on an author’s salary, which cannot be predicted from one month to the next.