Katie had perfectly managed the delicate balancing act we faced at university – of attempting to be functional adults while having a strong desire to get drunk at every opportunity. I had loved her from the moment I met her and simultaneously discovered my love of bubbles. And, of course, we had managed to land ourselves the hot guys, for the short while we were together at uni anyway. Katie had always been there for me, even after our student days together had been cut short.

‘So?’ she asked. I could sense a mix of excitement and trepidation in her voice.

‘Nothing to report,’ I replied. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘I’ve been thinking about you all day,’ she sighed, disappointed.

‘But I am learning that doulas are vagina-mad, that I have a fear of farting from my front bottom, and that having a baby is totally insane. I can’t believe so many people do it. Tell me the details of your birth story again? It will make more sense to me now.’

She sighed. ‘Two words – car crash. Don’t you remember Daisy and I were in hospital for four days afterwards because I lost so much blood? I’m not sure it’s a good idea to remind you.’

‘Oh yes, of course, I’m sorry. Maybe don’t tell me then. Actually, I need to know. Knowledge is power.’ I felt bad that I couldn’t remember the details of Katie’s birth story, but the truth was that before falling pregnant myself, I had found it difficult to engage with other people’s pregnancies and births. I had kind of blotted out the fact that a number of my friends were getting pregnant and having babies around me and I had purposely distanced myself from them, because I was finding it so hard myself. I did it with Katie too, and I’m sure it must have hurt her. For a while it had stung too much – she seemed to have it all, and I felt resentful, even though I had hated myself for it.

I think my body had been waiting, waiting for The One – for the same feeling of true love I had been lucky enough to experience once before, a long time ago.

I had spent years basically on a treadmill of long periods of being single, trying out various dating apps, going on dates and having relationships lasting a few months at most; many of them enjoyable and some involving plenty of good sex, but none that I felt could go the distance.

Like Lennox, the builder who had come to do some work in my bathroom and ended up drinking a bottle of wine with me one Friday evening. We went on a few dates and he was good at foreplay, but the fact that he had never read a book and still holidayed with his parents, aged 39, had soon put a stop to things.

And Rich, the wealthy banker who, if I’d drunk a number of cocktails, we were sitting in the right light, and I squinted, looked passable for Ryan Gosling. He had taken me to some of London’s most expensive bars and restaurants – even a couple of swanky hotels in the New Forest – during our six-month courtship, but he had absolutely no sense of humour. He didn’t even find it amusing when I introduced him to the new Snapchat filters and sent him a video of myself singing ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ half naked while looking like a fluffy white bunny. It was never going to work. There’d also been Tom from Norway, and a couple of other one-night stands whose names I couldn’t remember.