So that was when I had had to take matters into my own hands. I had to think about my body; my biological clock. I was fed up of people making assumptions about me. I had to make a decision.

My getting pregnant changed everything. And now here we were – happy – I was so glad he had finally embraced it.

The only thing left to sort out had been where to live – we couldn’t keep the Marylebone/Brixton arrangement with a baby.

‘Clapham seems nice,’ I had suggested, imagining long walks on the common with my baby. Having a newborn in summer had to be the best timing, and I had envisaged a sun-drenched maternity leave of sitting outside pubs sipping a cheeky glass of prosecco over lunch with my new yummy mummy pals, while our babies dozed soundly in their prams next to us.

It wasn’t hard to find the perfect house to rent just south of Clapham Common near the chi-chi and sought-after Abbeville Road, with its handy array of independent delis and boutiques, including an overpriced butchers, a fromagerie, a Gail’s bakery and a gastro pub that buzzed with locals at every time of day or evening. For me it had to be that area – and through a turn of fate, an acquaintance of Oscar’s ran an estate agents in that patch, and found us the perfect place which we snapped up before it even went on the market. It all fell into place so easily. It was a good idea, wasn’t it?

Chapter Ten

Aisha

‘It’s ridiculous!’ Jason had shouted when I mentioned the new washing machine arriving this morning had been paid for by Dad. ‘I should be supporting us fully now. I don’t want your dad’s money.’

He had a real issue with it, although I was sure that Dad was only doing it to appease his guilt at barely ever seeing me. Dad had just happened to call last week as I was battling with the machine’s temperamental dial. Barely a few hours later, his PA had swiftly emailed me details of the new one she had arranged to have installed for us today. To me, it was simply a kind gesture from a dad with more money than time. But Jason saw it differently.

There was some history with me and money. I had been brought up by parents who were never short of cash. My father, a self-made, high-flying businessman – thanks to a successful property-investment company in Leamington – had kept my mum and me in well-made clothes and luxury holidays from as early as I could remember. We had a gîte in France to escape to over the summer, and there were weekends skiing in Gstaad in the winter. But I couldn’t remember a single time my father had been home early enough to read me a bedtime story. I was pretty much brought up by a single mum, until she passed away.

When I had not long been out of university, my dad had bought me this flat in Clapham. At first I had lived in it with a house-mate, then with a former boyfriend. Then over the years it had been rented out several times, until Jason and I had moved in when we returned from Hong Kong. It had seemed the most practical thing to do; the tenant happened to be moving out and we knew how lucky we were to be mortgage-free in London. But the fact I owned the flat had always seemed to bother Jason. Although Jason was easily the major earner in our relationship, he had struggled with not being the wealthiest. As such, although he had never explicitly said it, he had always given me the impression that babies should wait until he’d earned enough money to support us both ‘properly’. Whatever ‘properly’ meant.