I genuinely wasn’t bothered about whether Jason was wealthy or not – I’d fallen in love with the man who had left adorable sticky notes for me on the fridge and pinned me against the wall of our Hong Kong apartment as he kissed me so passionately I never wanted him to stop. I didn’t care how much cash was in his wallet. But since I had fallen pregnant, Jason had thrown himself into work even more heavily, putting in for overtime whenever it was available, prioritizing his earning potential ahead of spending time with me. I’d spent a lot of today thinking about this, while doing what felt like an Everest-sized mountain of washing using the new machine – at least I wasn’t going to be forced to find a launderette – and then I had spent most of the afternoon reorganizing my knicker drawer and tinkering with some illustrations.

That meant that despite having spent the entire day at home, I left it to the last minute to get things ready for the breastfeeding class and then had a wardrobe crisis about what to wear ten minutes before they were all due to arrive. This late stage of pregnancy had made me more indecisive and anxious than usual. To say I was regretting offering to host the meeting was an understatement.

At the end of the first meeting, when Lucy had put herself forward to be the group admin by connecting us all on WhatsApp and email, and Susie and Lin had offered to make their already legendary brownies again, I had felt as though I should volunteer something too and before I knew it, my hand had been in the air and I was agreeing to host this class. Still, it was a breastfeeding session, with no men allowed, so at least it was a smaller group to accommodate, and it would be over in two hours.

‘What was I thinking?’ I complained to Jason when he got home from work. ‘It’s the last thing I feel like today.’

‘I wish they weren’t coming too,’ he offered, looking pensive. ‘I shouldn’t have gone to work on an argument this morning.’

‘It’s okay,’ I replied softly. This was the closest I’d seen him come to an apology about a comment made over money. But right now I had a more pressing situation on my hands.

I was stood in front of the mirror in our bedroom watching the buttons strain on a shirt I had bought in Zara only two weeks ago. How gravely I had underestimated my size. I really wasn’t comfortable with this bigness. I peeled off my pregnancy jeans (they were beginning to chafe anyway) and pulled on a figure-hugging dark-green cotton dress – a hand-me-down from Tara, who had been infinitely better dressed during pregnancy than me.

‘This, with a scarf?’ I turned to Jason, holding up a silk scarf with a leopard print on it.

‘Yeah, nice.’ He was now sat on our bed, hunched over his laptop.