But when he left the house at 7 a.m., I crept back into our bed to be close to Joni.

Later that morning, on a call with Tara, I mentioned the text message.

‘Honey, it could have been to do with any number of dramas at work,’ she reassured me. ‘It might even have gone to a wrong number, because of the lack of response. But if you’re that worried, why don’t you just ask him?’

‘And let him know I’ve been snooping on his phone? No, I couldn’t. He’d be so cross, and rightly so,’ I replied. ‘But I suppose you’re right, it’s probably nothing.’

‘You said things have been so much better recently – one off-evening coupled with sleep deprivation doesn’t help perspective, believe me,’ Tara continued sympathetically. ‘So please don’t over-think it. What I would prescribe, is some pampering time. It’s so hard to ever relax properly when you’re in the same house as your baby, so why not book yourself a spa treatment somewhere lovely, when Jason is around to look after Joni one Saturday? You bloody deserve it. Seriously Aish, if you’re not careful you’ll turn into a martyr otherwise.’

I remembered I had a massage voucher given to me by my agent as a baby present, at The House of Elemis day spa in town. As luck would have it, they had an appointment free on Saturday morning. If there was a woman in London who deserved a massage right now, surely it was me, I told myself as I booked myself in. But that night I struggled to sleep. The text played on my mind. Call it female intuition, something didn’t feel right.

Chapter Thirty-One

Aisha

Saturday 7^th August

At 5.30 on Saturday morning, unable to get back to sleep after Joni had been awake for the past hour, I meticulously prepared a list for Jason and put it on the kitchen table. Last night, he’d only seemed to be half listening as I briefed him to use the freshly expressed bottle of milk within the hour and to remember to take another out of the freezer a couple of hours later.

Right on cue my boobs tingled; the thought of Joni being hungry made my breasts fill rapidly. I took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. I knew that Jason was more than capable of keeping our baby alive, so surely nothing could go too wrong in just half a day. Could it?

More pressing was a serious concern about how I was going to get through a massage in about an hour and a half’s time with rock-hard breasts. The thought of it didn’t feel very relaxing at all.

I distracted myself from worrying about Joni and opened up my laptop for a quick scan of my emails. After leaving me to enjoy motherhood for a few months, my editor seemed to think it was okay to start emailing me about work again. Such is the life of a freelancer – no one expects you to stay out of the game for long, and they don’t seem able to leave you alone, even if you wanted to. There was an email about a new book project. The deadline for initial thoughts was in a month’s time; I was going to have to start carving out some time for it in the evenings if I had a chance of getting the commission. I sighed. That meant I was going to need to count on improved support from Jason if I had a hope in hell of pulling off being a working mum. Either that or we would have to start looking into childcare – although the thought of dropping Joni off at a nursery at such a tender age felt unbearable, not to mention impractical as I was still breastfeeding and intended to keep it up for at least six months. We would need to discuss other options, all of which were bound to be expensive. I closed the laptop and left the house, leaving Jason muttering to Joni about a trip to the park.