Posters line the walls around me; I suppose to give the room some much needed colour. But instead they just add to the doomsday feeling that ruminates around waiting rooms. Back as a kid in England I would have taken the time to read all of the signs, but I’m not the naive young girl I once was. No more do I bother with filling my mind with the anxiety-inducing statements about cancer scares or take the time to remind myself that the hospital staff will not take abuse from patients. The posters in my current waiting room are slightly different, highlighting the joys of growing a child, not that I have to read them to know. I remember them from when I was carrying Jack. All those years ago I needed the medical jargon to lose myself in, to hide from the fact I was alone and scared and so lonely.

Realistically, I have been alone most of my life. My mother, or as she demands to be called by her daughter, Eleanor, was never a nurturing woman. She wanted to have a sophisticated, high-brow, young English lady. She seemingly forgot she lived in Reading in the early Nineties and not Victorian London. After my dad died of a heart attack she was even more highly strung, but she was the only parent I had. Dad died when I was so young that my memories of him are very lacking; when I think back on my childhood it is her I remember.

I wore what she told me and attended the best private schools, but all I learned was how to climb out of my bedroom window without detection. I also learned that men are pigs, even little teenage private school boys. Frankly, they were probably worse; because along with raging hormones and huge egos that must have been compensating for something, there was the added entitlement of being daddy’s little boy who is going to inherit millions of pounds without working a day in their life. Basically, they were insufferable future prime ministers who wanted women to kiss their feet without doing any of the groundwork. You would think with a (supposedly) high-value education I would have picked better boyfriends over the years, but I still managed to pick the worst of the crop multiple times.

If I were a different – maybe better – person, I could attribute all the good I have achieved for myself to Eleanor’s child-rearing, but I am not a liar. Me getting an education was not her priority, she wanted me to appear educated so that I would appeal to her peers as a possible future daughter-in-law. Everything was a storm, from running from my old life, to starting anew in Seattle. But then I met Liam in university, and I was found again.