I smile gratefully. ‘Yeah, me too.’

And then we wave at each other as she scooters off down the street, her figure disappearing down the road in my rear-view mirror.

Of course I’m lying.

Angling the mirror towards me, I peel a rogue piece of packing tape out of my tangled hair, before corralling it back into its dishevelled bun and turning the ignition. With the engine running, I pause to look across at the house, with its SOLD sign in the front garden. My eyes flick upwards and I gaze at the bedroom window, imagining myself drawing back the curtains, remarking upon the weather, like I’ve done every morning for a decade; and I’m hit by such a wave of grief that it physically hurts.

My life doesn’t feel like it’s going to get bigger and better. It feels like it’s over.

And, looking straight ahead, I pull out into traffic and drive away.

Lost and Found

Still, it’s hardly breaking news, is it?

Husband leaves wife for another woman. It’s the biggest cliché in the book. We’ve all heard the story so many times we’ve become numb to it. As one of my students, Kieran O’Conner, once said when I caught him cheating in an exam, ‘What’s the big deal? This shit goes down all the time, Miss.’

Which, come to think of it, was the only thing Kieran ever got correct in an exam. But that doesn’t make it any less shit. And just because you’ve heard it all before doesn’t make it any less painful when it happens to you.

Thing is, I never thought it was going to happen to me. I’m not one of those people who love drama and scandal, and have exciting lives filled with fascinating anecdotes and conversations that start breathlessly with, ‘Guess what?’ I was happily married. I had a steady job, paid holidays, a nice house and a mortgage. There was no guessing what.

Growing up, I was always ‘the sensible one’; it was my sister Josie who got to be wild and reckless. Despite being two years younger, I was always looking out for her, making sure she didn’t get into trouble and fixing things when she did. Apart from a rather half-hearted attempt to be a goth as a student, I never pushed any boundaries. Too afraid of taking risks and making a wrong decision, I always stayed resolutely in my comfort zone. I dated unremarkable men. I had unremarkable sex. And then I met David and everything changed. Last year we celebrated our ten-year wedding anniversary.

I was in my forties and life felt sorted. I had good friends and a good social life. I loved my husband. I worked hard and went to the gym (though not nearly as often as I should, considering that I once divided the membership fee by the number of classes I went to and realized my last yoga class cost forty quid, which is an awful lot for namastes). I had a kitchen shelf full of celebrity recipe books that promised to make me thinner, and a wardrobe full of dresses and high heels that could still make me look half-decent. Plus enough hair products to start a salon. I’ve got my mum’s thick, dark curls, which often take on a life of their own and are both a pride and a pain. Especially when it rains.