‘. . . AND FINALLY ACCEPTANCE . . .’

Her distinguished voice blares out.

‘. . . HOPE AND EVEN JOY.’

Oh, for crying out loud: shut up with your hope and bloody joy!

Panicked, I jab at the controls, until finally I hit the right button and the car falls silent. Relieved, I quickly straighten up. Then, feeling slightly guilty about shouting at the famous actress – well, she is a national treasure – I set off driving again.

The thing is, everyone’s divorce is different. I’ve heard of women leaving their marriages with a sense of joy and relief. They’re out there celebrating their new freedom by throwing Divorce Parties with penis-shaped piñatas to whack and ‘All the Single Ladies’ bunting strung up across their dining room.

Meanwhile I’m out in the middle of nowhere, in the pitch-dark, with no phone signal. And now Google Maps has stopped working. I glance at my phone for directions, but it’s simply whirring around. For so long my life had a clear direction, but now I have no idea where I’m going. How do I get from my old life to my new life? Even Google doesn’t know, and Google knows everything.

So not at the Beyoncé stage just yet.

With no road signs, I take a random right turn. Even now, months later, I still can’t quite believe this is real. I feel like I’m living someone else’s life – not the one belonging to me, Liv Brooks, wife, teacher, stepmother. Except now I’m none of those things. Which begs the question: Who am I?

Truly I have no idea any more, but at least I still have my name. I never changed it when I got married. It seemed an outdated tradition, unless you’re going to have children, and David didn’t want any more. He was upfront about that from the very beginning. David already had a son, Will, from his first marriage, and one set of private school fees was enough, he’d joked on one of our early dates.

To which, quick as a flash, I’d replied that wouldn’t be a problem as, being a teacher in a local state school, it would be over my dead body before any child of mine would be sent private. But joking aside, David was serious. And joking aside, I was madly in love with him. So when he proposed after six months, I happily gave up the fantasy of a baby that I wasn’t sure I wanted, for the reality of a husband that I most certainly did. In the words of Jane Eyre: Reader, I married him.

But there was another reason why I didn’t take David’s surname; I didn’t want to give up Dad’s. We lost him just months after he’d managed to walk me up the aisle of the register office. He’d been a heavy smoker all his life. My sister Josie furiously smoked roll-ups at his funeral. Well, why the fuck not? she swore. She was so angry, whereas I was so sad. A tearful newly-wed who’d now lost both her parents. I was so thankful I had David by my side.