Jack looks like I’ve stabbed him in the heart, but I had to say it. I can’t go on pretending any more, even though it had been his idea I went for the job in the first place and I hate to hurt him. It was a step up the ladder, that’s for sure, but it hasn’t turned out that way for me inside. I want him to tell me it’s not worth all this stress, I want him to tell me to jack it in and be myself, the type of teacher I used to be, the type of person I am deep inside.

‘You’ll—’

‘Don’t say I’ll settle in, because I don’t think I ever will,’ I say to him, hoping for him to support me so badly. ‘I dread every day in that school, you’ve no idea how much I do. I love everything about our life, absolutely everything apart from my job.’

He lifts up my chin and looks into my eyes. ‘And my mother,’ he says with a smile. ‘You couldn’t possibly like her either?’

I manage to laugh through my tears. ‘OK, I’ll admit I’m struggling to like her too, but that’s not a new thing and I can cope with her from a distance.’

He tilts his head to the side and kisses my hair, making me feel better already. It’s moments like this that I’m so glad I have Jack to lean on every day.

‘Come on, let’s go home,’ he says, putting his arm around me. ‘We’ll have a good chat tomorrow when we’re perfectly sober and after we’ve had a nice early night. We’ll make some plans because there’s no way you’re working in a job if you hate it that much. Life’s too short. But in the meantime I have plans for you this evening, Mrs Malone, and I can’t wait to get you home.’

There’s no way you’re working in a job if you hate it that much.

I couldn’t have asked for a better response. Jack knows me, he loves me and he has my back on every decision I make.

I get a whoosh of butterflies in my tummy, longing already to be snuggled up beside him in our kingsize bed with its cool linen sheets and cosy, duck down duvet. So I push the dread of work tomorrow to the back of my mind for now and we stroll up the hill at our leisure, me leaning into him, loving the familiarity of his smell and the feel of his jumper.