Before lockdown I had pretty much been on a work dead-line for the previous eighteen months. I’d get to my desk at 9 a.m. and not leave until 4.45 to collect the kids (on my days), working much later on the days it wasn’t my turn. I’d be so caught up in it as my deadline approached that I’d barely look up to have a conversation. I’d go for turbo wees and eat lunch over my keyboard, to the point all the keys got stuck and I had to get another one. Two days a week Valentine would be downstairs in the day care that my workspace provided. I’d see him doing the music class on Wednesdays and feel awful that I wasn’t down there with him like the other mums, but my workload wouldn’t always allow it.

I’d dream of my writing being done, so I could take a few months off and just be at home with the kids. I craved it. Hoping that just one of my books would smash it out of the park, and that I’d make enough money to only have to write one a year and nothing else. Then I’d spend the rest of the time in a dreamy, homely bubble. Cooking amazing things and picking the kids up early. The reality was, I was in no position to take a few months off. If I stop working, I stop being paid, and it’s taken years and years of writing at this level to get paycheques that actually contribute to our family. So, this was to be my pattern: bursts of intensity with bursts of less intensity. I have friends (men and women) who do jobs where it’s high intensity all the time. We’d all talk about the dream of sabbaticals and breaks longer than a few weeks. We wanted month upon month of nothing but blissful family life.

Careful what you wish for. Hello, Mr Pandemic. (It’s definitely a man.)

Why were there suddenly so many hours in a day? Why do kids aged two and five show such enthusiasm for things they are bored of five minutes later? Why does fifteen minutes feel like two hours? Why is it that everything fun makes loads of mess that is no fun to tidy up? When lockdown began, we didn’t want Art to be sad and miss his friends, so we became his parents, teachers and best friends all in one. By the Friday of that first week, I had learned that the level of activity we were engaging in was completely unsustainable. I was not that woman, and as much as it pained me to admit it, I was not that mother.