And besides, when was anything ever the perfect time? Was there ever a perfect time to take a break from the office, to step away from the business? No. Was there a perfect age to get married, or divorced? Depended which of your marriages you were talking about. Was there ever a perfect time to have a baby? No, not really. Especially not when you were trying to get a new company off the ground and you were both working stupid hours to keep the mortgage rolling, the exorbitant school fees paid and the nanny in skinny caramel macchiatos.

If you waited for the perfect time, you’d wait forever, so when you saw something you wanted, you had to go out there and take it. Sometimes you just had to trust your instincts and jump right in.

Rowan had always had good instincts – aside from that one time with her first husband – and she was a great believer in the move fast and break things mode of doing business. Who was it who said that? Mark Zuckerberg, she thought, or one of those other Facebook guys. She’d met Zuckerberg once at a client’s event in New York, couldn’t remember much about him apart from how ridiculously young he looked. And short. But she liked his mantra, because he was right – when you were running your own company you had to keep moving, like a shark. If the shark stayed still for too long, it was dead. Maybe not right away, but over time; if you let yourself get slower, you got into a rut, you got into bad habits, and soon enough you found yourself eaten alive by the competition. Better to be the one doing the eating, had always been Rowan’s philosophy.

You could never stand still. Not in business, not in relationships, not in life. Not in anything. Especially now, when there was so much at stake.

Move fast and break things.

For all his faults – and he had a few, bless him – Russ would understand that better than most. At almost eight years together, their relationship was already the longest she’d had by quite some margin. But sometimes life threw things at you, complications that you couldn’t plan for, and you had to just roll with them rather than fighting them all the time. Especially if they were nice complications. With that thought in mind, leaning against the lip of the bathtub, she quickly thumb-typed a final message and pressed send.

She had always been good at keeping secrets.

But she would tell Russ, sooner or later.

At a time of her choosing. No one else’s.

Small footsteps reached her through the door. A high-pitched voice. Just one word, two syllables, rising in pitch like a question, a request. A five-year-old’s demand that Rowan’s five-minute respite should now come to an end.

‘Mummy?’

‘What is it, Odette?’

‘Are you coming out now?’