She was difficult from the start. She’d cry all night every night, turning tomato-coloured with indignant rage for reasons only she knew. She screamed if anyone held her apart from Angie, even Jack, who was not used to being rejected and was visibly hurt. They were still living in the Clapham flat at the time and the neighbours had started to complain about the noise. And on top of all of that, she also had a one-year-old who had recently learned to walk and was like a bull in a china shop. Life was chaotic and she felt out of control.

It was no wonder that Jack needed a break. It couldn’t have been pleasant for him to come home to their tiny flat, once their haven but now no longer fit for purpose, to be greeted by a screaming toddler, a wailing baby and a stressed-out wife. When he had started finding excuses to go out again after work – a client to entertain, a colleague’s birthday – she tried to be understanding but she was disgruntled, stuck in the poky flat caring for two tiny people while he was out having a good time. She couldn’t go anywhere on her own, even to meet a friend for lunch, because Indie refused to drink from a bottle, breastfed every hour and loathed Jack.

As her resentment grew, so did his late nights and before she knew it, he was back to rocking up in the early hours of the morning, often just as she’d finally managed to rock Indie back to sleep, and the sound of him coming in would wake her up again. She would turn to him, incandescent with rage but unable to pass him the baby because he was so drunk, and he would simply collapse onto the bed and pass out as if he’d barely even noticed that they were there.

He was always sorry in the morning. It wasn’t like the old days when he tried to justify his behaviour. This time he knew he was doing wrong but he couldn’t seem to help himself. And she was just too tired and too irritable to deal with it sensibly, so instead she gave him the cold shoulder. It was a difficult few months for them all. In the end she decided to go back to work when Indie was six months old. She knew it was the right thing for her mental health.

On her first day back at work she handed a wailing Indie and clingy Benji over to the new nanny and walked to the train station, crying the whole way. She wasn’t sure that she had ever felt so wretched in her entire life. But within a few weeks they had settled into a routine, Indie and Benji had decided the nanny was acceptable and Angie started to feel like herself again. Now that she was finally able to see things clearly, she confronted Jack.

‘I turned a blind eye when we were first married but things are different now,’ she told him. ‘You can’t carry on like this. You have a family now, you have responsibilities. We’re supposed to be a team and we don’t feel like one anymore.’