I drop my bag on the table and shake off my coat before I head upstairs to the bathroom. A long, hot soak is needed to restore me to the human race. We’ve been in this house for just over three years. Jake and I had a bit of a whirlwind courtship—if that’s not too unhip a word. We bought the house and moved in with each other within six months of meeting, which is not generally how things tend to go these days. People seem so determined to remain fiercely independent that we’ve got friends who are married but still live in different houses. How weird is that? After the initial whirlwind, things have calmed down to a gentle breeze. Now that we’ve taken one tentative step towards entwining our lives, we’ve put the brakes on galloping onto the next stage. Jake still sees marriage as more of a ‘commitment’. I’m not sure how he reconciles the addition of a couple of kids in the middle. My mother is truly horrified by the whole thing. She’s of the generation who can’t understand why I’d ‘risk’ getting pregnant by a man who won’t marry me.

I met Jake at a local nightclub. It was supposed to be a posh and happening place, but to me it seemed to be populated by forty-five-year-old divorced men looking for a semi-clad, nineteen-year-old girlfriend. Quite frankly, in all the Saturday evenings I spent there, Jake was the only man I met who could actually string a sentence together. The fact that he’s a tall, blue-eyed blond bombshell helped too. I’d never gone for blue-eyed blonds before, but Mr Perfect never comes in the shape or often the size you’d imagined. I usually go for swarthy types, but when Jake asked me out, I said yes at once without even considering my preferences. And I’m so glad that I did. I’d like to say that he completes me, but he doesn’t—not quite.