Good Material: THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, FROM THE AUTHOR OF EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE

‘I love my son,’ she said. ‘And I don’t say this as his mum, I say it as a woman who’s got twenty-six years on you. Everything you want to do in your life, you can do without a man, Jen.’

‘But do I ever think about what my life would have been like had I been brave enough to not become a mother? Had I been brave enough to even imagine what that life could have been like?’

realized: I don’t think I’m cut out to support a male artist. And I’m certainly not cut out to have a family with one.

My family were surprisingly upset by the news. It turned out that, in my mum’s eyes, a skint comedian who she didn’t like was a better prospect for a nearly thirty-five-year-old woman than no boyfriend at all.

Andy’s friend Jon and his girlfriend went travelling for a month and we agreed to look after their cat, called Doris. I changed Doris’s litter, I fed her, I gave her her medicine, I played with her when she yowled. Andy did nothing but stroke her when she sat next to him on the sofa.

I held her and rocked her gently and she wept and wept and wept. And I was reminded that you should really want to have a baby if you’re going to have a baby.

love what a good friend you are. You’re really engaged with the lives of the people you love. You organize lovely experiences for them. You make an effort with them, you’re patient with them, even when they’re sidetracked by their children and can’t prioritize you in the way you prioritize them.

‘Okay, well, do you know who’s going to be the talk of the mum WhatsApp groups tonight? Do you know who’s going to get slagged off for being a plastic sugar parent?’ she asks, faintly demonically, as she opens a pack of the party bag sweets and starts chomping at them. ‘It ain’t you, Avi. It never is.’

It was like my career was my bad boyfriend – it sensed every time I was going to leave it and, at that exact moment, would promise me all sorts of things to make me stay.