It's so obvious that divorce is the way to go, now that I've decided that I have a husband too many. But it's not surprising that it didn't hit me right away. No one in my family mentions divorce, let alone does it. No matter how rubbish the marriage, how dreadful the effect on the children, we stick it out. That's because my great-grandmother got divorced a trillion years ago and people told their children not to play with her daughter, my grandmother. My own mother says divorce is worse for children than abortion. Well, I may soon put that to the test. Not for a second do I want my lovely ones to suffer. But aren't they in pain now? They must be aware of the atmosphere - they know that much wine is sunk every night to try to make grown-up time pass in enough of a blur to be bearable.

I suppose it's also fair to say that I didn't spend quite so much time fantasising about my husband's death, and now the tempting possibility of divorce, before I bumped into Matt, a former flame. But how was I to know that he'd started working in my part of town? If I had known, I'd have asked to be bricked in to the house, allowing just a catflap-sized aperture to remain open, through which the supermarket could deliver the heaps of steak and chips my husband deems necessary to keep body and soul together (I have tried in vain to wean him on to healthier fare; it's just that his mother deep-fried his baby rusks in lard, and now it's too late to shake the habit).

Alas, I wasn't bricked in, and one day I rounded a corner and found myself spread-eagled across Matt's broad but deliciously firm chest. What is it about him? The charm, the good looks, the winsome smile? The hair black as a raven's wing, the way that he is emphatically not my husband? Or that he is now filthy rich, being the only person working in the City whose credit hasn't gone crunchy? I hope it's not that last bit, though sometimes one can't help being just the tiniest bit interested in money. Particularly when reading an article saying that the average divorce can cost anything from £500 to £20,000. I guess I'm moving from musing about the average divorce to seriously considering my own. But, even in the privacy of my own head, I sidle my way around to the subject with the squirminess of a teenager forced to discuss sex with her dad.

All that is about to change, however, for today I got a text from Matt. I can't help it. My heart is singing, for the first time in so long. And I've made an appointment with a lawyer.

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