At the end of February I was having dinner in Paris and feeling pretty smug. I was there covering fashion week for The Times, with my first novel out in July and the manuscript of the next almost ready to send to my editor in New York.

I was eight weeks pregnant too — a sibling for our two-and-a-half-year-old, whose early years have been a breeze thanks to her sunny temperament and my husband’s preternatural talent for dadding. It was during my first maternity leave that I started writing my book; in my head I had already begun planning the next.

Two weeks later I, along with every other parent in the country, was a stay-at-home mum. Not even as the oxytocin and morphine flowed