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virtual strangers in spite of having lived together for more than ten years and known each other for even longer.
    I had met Mark when I was a student at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford and he was an undergraduate at Balliol. He was three years older and, in my eyes, the epitome of sophistication. He dressed expensively, used a cigarette holder, drank cocktails, knew all about good restaurants, food and wine. A snap of his fingers brought waiters hurrying to his side and when he paid the large bill he barely glanced at it. At eighteen I was deeply impressed by such things. Of course, he took out other girls as well and after he went down from Oxford I didn’t see him for nearly three years. We met again, by chance, at a party in London where I was living a lonely and fairly miserable existence in an Earl’s Court bedsit, touting my portfolio unsuccessfully round the publishers. By then, Mark was something rather important in a City merchant bank. The casual, sweater-over-the-shoulders look that he’d affected at Oxford had moved on. His suits were Savile Row, his shirts and ties Jermyn Street, his shoes Lobbs. After the party he took me out to dinner and impressed me all over again with the way he handled the waiters and paid the bill, as well as with his considerable charm. For some reason, I also made an impression on him. Perhaps it was the fact that I was very different from the other girls that he usually took out – the debs in twinsets and pearls – or perhaps because, charming as he was, I wasn’t the customarily easy pushover. Maybe I presented an unusual challenge as well as an unusual appearance.
    We were married eighteen months later and Flavia was born the following year. I began getting regular commissions to illustrate children’s books, mostly ones about furry animals. The bunnies, as Mark called them, though they weren’t always rabbits.
    After only one of the years, I realized that the marriage had been a mistake and I’m sure that Mark realized it too. Ma had been quite right. We had almost nothing in common, no shared interests at all – except for our daughter. When he came home from his City desk, Mark expected me to be waiting, agog to hear about his day, not working away feverishly on some deadline, having got Flavia to bed and to sleep at last. I was exhausted from looking after a small child and trying to complete commissions in snatched moments, but I stubbornly refused Mark’s offer to employ a full-time nanny because I wanted to take care of Flavia myself. And I hated the dinner parties and the long evenings at expensive restaurants with important clients, and the international conferences in soulless hotels. The world of high finance was as uninteresting to me as the bunnies were to Mark. It was equal boredom on both sides. Equal disillusion. And, looking back, a lot of the fault and failure was mine. However, we staggered on until Caroline arrived to work as his secretary at the merchant bank. Ultra-efficient and groomed to a whisker, she understood exactly what Mark needed and was eager and able to provide it.
    The divorce was very amicable. I opted for a clean-break lump sum instead of maintenance and used two-thirds of it to buy a house in Putney. Mark paid for Flavia’s schooling and university and gave her a very generous allowance. There was no bitterness, only relief. Our lives simply diverged. Flavia lived with me and I went on with the illustrations and taught watercolour painting at adult evening classes, while, with Caroline’s support and encouragement, Mark rose to great heights in the City, and had four more children. But I remained a divorcee. A wretched, long-drawn-out affair, involving a married man and dragging on over several years, taught me a painful lesson and, thereafter, I kept out of trouble.
    When Flavia had finished university and started work in London, we split the Putney house into two flats. She occupied the