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sorry?’
    ‘You know: there’s no need to do any housework, because after the first four years, the dirt doesn’t get any worse.’
    ‘Leave it then,’ Dom says, giving the room the once over. ‘Looks fine to me.’ There could be rats taking residence in the sink and Dom would say the place looks fine. ‘Come and listen to my speech instead.’
    ‘What’s it about?’
    ‘The limitations of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.’
    ‘Sounds fascinating ,’ I reply.
    ‘Well, you can listen to me or you can clean the loo. It’s your choice.’
    ‘I’ll just get the Harpic …’ I say with a grin, but I’m already following him into the living room to listen to his speech.
    And the extraordinary thing? It actually is fascinating. Dom can make the dullest, driest, most tedious subjects interesting. He has a way of explaining complex concepts, of illustrating his points with everyday examples, which brings his subject to life. And his subject – labour law – does need livening up.
    ‘It’s great,’ I say as he finishes, getting up off the sofa to give him a kiss. ‘Really good.’
    ‘You don’t think that section in the middle on codes of practice goes on too long?’
    ‘No, honestly, it’s good. Who’s this one for again?’
    ‘It’s for the Law Society dinner in January. I’m keynote speaker, remember? I did tell you about this Nic.’
    ‘Yes, of course. I remember.’
    He raises an eyebrow, sceptical. ‘No you don’t.’
    ‘I do.’ I didn’t.
    I’m incredibly proud of Dom. He’s a very successful solicitor, made partner at thirty-two, he’s forever getting asked to give speeches and appear on committees. But sometimes I do space out when he’s talking about his job, and not just because employment law is not the most enthralling of subjects. It’s because I’m jealous. It’s pathetic, I know, but I can’t help myself. Witnessing the steady, hard-won, well-deserved progression of his career from strength to strength only serves to highlight the painful decline of my own. And it’s stupid, I know, because this isn’t a zero-sum game: his doing well doesn’t have anything to do with my doing badly. Still, it hurts.
    Take, for example, my latest project, Betrayal . When I was first asked to produce the programme, the production company informed me that it was going to be a fairly sober three-part series ‘examining the causes and consequences of domestic treachery’. Obviously I knew what the basic subject matter would be: divorces, affairs, Machiavellian goings-on in the workplace, that sort of thing. I also thought it might be quite interesting. The production company promised interviews with psychologists and psychiatrists, in-depth sessions with family counsellors, cultural references and historical comparisons – we’d look at the stories of Judas and Iago, Brutus and Delilah. I thought I might learn something. I thought it might help me deal with my own situation. Ha! I never learn. Turns out it’s just another prurient, cruel trawl through the dirty laundry of people whose lives have just not turned out the way they thought they would.
    Annie Gardner, the woman I have to visit in Oxford tomorrow, is a case in point. Annie is married to Jim. They have two daughters and, as far as Annie was concerned, they were perfectly happy. That was until Annie’s sister, Suzanne, fell pregnant and announced to Annie that Jim was the father. Suzanne has decided to keep the baby and Jim, big-hearted chap that he is, has agreed to support it. Annie has forgiven them both. And into this domestic hell go I.
    Annie is the ideal subject for the programme – and they’re not all that easy to find, despite what a daily diet of Jeremy Kyle and Jerry Springer might suggest – but she’s very nervous about airing her dirty laundry in public. Who wouldn’t be? In any case, she’s having second thoughts about participating and it’s my job to convince her to go ahead. Now all I have to do