to Leo

MORE THAN FORTY years ago, I dined next to Godfrey Smith, the gloriously convivial editor of the Sunday Times Colour Magazine, and regaled him with tales about the screaming domestic chaos of my first months of marriage. I explained that because we made love all night and I spent all day, except for a scurrying shopping lunch, at the office, then rushed home to wash, iron, clean the flat, cook and eat supper, make love all night, go to the office — a pattern that was repeated until one died of exhaustion and our flat was so dirty I found a fungus growing under the sink.

On one occasion, I told Godfrey, my red silk scarf strayed into the washing machine at the launderette, so my husband Leo’s shirts came out streaked like the dawn and he claimed he was the only member of the rugger fifteen with a rose-pink jockstrap. Our attempts at DIY were just as disastrous, as we stripped off the damp course in the drawing room, then found we’d papered our cat to the wall like the Canterville Ghost. Godfrey laughed a lot and commissioned a piece called ‘A Young Wife’s Tale’, which appeared in the Sunday Times colour mag.

My poor mother was subsequently besieged by telephone calls from her friends: ‘Darling, what’s a jockstrap?’

Shortly after I had the miraculous break of a column in the Sunday Times, which lasted thirteen and a half years. At the same time a publishing friend asked me to write a little book called How to Stay Married.

I was so unbelievably flattered that even though I’d only been married seven years, I said yes, and was soon merrily laying down the law on everything from sex on the honeymoon to setting up house, from in-laws to infidelity. With a deadline of three months, however, as well as my new weekly column to write, a six-month-old baby to look after and a newish house in Fulham to try to run, my poor neglected Leo got very short shrift and grumbled the book should be called How to Get Divorced.