The camera came in close on my face as I watched them and stayed on me as I imagined myself sitting with the women in McDonald’s, a shopping list in my pocket, joking about my husband, knowing exactly what I had to do for the rest of my life.

I got so involved in thinking about what kind of pushchair I would buy for my kid that I missed my stop. I got out at the next one and walked back.

If I really was in a film, when I got home the flat would’ve been filled with balloons and everybody would’ve been there, wearing party hats and hiding behind the sofa to surprise me. But I wasn’t in a film. At least not that one. The flat was empty: no party and no balloons. I’d already opened all my presents and cards and my mother wouldn’t be back from work for a couple of hours. This was fine with me. All she ever did was yell and nag. You’d think she was permanently suffering from PMT the way she carried on.

Anyway, I didn’t care that there was no one there because I needed extra time to get ready. My mum and her boyfriend, Charley, were taking me to Planet Hollywood for dinner. This was a big deal, since Hilary and Charley’s normal idea of splashing out was to eat at Pizza Hut, damn the expense.

I’d wanted to go to Planet Hollywood since it opened. I reckoned you never knew who you’d bump into in a place like that. The brainboxes at school all wanted to go to university and become professors or solicitors and stuff like that, but I wanted to get married and have my own flat and lots of children. That was my true ambition. As far as I was concerned, having a family was the outfit you wore in life and everything else – jobs and stuff – were just the accessories. I even went through a phase when I was younger of designing my dream home and family with pictures from magazines. I bought dozens of cheap photo albums and filled them up with pictures of houses and husbands and children. They were all still under my bed.

But I wasn’t stupid.