It’s easier than anything else I know how to do. When I have sex I can forget all that control and be something different, unembarrassed and lustful, like an animal, but also absolutely human in a dark and disgusting way. As a mother I have to pretend to be the person I really am not: patient, hygienic, gentle, good at craft, moderate, rarely anxious, never depressed. Sex is the place we can find one another again. I’m never ashamed of who I am in front of him, even when I’m angry and hateful with exhaustion, and I crave more of him. I miss the people we were, before we became carers. The children chatter away to him all the time and I am pushed aside like a silenced scullery maid whose role is to wipe surfaces, find shoes and carry coats. When he is at home, it’s almost impossible to have a conversation, interrupted incessantly by children swinging from his arms like comedy bananas. When I have the space to think of Pete, I miss him, because there are so many of us in this marriage.

And I was the parent the children turned to for help, since I was always there. Most of the week, we were often living apart. Pete spent more time away, working to support these children he adored. But the move also made life more complicated. We spilled out of the house Jimmy, Dolly and I had been living in when I met Pete, into the countryside, where there was space for us all. But the new, big family also brought newer, bigger responsibilities. My band of three became our band of four and then five, when Evangeline arrived in 2012, and, soon after, six, when Dash was born. Pete’s heart is huge, his love absolute, and he wrapped it around the children as much as me.

When Pete and I fell in love, my family shifted, and resettled. Most nights, the three of us tangled together to sleep absolute single motherhood was financially terrifying but filled my heart and head with complete love. Jimmy and Dolly were nine and six and we were close in a special way I had split up with their father after Dolly was born and while Jimmy was still almost a toddler. “Five! Five children! What the fuck is that going to be like?”

He reaches out to me, enclosing me in his arms, the safest place in the world I know – because he’s so up for life, he’s never scared.

“What a nightmare! An amazing nightmare!” “Oh God, oh God, oh my God!” Pete says when I show him the two lines. I know, too, that motherhood can bring a sort of violent, overwhelming love that feels like being encased in metal and dropped into a deep sea.

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