The pleasures of being a boring old unmarried couple

The problem with not getting married, I am increasingly realising, is that you cannot get divorced. There is no mechanism for separating when you are simply co-romancing with someone. The builder boyfriend and I are not even cohabiting. We simply pop round to each other’s houses as the fancy takes us.

Not that I am complaining, necessarily. After a lot of stops and starts we are currently rather happy. And this is all very fine and dandy. But every now and then a dread panic grips my heart and I think, ‘Hang on a minute. What if I ever want to get out?’

We’ve been together on and off for three years now. It seems like only yesterday that we met. He was the blond, rugged chap in beige breeches unloading a big white horse from a lorry and I was the train-wreck of a singleton approaching her forties, faffing about in the stable yard trying to tack up my pony, no doubt having some sort of crisis.