The Birthday That Changed Everything: Perfect summer holiday reading!. Debbie Johnson

       Chapter 1

      I was online, buying myself a fortieth birthday present from my husband, when I discovered he was leaving me for a Latvian lap-dancer less than half my age.

      Now, I like to think I’m an open-minded woman, but that definitely wasn’t on my wish list.

      One minute I was sipping coffee, listening to the radio and trying to choose between a new Dyson and a course of Botox, and the next it all came apart at the seams. The rug was tugged from beneath my feet, and I was left lying on my almost middle-aged backside, wondering where I’d gone wrong. All while I was listening to a band called The Afterbirth, in an attempt to understand my Goth daughter’s tortured psyche.

      The Internet wasn’t helping my mood either. I knew the Dyson was the sensible choice, but the Botox ad kept springing into evil cyber-life whenever my cursor brushed against it. Maybe it was God’s way of telling me I was an ugly old hag who desperately needed surgical intervention.

      The fact that I was having to do it at all was depressing enough. As he’d left for work that morning, Simon had casually suggested I ‘just stick something on the credit card’. He might as well have added ‘because I really can’t be arsed…’

      He may be my husband of seventeen years, but he is a truly lazy git sometimes. We’re not just talking the usual male traits – like putting empty milk cartons back in the fridge, or squashing seven metric tons of household waste into the kitchen bin to avoid emptying it – but real, hurtful laziness. Like, anniversary-forgetting,