How the other half lives: Lucy Cavendish ponders the upsides of divorce

There seems to be some jinx hanging over the area in which I live. Over the past year about six couples have split up and they all seem to have been given a new lease of life. I keep seeing one of them – dark, glossy-haired, slim, attractive – bouncing past my house with her dog as if her new single life is precisely what the doctor ordered. The rest of us – the long-time marrieds – look exhausted.

I call Nancy and ask her why this is.

'It's because they're having a good time,' she says.

Nancy herself had a miserable year after her husband left her for a younger woman, but she's now having a ball. 'I know the relationship with the personal trainer didn't work out,' she tells me, 'but I've met someone else. He's The One.'

'He's The One?'
'Oh yes,' she says. 'There's just one problem. He's with someone else.'

'Oh God, Nancy,' I say. 'You're going to be a marriage-wrecker.'

'It's not like that,' she says defensively. 'He's not married. He's going out with someone.'

'How long has he been going out with her?'

'Oh, about a decade,' Nancy says airily. 'But I know exactly how to get him. I am going to work on her weak spots.'

'What?' I say.

'All women have them. I'm going to find out what she's lacking and then I'm going to be everything she's not.'

'You can't do that. It's so Machiavellian.'

'Good, isn't it?' she says happily.

After Nancy puts the phone down, I find I am feeling incandescent with rage.

Imagine if someone set out to steal my husband. What would they need to do to win him over? I sit and think about all my weak spots. I know what they are because the children tell me constantly: I never listen, I'm fat, I wear horrible clothes and I won't scratch Leonard's back for longer than a minute because I get so bored.

I make a list: listen more; stop eating; wear pretty clothes; do more back scratching. There. That'll do it.

Tags: jinx single exhausted younger