Having embarked upon this self-imposed journey of discovery, I feel like a child who has been gingerly looking around in the dusty attic, when she suddenly comes across an old chest, locked and hidden away in the corner: I thought that perhaps I’d seek out a little, inconsequential affair, just out of curiosity and because I had never gone exploring the dusty attic of my life as it is. Instead, I seem to have found contents and belongings I was unaware of.

I had taken my underlying sense of dissatisfaction for granted; a little like having an irritating friend you cannot bear to cast off, but agree to put up with for the sake of.. ‘old times’.

However, instead of concentrating on what this person might be saying that annoys me, I have now started analysing what, exactly, makes me think of them as a friend. And what are the ‘old times’?

Am I the same person I was before Mr Husband and Pest n.1 and n.2 populated my life? No. However, the last eight years of marriage and motherhood have become the ‘old times’, to cherish and hold whilst I am loving and obeying. I have forsaken all others: all the other parts of me that, I admit, did not make me complete and yet had a life of their own.

I cherish what I have and hold what needs supporting; I have loved and respected my family, obeyed the rules of middle-class ordinary life. Mr Husband’s friends are my friends, his existence coincides with mine. When I walk around the beautiful house we have together or look out from the Georgian sash windows to the charming garden I tend to with bourgeois care, I know that these ‘old times’ are all I have worked for.

But I am on borrowed time. We all are. Borrowed is the beautiful house that belongs to the bank, whose mortgage keeps Mr Husband a slave to his office, and that will never be truly ours. A mirage, the garden which would so easily drown in weeds if I didn’t keep it afloat with my daily battles. Ebay and charity shop finds, the many little ornaments scattered about the place.

When I open the door to the music room and the old, shining grand piano looks at me with studied, bored indifference, I usually walk in not to relax on the plush cushions and have a herbal tea, but to hoover and dust.

In that room there is an original fireplace, oak and walnut surroundings and polished black grid; it complements the room beautifully, and it is my favourite piece: I searched for weeks, visiting all the salvage yards within a hundred mile radius, for something I could really feel mine. I spotted it, dusty, old and forgotten, leaning against the far end of the wall, behind many other old and forgotten fireplaces; the grid was broken and the inserts chipped. I pointed at it and said: ‘that one.’ I carried it into the boot of my car myself.

It was bought for a pittance and I just lovingly polished and cleaned it until it shone. It belongs to me in a way nothing else in the house does. It looks grand and special, but it’s just an old piece of furniture that other people did not want, or did not see the value of. If I were prone to self-pity (and I often am), I’d say that fireplace is a bit like me.

So, I have everything and nothing. Mr Husband buys me the latest CD he thinks I am going to enjoy and tells me I am beautiful. He notices if I go to the hairdresser. He compliments me on anything I wear.

But when, many times in the last eight years, I have longed to be pulled out of my despair, when my friends have betrayed or forgotten me, when my son has tried and failed to make friends at the new school and my heart has bled, when I have felt trapped between nappies and the ironing pile, when Suitcase-Child Master Teenager shouted all his pent-up rage at the ‘bitch’ and slammed the door, Mr Husband’s insularity has always left me out.

Maybe I have changed. My life as it is… is no longer an irritating friend. Not a friend. Just irritating. Maybe the old times are really old and I don’t fit them anymore. Or I have managed to make myself fit for so long that I feel all creased up and emotionally squashed. I am the contents of that old chest up in the dusty attic. Never thrown away, possibly cherished. But not used to its full potential.

Are all marriages like this? I don’t think so. But I increasingly believe that mine is.

I am both the child looking into the chest and its contents. If I asked Mr Husband what he is, he would probably say he is the owner of the chest, attic and house.

I wonder whether other married women may, even occasionally, feel the same. If they do, what happens to their chest and its contents? If they don’t, what is inside the chest? Is there a chest at all?