I SLAMMED on the brakes of the car in heavy Christmas traffic. Adrian, my fiancee, got out and walked off. So I abandoned the vehicle, door open, in the middle of Kensington High Street.

Motorists behind hooted. I yelled to Adrian that if he didn’t want his car left there, he’d better collect it. Then I hurled the keys to him – or at least to a place estate agents would have considered within his walking distance.

Passers-by, captivated by the domestic soap but looking discomfited, pretended they weren’t watching. I huffed off, collected later by the kindly Adrian in his retrieved car. He’d complained about my driving. Leaving the car to drive itself had seemed a perfectly rational way to react. I’m pregnant. We’ve had 13 weeks of this madness. I’m normally slightly Mediterranean, but never like this.

In the week of the abandoned-car incident we went to a Sunday service in St Mary Abbot’s, seeking a venue in which to marry so that the bun-in-the-oven doesn’t come from a single-parent family when his father is away on business trips. We’ve been together nearly five years and I’ve been wearing the Phillips rock for one, so it’s not so much shotgun, but more of an about-bloody-time wedding.

The service started, and my betrothed said something suspect. So what does a girl do? Say shhh? Course not. Stomp out, that’s what. Flying past the congregation in Ferrari-red coat, bereft of keys and money. Then spend the rest of the day, happy as Santa, visiting friends and forgetting to go home for our lunch party.

I knew I was enceinte when the pregnancy test – well, four actually – showed positive. It seemed to me that the first three came from tampered stock, thus necessitating a fourth test. I was several loaves short of a picnic even then. Luckily, the beloved, watching Silence Of The Lambs, was in cheery mood when I broke the good news.

Immediately I suffered the most common complaint of pregnancy. Worry. First worry was who to have it with, so to speak. I chose John Malvern who combines professional brilliance with a sense of humour and a senior post at Queen Charlotte’s. A rare combination in a man.

Since then, like a third to half of all pregnant women, I’ve suffered from the misnomer of morning sickness. More like morning, noon, afternoon and middle-of-the-night sickness. And show me a cigarette and I rush to the bathroom.

Then came the gas, heartburn, burgeoning 38 double-D cups, indigestion, emotional instability, crying five times in a day, reduced libido, wanting a Thai curry in the middle of the night and dizziness.

My sense of smell has become bloodhound strong. People smell. Not just pongy, body-odorous types, but everyone. A friend once told me she always knew when she was pregnant when she could smell women menstruating. I thought she was bonkers.