I am not a person tormented by regret about life or career choices (I have had a lot of coaching!) but the one thing I do regret, as a working (single) parent, is not being at home more when my children really needed me. I regret not being at home more when they were young teenagers, too old for after-school care but really too young to be unsupervised at home; and unsupervised and unfed they were until I had completed the daily battle with public transport only to find that no one had turned the oven on for jacket potatoes, so I had to cook pasta in my coat (again). And let’s not even talk about homework.

This regret is compounded because, on the face of it, I had choices. For starters I was a founding director of my own company. One of four, the other three all being men with partners who assumed the bulk of the responsibility for childcare. Surely I was, technically at least, not answerable to anyone and could choose where and how I worked? I am sad to say that it didn’t ever occur to me to assert the need for this kind of flexibility. Or to extend it to anyone we employed who was in the same position. I am not sure it occurred to me that this flexibility even existed.

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