After the breakdown of her first marriage, Wilson spent several years alone and even though she says it was good for her, she still found it terrifying. “But then I discovered I quite liked being single, and I had a good social life so everything did end up working out well.”

It wasn’t until mid-age that Jacqueline Wilson realised she needed something different. She shared with the crowd: “Forty is an odd age. It’s just a number, and yet it’s also a reckoning age. You start to think well, is this what I want for the rest of my life? Or do I want to change? At 40, I was lucky. My books were selling well, and my daughter had grown up and was doing well herself, and my marriage was sort of jogging along, shall we say. [Imagine] if I had known then that 10 years later, I would no longer be married, and that quite shortly after, I would meet the woman who was the love of my life.”

“I was in an OK marriage… then I met the love of my life”: Jacqueline Wilson shares what she’s learned about love