Why Women Sometimes Blow Up Their Lives Around 50

A hit book about a high-flying 50-something who risks everything for sex with a stranger has been turned into a BBC series starring EmilyWatson. Here, the author reveals the unspoken truth about the female midlife crisis – and why the divorce rate among women over 55 is rising.

- Louise Doughty

I am on a film set in Smithfield, east London. Emily Watson, Oscar-nominated screen star, is walking towards me with a smile. We are just two of a crowd of people in a grand building called Haberdashers’ Hall, where the most important scene of the BBC adaptation of my novel Apple Tree Yard is being filmed. The scene appears towards the end of episode one. The main character, Yvonne, played by Watson, is at a champagne-fuelled leaving do for the head of department of a university where she does some freelance work. Yvonne is a high-achieving, 50-something research scientist, with a husband and two grown-up children and a beautiful suburban home. At the beginning of this episode, she has been giving evidence at a House of Commons select committee on genetic engineering and has met an enigmatic stranger in a corridor, played with magnetic brilliance by Ben Chaplin. In a moment of recklessness that is completely out of character, she allows him to seduce her in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, beneath the Palace of Westminster, and they proceed to have what I believe is called a knee trembler. She doesn’t even know his name.

At this point in the story, the leaving do, she seems to be managing the two halves of her life – respectable middle-aged woman/erotic adventuress – quite well. She has disassociated one from the other. But something horrible is about to happen, something that will make her whole life spin out of control and lead to her being on trial at the Old Bailey for murder.

I have turned up on set during a break in filming and walk into the hallway just as Watson is emerging from having her make-up retouched. She sashays towards me in her party frock and heels, and I fall down a rabbit hole.