When my partner, Chelsea, discovered that she was pregnant with our first child, the first thing she did was lay on the bathroom floor bawling her eyes out as she clutched the pregnancy test to her chest like a dagger. The next thing she did was have a cigarette to steady her nerves while she processed the life-changing news. That cigarette proved to be her last ever. She never smoked again. Ever. Just like that. Done.

Chelsea didn’t consider that she’d done anything particularly selfless or courageous. To her, it was simply something that needed to be done, because the alternative – continuing to smoke with a baby growing inside of her – was unconscionable. But she’s brave and selfless both, because quitting cigarettes is a bloody hard thing to do.

Chelsea went on to become something of an evangelical figure in the massive anti-smoking campaign that kicked off in our flat that very same day. She spent her days promising eternal damnation – or at least eternal nagging and chastising – to all those stupid enough not to heed the warnings that were whirling in her hellfire. But it wasn’t really directed at ‘all those stupid enough’, ladies and gentlemen. It was primarily directed at me, the ‘all those stupid enough’ with whom she lived.

I knew that I couldn’t smoke indefinitely. The odds were already stacked against me as a non-exercising, crisp-munching Scotsman, and I figured I owed it to my kids to survive at least to the end of my forties. They’d be teenagers by then, and a dead Dad might play well with the ladies.

I also knew that for however long my habit prevailed I didn’t want my kids to see me smoking, or even to know that smoking was a thing. Kids use big people as templates for the things they do and the people they might become, and that’s especially true of the people they love and look up to, so it’s always best to avoid doing anything that might one day inspire them to, for instance, pick up a stick of dried leaves, set fire to it and suck smoke and tar into their little lungs until they can’t even run for a bus without passing out.

So I obviously realised that I’d have to stop smoking, too, but I decided to use a slightly different smoking cessation technique to Chelsea’s: I decided to keep on smoking, but to do it secretly.

This story has a happy ending. As at the time of writing this very sentence I’ve been a non-smoker (or a non-practising smoker, if you like) for almost two years, barring two regrettable and mercifully temporary re-uptake incidents that were – perhaps unsurprisingly – sponsored by alcohol. I’ve also been tee-total, or whatever you call it when you only have a drink on average once every twenty months, for the past few years, which certainly helps with the not smoking thing. My bad habits tend to operate on a chain reaction basis, and the trigger is almost always alcohol.

But back then, at the exact moment when my partner and I learned that we’d been accepted into the ‘Ageless, endlessly-perpetuating cycle of life and death’ club, I was still in the iron grip of a 15-year-long chemical addiction, not to mention under the spell of the lunatic delusion that if I stopped smoking I’d lose the ability to write (so inextricably linked in my mind were cigarettes and creativity).

Chelsea was merciful. She was happy for the process to be more of a transition than an emergency stop (obviously, my days of smoking in the house and the car were over, a realisation I’d already arrived at myself without prompting). I was extended the good grace of three months’ smoking, during which time I was urged to cut down my intake so the cessation, when it came, wouldn’t be quite so jarring and unpleasant. Naturally, being an impulsive sort of a fellow, I resolved to waive the transition and quit at precisely three minutes to midnight approximately three months’ later.

When the promised time came, I made a half-hearted stab at stopping, and fell at the four-day hurdle. Rather than admit my weakness – and thus have to hear constant reminders and admonishments – I decided I would continue to proclaim myself a non-smoker at home, but smoke during working hours. One cigarette in the morning, one at break, one before the end of lunch, one at break, one at home-time. Never-the-less, I kept trying to stop. I tried, and tried again, always failing, because I never really tried all that hard. For a while I vowed that I would only smoke when I was drinking. Guess what happened? I started drinking more often.

It got to the point where my surfeit of day-time smoking was leaving me with major night-time nicotine withdrawals, so I had to keep popping out for random, often unnecessary things, at random times of the night so I could satisfy my cravings.

‘We’ve only got twelve slices of bread left.’

‘I’m on it.’

‘It’s okay for now.’

‘I’ll go to the shop.’

‘No, we don’t need it right now, I’m just sayi…’

‘BYE!’

Often it was more ridiculous than that…

INT. LIVING ROOM. MIDNIGHT.

A couple snuggles on the couch.

CHELSEA

I’ll need to get remember to get some swimming goggles.

The front door slams shut.

Jamie??

Everyone in the family heard I’d stopped smoking, too, and most of them lived locally, so I had to be very selective in choosing my secret smoking spots. An army of spies was around every corner. I parked up side-streets and down back alleys, in strange car parks and cul-de-sacs on the far side of town, smoking in the moonlight and under the murk of street-lights. I drove around with mouth-wash, hand sanitiser and aftershave stuffed down the side of my seat, and my smoking paraphernalia – tobacco, filters, papers, a lighter, gum – stashed in the back of the car, under the spare wheel in the boot. Always skulking, searching, and waiting. Watching and brooding. Like the Yorkshire Ripper of smoking.

There came a time during the whole sorry saga when I had to confess. The mouth-wash, the aftershave, the evasiveness, the increased temper and irritability due to cravings, the stepping out at strange times of the night. She half-thought I was having an affair. I suppose I was, in a way. I was cheating on her with cigarettes. So we talked and I stopped. Then I started again, resolving to be more crafty about it this time; have better staying power, do it less, remove all traces. Ultimately, I would’ve made a lousy secret agent. Chelsea later told me that I couldn’t have been any less subtle had I whipped out a roll-up in front of her and started blowing the smoke in her face.

I think at least some of the time she just shook her head and thought, okay, I’m tired, let’s just do this dance for a while. And in my gymnastic imaginations, I figured that being cloak-and-dagger about it was actually a good thing, because it stopped me from smoking as much as I would have smoked had I just been openly smoking. I could never convince Chelsea of the logic of that one, I guess because I was missing the point. Try substituting ‘screwing other women’ for ‘smoking’ and see how far you get on with that line of reasoning.

I felt guilty for sneaking around, but I really believed I was being selfless and heroic in my own limited way, and I really was genuinely worried about losing my writing mojo. That’s what kept me smoking the longest; my biggest obstacle. I’d go out to a local hotel with my lap-top, where I’d glug lattes, and write and write, and smoke and smoke. I felt at home at the hotel, too. I was becoming like a non-alcoholic version of Norm from Cheers. I knew if I quit smoking, I’d have to quit that place (and so it proved – but they’ve increased the price of their lattes by about £1.50 since my heyday, so fuck them).

The times at which I was most ashamed of my smoking was on those (thankfully) few occasions when I had my eldest son in the back of the car, and pulled over to have a quick smoke next to the car. This was a shit enough thing to do on its own, but remember: I couldn’t smoke anywhere familiar, and I couldn’t let my son see me smoking. This meant I would find myself in strange neighbourhoods, squatting against the back bumper of a car, that clearly had a young child inside of it, smoking nervously. How the fuck do you explain that? One time a mother and her kids walked past, and the mother looked at me with an expression somewhere between alarm and disgust, so I just put on my best winning smile and waved. I don’t think it salved her horror.

The few times I chanced it I of course had to keep popping up at the window every few puffs to make sure my child was still alive, and to reassure him that I was still alive, too; that I hadn’t crawled off into the distance or down a manhole into the sewer. I couldn’t let him see me smoking, for the reasons I’ve already outlined, but there was another reason, too. He was articulate enough to grass me up to his mum, and let’s not forget, that’s the real reason I had to squat behind parked cars and drive down strange streets in strange neighbourhoods: fear. Not fear of my partner, per se. She isn’t exactly an MMA fighter (although speaking as someone who’s triggered her reflexes by jumping out from doorways and shouting boo at her, she packs one hell of a punch) or a mafia don. But she’s tenacious and persistent. She would’ve hissed and snarled at me almost every hour on the hour until I did the right thing.

In the end, I did the right thing. My triumph over cigarettes wasn’t quite as heroic as Chelsea’s. I got tonsillitis, and such a bad dose of it that I could barely drink water. I felt wretched, and weak, and sore, and even began to hallucinate through lack of proper sleep and sustenance. After a week of that, smoking was the last thing on my agenda. And the desire just left me. Now and again, every once in a while, I’ll see a character smoking in a TV show, or someone leaning back outside a cafe luxuriating with a cigarette, and a pang will hit me. But I know I’ll never go back.

So thank you, Chelsea, and thank you, tonsillitis. I couldn’t have done it without you.

I look forward to the next stage of my smoking evolution: becoming a fucking hypocrite.