It was a standard bathroom. The kind you’d find in a 1950s timber home just about anywhere in New Zealand, with a dark linoleum floor and small handbasin – enough of a bowl to wash your hands, but not enough to contain all the water while you do it. I had pulled the lid down over the toilet and was sitting on top of the hard plastic. Waiting. My heart beat a little faster than usual.

On the other side of the door, I could hear my friend Julia moving around her kitchen – roasting pans hitting the side of the sink, plates clinking against one another as she stacked them. She was likely scraping away the remains of yet another dinner I had only pushed around my plate. Julia was an excellent cook. I was just a nervous eater. Especially now.

Jacinda Ardern never set out to become leader of her party, much less prime minister of New Zealand.Credit: Getty

For the past seven weeks, I had been living on cheese, crackers and my mother’s homemade bliss balls – giant, energy-laden lumps of puréed dates, cashews and chia seeds that had a tendency to take up residency in my front teeth. That might be fine if these golf ball-sized snacks were being eaten in the privacy of my own home, but I had been eating them in public in the middle of a campaign. A campaign to determine whether I would become the 40th prime minister of New Zealand. Weeks had passed since election night, and I still couldn’t answer that........

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