Graham paid for me to do a part-time business course. The people. Dullness seemed to be etched on to their faces. I thought that perhaps Graham or God might be playing a joke on me, that this was all that I had to look forward to, courses with the aim of allowing me to climb the corporate ladder, rung by rung to dizzying heights and then maybe later, if I was successful, a retirement plan.

Graham was trying to bond with me at work, and I didn’t like it, putting a bit of pressure on me to go to the Friday night drink. I was scared of going out with the work crowd, scared where it might lead. The job I had was a means to an end, and nothing more. The course was a means to an end. Our children would be beautiful and gracious, and our house would be painted with heritage colours throughout, and Jenny’s face would be full of pleasure in the evenings. Our future happiness was secured.

Despite the monotony of the job, there was a kind of holiday atmosphere to the way we lived. Jenny finally taught herself how to cook. I came home in the evenings and we would talk and she often had pleasing meals prepared, salads and cold ham and shepherd’s pie, in the winter, and French onion soup that I felt was every bit as flavoursome as the one you could get at La Maison des Gourmets.

Our place, in general, spoke of kindness and of two people who didn’t have it all yet, in terms of the perfect house, but at least had a fairly decent home, a place they could call ‘theirs’, and the jam jar filled with Michaelmas daisies on the kitchen table in the late summer reflected that. And for a long time Jenny seemed content and she made me believe she didn’t miss town, and the dirt and the grime and the sort of beauty that’s in that, and she didn’t say that she didn’t enjoy fixing those meals to share together in the evenings and one evening after one of those lovely meals of hers – a beef and olive casserole – Jenny told me she was pregnant.

And that’s when I truly believed.

The knowledge that we were absolutely meant for each other, forever, felt warm to me in my blood. We were having a child together, we were unstoppable, us. The beautiful calm knowledge, the perfect evening, the perfect news.