I got her phone number at the end of what was a rather painful cleaning. That happened during a fast exchange as I got out of the dental chair, during which we discovered that we’d grown up in the same neighborhood, gone to the same high school and had so many other local points in common.

Life works that way, doesn’t it? Agnieska was subbing for my usual hygienist that day. I was still feeling a little bruised about saying goodbye to Bernadette for what was now the last time – and was beginning to think that, as I was now in my late twenties, I should really try to find someone with whom to build all that we are told to build. Agnieska had just ended something with an army guy who had become increasingly paranoiac and angry (well, he had survived his tank being hit by one of Saddam Hussein’s shells during the fight to liberate Kuwait). She was single and looking. I was single and looking. Timing is everything. So too a shared program. Were we in love? We certainly told ourselves we were. We genuinely did get along. As my father told me in his old-school way:

‘She’s perfect wife material. You shouldn’t hesitate here.’

As always I followed Dad’s stern advice. Two years after we met we were married by my old friend Todor in Agnieska’s home parish. The Mustang got traded in for a more sensible 1993 Subaru Legacy station wagon. And in the summer of 1995 Agnieska gave birth to our first child: a boy whom she insisted on naming Karol (the original first name of Pope John Paul II). A son! Agnieska very much wanted a boy – and was happily obsessed with everything to do with him. I was pleased too. But Agnieska said that she wanted to take at least a year off from her work to look after Karol. I couldn’t argue against that. Karol rarely slept more than three hours. As such sex became a rare event owing to baby insomnia and Agnieska complaining about being exhausted all the time – though I was putting in twelve-hour days on the sales front to make up for the loss of my wife’s income … and doing so on little sleep thanks to Karol’s colic. Full admission: I started to seriously wonder why I’d bought into a domestic life that I privately knew wasn’t for me.