But there were still agonizing spells of doubt. About once every six months, I’d ring Nola and ask, ‘Should we not just chance it and hope for the best?’

Her answer—always—was to Golden Key it: if we were meant to have children, we’d have them. ‘You want guarantees but that’s not going to happen. You have to learn to live with uncertainty.’

‘But what if I’m too old?’

‘But what if you’re not? Dr Solomon says you’re looking good—honestly, I feel like I know that woman as well as my own doctor—and you’ve got to remember that you’re not like other people. You can probably have everything you want, so long as you wait. If you launch into it all at once, you could bring your whole life crashing down on your head. Too much stress puts you in danger of relapse.’

The mere suggestion that I might ever relapse made me huffy—there was no chance!—but she was right that I didn’t want my life to be a bodge job.

Luke tended to agree with Nola. ‘Babe, look at our lives! A lot of plates are spinning here. If one falls, so will some of the others. If you get pregnant now, you’ll have to stop working, at least for a few months, and we just don’t have the money.’

If we’d had an accident with contraception, we’d have gone ahead and had the baby. But there were no accidents. And that, in its way, was telling me plenty, I decided.

However, the day did finally dawn when we were both qualified, our college loans had been repaid, Luke had a small but solid business, doing personal accounting, tax returns, etc., and I’d finally been made a staffer in Hope House, a rehab facility in New Jersey.

‘Look at us!’ I declared. ‘Adulting like no one’s business!’ Then, seized with anxiety, ‘What if we’ve left it too late? What if my ovaries have shut up shop?’

‘What if they have?’ Luke asked. ‘We have a good life. Don’t we?’

‘Luke…if you’re having second thoughts, now would be a good time to mention it…’

‘Not having second thoughts,’ he said.

So I came off the pill, downloaded an ovulation app, bought a thermometer and drew up a sex schedule.

Being me, with my penchant for dramatics, I was convinced that it had worked the very first month. ‘I feel pukey. And my boobs feel sore.’

‘Your period isn’t even due for three more days,’ Luke said.

‘Yeah, but…’

He was right, of course. I wasn’t pregnant that month. Or for many more.

Seven or eight months in, Luke found me crying because—once again—I’d got my period.

‘What if it never happens?’ I asked him.

Gently he said, ‘We can have a good life without kids.’