After all, I’d already lost Mark, not that he’d ever really been mine in the first place. But I’d been left with vivid memories of our short time together – painfully vivid. Being with someone else seemed like the best way to force them to fade.

One day, when Sean and I had the house to ourselves, we made love and then took a bath together: the kind of thing young lovers do. He soaped me tenderly and dried me, and we got dressed and went to the pub – lemonade for me, a pint for him – and he said, in a sudden rush as if it had only just occurred to him, ‘I think we ought to get married.’

And I was thrilled. Thrilled – but stunned.

‘But, Sean—’

‘You don’t have to answer now. But I do mean it, and I have thought about it. I love you, and I want to take care of you. You and the baby.’ He swigged a mouthful of beer, set his glass down. ‘Just think about it, OK? No rush. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here. I won’t change my mind.’ He knocked back some more beer. He was clearly nervous. ‘I’m not saying we should lie to anyone. But, you know… if we get married you can just let people think what they’re going to think. It might make things easier for you.’

He was right. People did assume that he was the father of my baby, and we didn’t bother explaining that he wasn’t. And I could see that this made things easier for Sean, too.

Then, when I was beginning to show, our landlord started asking awkward questions and Sean found somewhere for us to move into together.

Our new home was a converted loft in a house that belonged to a regular at the pub Sean worked in. It was always either too hot or too cold, and given that it was up three flights of stairs, it was hopelessly impractical for a couple with a baby on the way. But I didn’t care about any of that at the time. I was over the moon about it.

I’d been avoiding my mother, for obvious reasons, and she clearly suspected something was up, and had been sounding more and more worried when we spoke on the phone. But then I invited her to visit and introduced her to Sean and she seemed thoroughly relieved. As soon as he’d gone off for his shift at the pub, she said what a nice lad he was. And then I told her he was looking for another job, something that would pay more, and broke the news about the baby and she hugged me and cried and said she’d been wondering how long I was going to leave it before saying anything.

Turned out she’d had her suspicions for a while, though she hadn’t been sure. She often had an uncanny way of knowing things she had no way of knowing… though, as I was to find out, that didn’t mean she was always right. There was a lot she didn’t see. And some of it, like Sean’s drinking, was pretty obvious; even on that occasion, he’d got through a couple of cans before leaving for work. But she liked him, and that was all the approval I needed.