‘I didn’t realise you were keeping track of time like that. Or that you thought of making love as trying,’ he said.

I sat up too. Suddenly I felt ridiculous. Not a sex goddess. Not a beloved wife. Barely even a woman.

I was a failure. We were a failure. And he couldn’t even bring himself to talk about it.

‘I just wonder whether it might be time to look into things,’ I said. ‘To rule out any potential problems. And it’s easier to start with you than me.’

‘I’m not getting into all of that. It either works or it doesn’t. And you either want me or you don’t. If you think you’ll have better luck with someone else then go ahead and find him. But I won’t be waiting for you, and I think you’ll regret it.’

He stood up and went off to the bathroom, and I got up and lay down on the bed and cried.

I knew I’d have to pull myself together quickly. When he was like this, tears didn’t move him: they just made him cold. After a while I forced myself to stop, and sat up and blew my nose and buttoned my dress. The shower was still running. I checked my reflection in the mirror on the old-fashioned dresser by the bed, wiped off my smudged eye make-up and brushed my hair, and lay down on the bed again.

When he came back he was wearing one of the hotel dressing-gowns and smelled of lemon-scented shower gel. He sat down next to me and put an awkward, consoling hand on my shoulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just can’t. I can’t do it. I love you, Paula, and I don’t want to lose you. But if it’s going to be all that… test tubes and injections and God knows what… I don’t think I can bear it.’

I could have tried to reason with him, to point out that it might be something that could be easily fixed, that it was foolish not to at least try and find out. But I didn’t. Instead I straightened up and gave him my brightest smile.

‘Let’s just enjoy this weekend, shall we? Because right here, right now, I’m really happy to be with you.’

He put his arms round me and embraced me, and I felt him sighing in relief.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ I told him, remembering the little girl I’d once imagined so vividly, who had seemed so real.

In a way, it didn’t matter what I felt… If I wanted her, I had to keep Mark happy, had to keep him on board. I had to push all the bitterness down and stay sweet. I needed him to want me, because how else was I going to make it happen?

I suppose you could say that in a way I was deceiving him too. But I did it for love. For the future. For the child I wanted. And everything he did, right from the start, was for himself.