Then the miracle happened.

Four weeks after that wedding anniversary trip to the hotel in Oxford, I did a pregnancy test and there it was: the sign I’d been wishing for so hard it seemed impossible that I could be so lucky.

I did another test and there it was again. Unambiguously positive. No ifs or buts or maybes.

Finally, our baby was on the way.

Mark’s initial reaction was one of pure shock. When it had sunk in, he was pleased as punch: ‘Well then, my sperm obviously does work after all!’ For a little while he was wildly overprotective: was I overdoing it, carrying on working? What was I thinking of, standing on a chair to change a lightbulb – what if I fell? Wasn’t bagged salad potentially bad for the baby? OK, so I’d rinsed it, but was I sure I’d really washed it thoroughly, because if not there might still be some traces of contaminant? Then the novelty began to wear off. He stopped being quite so conscious of the host of threats I might inadvertently allow to damage our child, and, on the whole, went back to expecting me to take things in my stride.

Occasionally he’d ask if I’d read any of the parenting books he’d bought in the first rush of enthusiasm, and I’d make soothing noises about how there was still plenty of time and that seemed to satisfy him. A more persistent question was whether we could tell people yet. I knew he was longing to share the news. ‘I think it’ll seem more real, once it’s out in the open,’ he said once, as plaintively as if I was withholding a treat from him.

My instinct was to keep it to ourselves for as long as possible. Being secretive was a way of making the most out of my victory, of raising a middle finger to everyone who’d ever asked. I was certainly in no particular rush to tell my mother. But Mark was desperate to tell his, which was odd because out of all the people we knew, she was the only one who had never gone near the subject of babies. ‘She’ll be delighted, I promise you,’ he said. ‘I know you two haven’t always seen eye to eye, but this is going to be a game-changer.’ I wasn’t so sure: even if she was thrilled to bits, I didn’t think she’d show it, and I was already steeling myself for criticism of my parenting skills

Still, we couldn’t put off telling our families forever, and for both of us, our mothers were pretty much all the family we had. Once I was safely past the three-month mark we made a pact that I would visit Mum and get it over and done with, and then we’d go and see Mark’s mother and break the news to her.

At the time Mum was living in a houseboat moored near Vauxhall with a boyfriend who was in his forties, a couple of decades her junior. He specialised in making sculptures of feet; there were usually a couple of works in progress lying around in the bow. He was out when I showed up, not that it made much difference because he always removed himself when I was present, either retreating to the cabin they used as their bedroom or going outside to attend to the various chores that came with living on the river.