Will arrived after them, this time with a guy. I’d bet there were gym-honed bodies under their Ralph Lauren sweatshirts.

He stopped in the middle of the circle. ‘This, as you probably guessed, is Christian,’ he declared. Christian turned around to the group, making eye contact with us all individually. Holding hands, they made their way to another pair of free chairs. I caught Will’s eye and smiled. He nodded warmly back.

Lucy rushed in last, on her own again. ‘Sorry I’m late, couldn’t find my house keys,’ she muttered as she took her seat. She looked up and gave a small, strained smile in my direction. I smiled back warmly. Will and Christian raised their hands to Lucy and it seemed as though she had met Christian before, as she mouthed, ‘Hi,’ to him. ‘Oscar’s working again this morning, but he’ll join the session after lunch,’ she revealed once she had regained her breath. I was excited to meet the man I’d heard so much about.

‘Lovely! Almost a full house.’ Maggie clapped her hands together. ‘Let’s get going!’

Thankfully there were no more chants of ‘Vagina!’ today, although I was a bit disappointed Jason and Christian didn’t have to go through that particular rite of passage. The conversation quickly took a turn for the comedic, though, when Maggie began to explain how to identify the different shades of poo in your baby’s nappy. We obediently handed around images of the sticky, dark-green meconium that our newborns would be ejecting from their perfectly formed peachy bums on days one and two, followed by photos depicting a ‘mustard yellow’. And then Maggie revealed her pièce de rèsistance: a nappy with some yellow papier mâché gunk attached to it. When this slightly disturbing visual stimulus reached Ian, he became the most animated I’d ever seen him. He held the nappy up to his mouth and pretended to be sick in it. Ian found this a lot more amusing than Helen, who shrieked, ‘Ian, that’s disgusting!’ before handing the full nappy back to Maggie.

It hit home that having a baby was not glamorous, however hard you tried to dress it up. It was unfortunate that this topic was covered just before lunch, because it reminded me of my stodgy banana cake lying beneath its thick layer of icing just a few feet away from us.

Jason’s earlier enthusiasm seemed to have disappeared quite quickly. I wasn’t too surprised when he popped out for some ‘air’ after the nappy segment. But when he went for a toilet break twice, then outside again to check his phone, it started to irritate me. If he couldn’t sit through one meeting, how was he was going to cope with a newborn baby? His behaviour seemed uncharacteristically fidgety. We hadn’t even broken for lunch when Jason failed to return from a third trip to the toilet. I checked my phone and found a message:

Feeling dodgy. Have popped out for air, and to go home to change into a less hot jumper. Jx