‘Hi all, I’m Lucy Raven, baby boy, due May 31^st. Looking forward to starting maternity leave in a few weeks. Still got a ton of nursery prep to do at home though. My partner, Oscar, is also working today. He’ll join one of the other classes. That’s me, I guess.’ She folded her arms and sat back in her seat, signalling she’d said her bit and wasn’t opening the floor for questions. She seemed to have her shit together – it was a little intimidating.

Maggie nodded; she seemed impressed too. I noted Lucy wasn’t wearing any rings on her wedding finger.

Seeing Lucy here on her own made me feel better about Jason’s absence, but I wondered how she really felt about it. She certainly came across as perfectly happy and confident, so I decided to take a leaf from her book and sat up a little taller.

The last couple to be introduced were sat on my right: a tall black guy with a chiselled face called Will, who could easily have been a model, and his partner, a white woman called Carol, who was not unattractive but not nearly as head-turningly gorgeous. Were Will single, I’d have been tempted to trade Jason in for him; he had ‘swipe right’ written all over him. There seemed something mismatched about them. Will did most of the talking and while he spoke, Carol delved into a little blue bag hanging from her chair and retrieved her phone, which she cradled in her palm as if she might need to ‘phone a friend’ at any moment.

‘The baby is due on the 22^nd of May and it will be a hospital birth for us, too,’ Will informed us in a matter-of-fact way. He had a deep, thespian voice.

‘My husband, Christian, will join one of the other sessions,’ he continued. He paused for a moment, gauging correctly that we had all naturally assumed Carol was his other half. Carol gave us a small shy smile, while Will seemed to enjoy the attention from his captive audience. His timing was brilliant; I wondered if he was an actor, as well as a model. ‘Carol is our surrogate,’ he continued. ‘She’s had a baby before, but fancied a refresh, so we enrolled in this class. You’ll get to meet Christian soon.’ He turned to her and they exchanged a warm look. ‘Christian and I are both planning to be there for the birth, and then we will be the legal parents – the two dads. Carol will be moving back to the Ukraine.’ He looked at Maggie with a neutral face, as if waiting for her to ask a question.

Maggie simply smiled and said, ‘How wonderful!’

Will had delivered his lines beautifully and he had made me stop and think. I had been so consumed by my own pregnancy journey, I hadn’t really appreciated how difficult it might have been for other couples to conceive. You kind of assume that for everyone else it’s easy. Having some more unusual family set-ups in the group was going to make it more interesting.