‘I fell in love with Jos and the church didn’t like that, so… because I’d studied immunology and cell biology before training to be a priest I was able to get a job in the Public Health Department in Liverpool. This was just at the time when Britain had started to wake up to HIV and AIDS… and because Thatcher had all that scientific training she understood the huge public health challenge to prevent the spread of HIV. Although it must have gone against all of her Conservative instincts, she listened carefully to public health doctors and drug addiction service workers all over the country and agreed that the National Health Service should fund a prevention programme. That meant opening clinics for street drug users to be prescribed with methadone, syringe and needle exchange schemes so that injectors didn’t have to share needles, the provision of free condoms to sex workers and gay men. Teams of outreach workers were employed to do public education with hard-to-reach groups of people deemed to be at risk of infection because of their behaviours. Margaret Thatcher saw to it that hundreds of millions of pounds of additional funding went to the health service to do this work, and I was lucky enough to be in the right place, at the right time, and I became one of the people managing that whole project in Liverpool.’

‘I didn’t know that you’d done that sort of work. Were you successful?’

‘British cities have some of the lowest HIV infection rates anywhere in the world, and a lot of gay men came to understand the need for safer sex… but we still – nearly thirty years on – have a lot of people addicted to prescribed methadone. Perhaps it’s the lesser of two evils.’

‘Maybe,’ Fridolin said thoughtfully.

‘So… how can I hate the woman? Because of her public health policy I got five or six of the most challenging and fulfilling years of my professional working life; I got paid really well and was able to buy an apartment… and after being kicked out of the church I found a new purpose and a new direction.’

‘She did some good then… not such a wicked witch –.’

‘Ah… but wait,’ Elgan said, waving a pointed finger. ‘Story number two – Once upon a time there was a little book called Jenny lives with Eric and Martin, a children’s picture book from Denmark. Five-year-old Jenny lives happily with her father, Eric, and his boyfriend Martin –.’

Fridolin laughed. ‘And this is a story about Margaret Thatcher?’ he quizzed.