‘The positives [of a child-free life] for me are more time and money, to do all the things I want to do in life.’

J, 32

32

Marcus and I are sitting side by side with our laptops on his small kitchen island, going through emails and other bits and bobs for work. He’s wearing a pair of light brown glasses that he only wears when at this computer and a big knitted jumper – I keep looking up just to catch a glimpse. He’s deep in thought, with frown lines across his forehead. He then looks up, takes off his glasses and turns to me.

‘Ol, I’ve been thinking,’ he says.

‘Yeees?’ I reply, clicking ‘send’ on an email to Colin.

‘You should meet my girls soon.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah!’

I gulp, feeling caught off guard. ‘OK, I would love to.’

‘It just feels wrong now to be tiptoeing around them. They’ll love you,’ he says. The only reason I am sat in Marcus’s house right now is because they are both away on holiday with some family friends.

‘That would be wonderful – just let me know when,’ I say, smiling.

‘OK.’ He nods. He makes us both a cup of tea while singing to himself and I tell him to ‘sshh’ because I’m trying to write. A sign of closeness.

The idea of meeting Marcus’s two girls is, of course, terrifying. It’s a relief that they’re old enough to hopefully welcome new people, but they’re also old enough to really analyze me and question me in ways I’m not sure I want to be questioned. For once, the tables will turn, and I’ll be the interviewee. When we first started going out, Marcus would call his kids ‘the fifteen-year-old’ and ‘the seventeen-year-old’, I assumed as a distancing technique so that I wouldn’t start getting too attached in the early stages. They didn’t even have names until recently. Now I know: Caitlin and Sally.

When I get back to my place, I pick up my keys and bag to leave the house and find a note wedged in my letterbox. It’s written in old squiggly writing, I can hardly make out the letters:

Happy Birthday OLIVE – thank you for being a great friend to your old neighbour. Dorothy x

I smile and fold up the note, and put it in my pocket. The air outside is warm, and everything finally feels like it’s moving along just how it’s supposed to.

The following weekend, I follow a pebbled path in Hampstead and finally arrive at the Mason’s Head, a big grey pub with foliage growing around all the windows. There are orange lights framing the arch of the doorway and a festive feeling in the air. Old lampposts flicker like a scene from Mary Poppins. I push open a heavy wooden door and the barman, cleaning some glasses, says hello.

I can see Marcus waving; he is sitting at the back at a corner table. A girl with a dark brown bob is seated in front of Marcus, with her back to me. She turns around and waves coyly. That must be Caitlin, the seventeen-year-old. She is wearing a leather jacket which has ‘God Is A Woman’ painted in gold on the back. On closer inspection she has bits of blue dye on the tips on her hair. Sally, the fifteen-year-old, has longer, darker brown hair and heavy winged eyeliner. She is seated next to Marcus and is wearing a long black dress, a black cashmere beret and Dr. Martens boots. Her head is resting on his shoulder.