‘Yes, I think it does,’ I say, in a cautious voice. I’d heard of the Teletubbies, of course, but don’t have a very clear idea what Mimi was talking about (I never allowed Ceci to watch children’s television) and I was always very, very careful about contraception myself, in case we had another baby, but this wasn’t the moment.

We wait for an ambulance to overtake us. Godminster General, with its maternity unit, its A&E, its terrible on-site incinerator, is plonked right next door to the undertaker’s, so this really is a one-stop shop for every stage of life and, as if on cue, we both watch without comment as two heavily pregnant young girls – children, they couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen – went past, pushing prams, on their way to antenatal clinic.

I wonder whether this is a good moment or a bad moment to point out that, these days, it’s really weird, women are all either having babies before they’re twenty or delaying it till they’re forty, but Mimi goes on.

‘Then we were shown our beds, in blue-curtained cubicles, with curtains that didn’t quite shut, and told to place our plastic bags underneath them. Then a medic came and asked me lots of questions and wrote down my answers. She was very sweet. But one of them asked about my existing children, and why I was doing it. I tried not to cry. I just didn’t know what to say. I felt so sad.

‘Then she looked apologetic and asked me if I would consent to being examined by her, internally, under anaesthetic, as part of her training. I looked at her. She looked at me, and blushed. As she was sweet and looked embarrassed I said yes, though I have to say that I felt the hospital had singled out me, the lone middle-class mother, for this privilege.’

‘No, Mimi. I would have chosen you, too,’ I say, stoutly.

‘The anaesthetists arrived in green scrubs, with their heads covered in white caps. I was quite pleased to see them, even though in a few minutes I would be dead to the world and exposed to them. It meant it would all be over. They were so gentle, Rose! One of them touched my arm and said, “I’m John, darling. I’ll be putting you to sleep.” It made a real difference. They all treated us sort of non-mothers with a tenderness I never expected. They were like human rights workers, on field trips to failed states.’