And then he kisses me, very slowly, and intimately, and with patience, and skill, and infinite variety, for what seems ages, while I completely lose myself in him.

Mimi

After the mandatory hour reading my way through a dog-eared stack of Dorset Lifes in the waiting room at the surgery my name is called, just as I’ve found the new Vanity Fair with an exposé of a Hollywood murder in it that looks enjoyably juicy. I lay it down, gather up my things, and go.

‘Ah, Mrs Fleming, a very good morning,’ Dr Ashburton says, not looking at me but at the morning appointments on his screen. He has the glum air of the country doctor for whom attending to patients is an unwelcome distraction from the important main business of the day, which is hunting to hounds. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asks, looking at his watch.

Explain I’m feeling, you know… slight temperature, chest now so big could eat breakfast off my own boobs, metallic taste in mouth, period late. I pause, as if there was no need to go on.

‘Have you been in contact with animals?’ is his incisive first question, as he makes tiny marks with his biro on my notes.

‘Well, we do have a dog and a pony,’ I answer. I don’t say ‘Trumpet’ because I am now all too aware that everyone in the village is stalking me to steal away Trumpet for the nippers to use on first days ‘out’, which is how the hearty refer to the sacred sport.

‘Children ill? Any viruses going round at home?’ is his next line of enquiry.

‘Not that I know of,’ I answer. At this, Dr Ashburton seems well and truly stumped. He takes my temperature, giving me a two-minute opportunity to study the lush thicket of black hair sprouting vigorously from his ear. The thermometer reads 99 degrees. ‘Is that high?’ I ask hopefully.

‘No,’ he answers, putting it back on the desk, and looking at me over his spectacles, which I can’t help notice have a drab frosting of flakes and smears on the lenses.

‘Do you think there’s any possible chance I might be, urn…’ I trail off. I want Ashburton to join the dots for me.

‘Contagious?’ he queries.

‘No, I just thought, all my symptoms…’ I give a light laugh. ‘To tell you the truth, the last time I felt like this, I was pregnant with Posy.’

Dr Ashburton raises his luxuriant eyebrows, which have long, bristly hairs extruding, and I see him glance at my date of birth onscreen.

I want to shout at him. After all, he has two children, is miles older than me, and I don’t hear anyone accusing him of being a medical miracle or a senior father.

Men get away with everything when it comes to parenthood.

Dr Ashburton sighs heavily. He opens a drawer. Then another. Then he rather reluctantly gets up, and leaves the room without explanation. He leaves the door open. He is gone some time. I hear doors open and close in the corridor.