We chatted for a while. Rose told us they’d recently bought a huge house called The Willows, not far from our own village. A ‘complete wreck’, she called it, and laughed about how they were going to have to spend years doing it up and how they were both hopeless at that sort of thing. So Doug told them he was a builder and gave them a bit of advice, offered to come out and take a look at it, which they seemed very pleased about.

On the way home I thought about them; about their gorgeous daughter and how content they all looked. I’d stopped taking the pill not long after Doug and I were married, and the worry, the anxiety, had already firmly set in by then, because month after month, year after year, my period would turn up regular as clockwork, and I suppose deep down, I knew something was very wrong. So as we drove home I thought about the Lawson family and closed my eyes and wished and wished with all my heart that we’d be as happy as them one day too.

Despite how nice she was, it was still unusual for someone like me to strike up a friendship with someone like Rose. Even though we weren’t very far apart in age, we were poles apart in terms of class and education. But in fact, six months after that meeting in Sainsbury’s we did become friends, because of a series of events that led us to forming an unusual sort of bond. I suppose it was a case of luck, of being in the right place at the right time – or so it felt back then. Looking back of course, I’m not sure how ‘lucky’ our friendship really was, when you think about what went on to happen.

It began because I was temporarily placed on the maternity ward, due to a staff shortage. Of course, as a paediatric nurse I was well used to working amongst children, had learnt to shut my private longing away in a little box inside myself when dealing with my young patients. But the maternity ward was a different matter. The placement coincided with a brief but unsuccessful pregnancy that had ended in miscarriage. It was the first time I’d actually managed to get pregnant and so much excitement and relief and hope was wrapped up in that positive test result. Doug and I could barely contain ourselves, walking around with our hearts in our mouths, almost too nervous to breathe, praying that finally, finally, everything was going to be OK.