‘Here. Look.’ I pulled up the story on my phone, and handed it over to her. ‘Melbourne woman gives birth in an Uber. She’s not from Melbourne, she’s from Portsmouth.’

‘Oh. Oh, I’m sorry Paul. You weren’t still hoping…?’

‘I was. Stupid me. We’d always spoken of having kids ourselves. It just wasn’t the right time.’

‘It never is. You just work it out as you go along. I didn’t think I wanted to be pregnant with you but I couldn’t have been happier when you came along.’

‘You didn’t want to be pregnant with me?’

I was joking but she took me seriously.

‘We were enjoying being young, living in Manchester, having friends. Teaching wasn’t so bad then, it was a challenge, it was getting easier, I thought it would get easier forever.’

‘I’m sorry I ruined that for you.’

‘Don’t be daft. I’m glad. It wouldn’t have been you if we’d waited, it would have been someone else.’

‘I’m even more sorry about that. You might have given birth to a doctor or a lawyer.’

‘Stop it. I’m proud of you, Paul,’ she said.

‘What for?’

‘For everything.’

‘But specifically.’

‘Don’t be daft. Well… you’re funny.’

‘That’s it? I’m funny? Jesus Christ.’

She tutted. The Lord’s name in vain. It would have been cruel to upset her by letting her know that Monica had been pregnant with our child a few years ago. She was twenty-seven, I was twenty-eight; after years of being exploited as an assistant her career was just beginning to get moving.

We were both very tentative and considerate; we would do what the other wanted. I like to think I would have been delighted if she’d said she wanted the baby. And now I always wonder if she would have been delighted if I’d said I wanted it, her, him. But we both shied away from that. We were living in the château and earning very little money. We had this idea that if we just waited three years, ‘three years’ was the magic number we had in our head, then we’d be in a position to give our child a proper home. The Tories had just got in; what eager bourgeois we were. I don’t blame us for our conventional desire for a place to live, but I wonder if it was cowardice that I’d dressed up as feminism: it was her body and I had not wanted the responsibility of voicing an opinion about her body, for being responsible for the way her body and our lives would change forever if she had decided differently. We were both relieved to use the other as our excuse to prolong our freedom and decadence for another few years.