Peter’s book was progressing well, so we settled to a nightly routine after supper, broken only by unwanted visits from a “friend” John Longdon, a very intelligent but very boring man who was working as a statistician for the health service. Soon he was coming every evening and staying and staying until in desperation we said “Sorry, John, but we must go to bed”.

“Don’t worry,” he would say. “I’ll let myself out,” which was not what we had hoped to hear. However, he did respect Peter’s need to write and mine to type and we could think of no way of discouraging him.

There was still no sign of another child! So we decided we needed help and our doctor referred us to a Sterility Clinic in a hospital in London. I forget which one!

At first I went alone. All the doctors were male; the one who examined me being particularly young and handsome. He questioned me closely.

“How often do you and your husband have sex?”

“Most nights unless one of us is very tired.”

“Fine! Nothing wrong there! You would be surprised how many couples say they manage it at least once a month, and then wonder why they can’t conceive!”

Then I had tests.

“Nothing wrong there as far as I can tell. Now I would like to see your husband.”

I made an appointment. Peter was terribly insulted at first but then began to see it all as a bit of a joke. The appointment was early, so he took the day off school and we left Gale with Lynne and Jill so that we could spend the night at Canonbury Square with Geraldine and Randall Swingler, who thought it all hilariously funny. Geraldine took me aside and offered me the services of her husband if Peter proved sterile.

“He wouldn’t make any claim on the child,” she assured me.

“It would be entirely yours and Peter’s.” She didn’t mean by artificial insemination either.

By then the whole subject had turned Peter on and we spent most of that night, much against my better judgment, making love. So I was not unduly surprised at the hospital, when Peter was sent into a private room and asked to produce a specimen, that he took a fair time. On examination the doctor said the sperm proved a bit sluggish and many had bent tails. Of course, he didn’t tell them what he had been up to the night before.