I must say it was lucky that Lucy did not require one of her servicings on demand tonight because I don’t feel much of a man at the moment. I can still support us in the style to which we are accustomed, but at what cost to my pride? If I thought I had a nothing job before, I don’t know what I’ve got now. A timeserving sideways shunt of a dead-end grace-and-favour pile of shite, that’s what. I mean, radio entertainment’s fine up at the posh end, the Radio 4 clever quizzes, witty, ’varsity stuff and edgy alternatives, but all that’s already spoken for. I’ve been dumped down at the Radio One yoof end and they don’t want comedy. They want attitude and I’m a deal too old to give them that.

Anyway, to my surprise Lucy was quite positive about the situation. She seemed to think that it was a good thing. She pointed out that I’d never liked my job anyway, and now I’d have the time to do what I really want to do, which is write.

Well that of course brought on the same old row.

“Oh yes, that’s a good idea,” I said. “I’ll just bash off an award-winning script now, shall I? Except hang on, that’s right, I remember, I haven’t written a bloody word in years.”

A bit bitter, I know, but it had been a pretty rotten day. Lucy always hates it when I get negative on her.

“And do you know why?” she snapped. “Because you’ve given up on your emotions, that’s why. If you live your life entirely superficially how do you expect to write anything?”

Well, this sort of thing carried on back and forth until we went to bed, both pretty depressed. Lucy was out like a light, emotionally exhausted, poor thing, what with all that infertility about the place and having a completely useless husband. I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep. What Lucy had said kept ringing in my ears. Maybe I do avoid my writing so that I don’t have to explore my emotions? Or is it the other way round? Do I ignore my feelings so that I’ll be sure that I’ll have nothing to write about? Either way it’s a pretty sad effort. Then I began to wonder what my emotions would be if I had any. What was happening inside me? Did I care much about losing my job? No, I didn’t really care much about my job because I was no good at it. In fact I didn’t deserve it in the first place. I was no good as a commissioning editor because I was too bloody jealous of the people I was commissioning, which was pathetic. So what did I feel? When I wasn’t avoiding my feelings? That I want to write? Who cares? That I love Lucy? Well that’s not a bad subject. Love always goes down well. That I want Lucy and me to have children? I certainly feel that. I may never say it, but I want more than anything else in the world for Lucy and me to have children.

And then it struck me! It was such a shock that I went cold. It was so obvious! How could I have missed it! That’s what I would write about! I sat bolt upright in bed. The whole thing seemed to leap into my mind fully formed. It made me dizzy there was so much of it coming to me at once.

“I’ve got it, Lucy!” I shouted and she nearly fell out of bed in shock.

“Got what?”

I could hardly form a coherent sentence I had so much to say. The words tumbled out in a stream.

“My theme. The inspiration I need! It’s so obvious, darling, I can’t think how I’ve missed it. I’ll write about an infertile couple! It’s a real modern drama, about life and the absence of life… There’s jokes, too. But proper jokes. Sad jokes, which are the best kind. Sperm tests, postcoital examinations, guided fantasy sessions… Imagine it! The disintegration of this couple’s sex life, the woman beginning to think about nothing but fertility, going all tearful over baby clothes… Adopting a gorilla…”

Writing it down now I admit it looks a little insensitive but I swear I didn’t mean it to be. After all, I was talking about writing a story, a fiction, about two fictitious people, not us at all. Perhaps I could have put it better, but I was so excited. This was the first decent idea I’d had in years.

“The thing will write itself,” I said and the ideas just kept tumbling into my head and straight out of my mouth…

“How about a scene where the woman can’t decide which herbal teabag would be most aromatherapeutically conducive to her biorhythms? Or some sort of open-air ritual… It’ll be bloody hilarious…”

I would have gone further. I could have gone on for hours. I was really on a roll, as they say, but at that moment Lucy stopped me. Well, when I say stopped me, she threw half a cup of cold herbal tea in my face.

“How about a scene where the woman throws her herbal tea all over the callous bastard who wants to rape her soul for a few cheap laughs,” she said.

It took me a moment to cut through the bitter irony to realize the point she was making. I was astonished. I’m not astonished now, of course, having had time to reflect on what she was getting at, but at the time I couldn’t work out her attitude at all.

“What!” I exclaimed. “But you said! You said! You told me to look within!”

“I didn’t tell you to try to turn our private misery into a public joke!” I’ve hardly ever seen her so angry. “Maybe it’s a good thing if we are infertile. If we did have kids you’d probably expect them to pay their way by becoming child prostitutes!”

This was pretty strong stuff. I mean, I understood that she was upset and everything, but child prostitutes? Come on.

“You don’t understand anything!” she said. “I’m thirty-four. I’ve been trying for a child for over five years! I may well be barren, Sam!”

Well now I admit that I lost it a bit too. I mean it seems to me that Lucy has developed a habit of seeing the fertility thing as being pretty much exclusively her problem, just because I deal with it in a different way to her. I mean I’m in this marriage too, aren’t I? I have feelings and I had thought that I was under orders to get in touch with them. I mean, maybe we are infertile. I don’t know, perhaps we can’t have children. But if we can’t, what does she want me to do about it? Go into mourning? Weep and wail over the absence of a life that never even existed in the first place?

I’m afraid I put this point to Lucy and she took it as confirmation of her long-nurtured suspicion that I don’t care whether we have a baby or not. In fact I probably don’t even want one. After this I probably said too much. It’s just that I don’t think she was even trying to see it from my point of view.

“And what if I don’t?” I said. “Does that make me a criminal? Have I betrayed our love because I happen to place some value on my own existence? On my career and my work? Because I have not committed my entire emotional wellbeing to the possibility of some abstract, non-existent life which we may or may not be able to produce?”

Lucy was near to tears but like the bastard that I am I pressed my advantage.

“I mean isn’t this near deification of the next generation all a bit bloody primitive? A baby is born. Its parents devote their lives to it, sacrificing everything they might have hoped to have done themselves. Then, when that baby is finally in a position to fulfil its own destiny and also the dreams its parents had for it, that baby has its own baby and the whole thing starts again. It’s positively primeval.”

Lucy got up and went and made herself a cup of herbal, which I hoped she wasn’t planning to throw at me. When she came back she said, “It’s life, Sam! It’s what we’re here for, not… not to make bloody films.”

But that’s the point, isn’t it? As far as I’m concerned I am here to make films! Or at least to fulfil and express myself in one way or another. I mean I only have one life, don’t I? And it’s the one I’m living, not the one I may have a hand in creating. I know that sounds selfish but is it actually any more selfish than seeking to replace yourself on the planet? I don’t know. Anyway, I tried to calm things down a bit, so that we could get some sleep if nothing else.