“Look, Lucy, I’m sorry… I don’t want to upset you. Of course I want us to have a baby, it’s just… it’s just…”

Lucy was not in the mood to be calmed.

“It’s just you want to write a comedy about it,” Lucy said. “Well, if you ever even so much as mention the idea of exploiting our personal misery for your profit again I’ll leave you. I will, Sam. I mean that, I’ll leave you.”

With that she turned her back on me and we lay there together in grim, wakeful silence.

Dear Penny

I had a pretty rotten night last night. Sam and I had a row. He thinks I’m a mawkish self-indulgent obsessive and I think he’s an arrogant self-obsessed emotional retard. However, I’ll write no more of that at the moment because there was dreadful news this morning which certainly puts my little worries into perspective.

Melinda rang at about nine to say that Cuthbert had been taken into hospital with suspected meningitis. He’s at the Royal Free in Hampstead and Melinda is in with him. We won’t know the full picture for a day or two, but it might be very serious indeed. Poor Melinda must be going mad. If it is meningitis then even if Cuthbert survives it’s going to mean brain damage and all sorts of complications. Of course it might not be. All we can do is wait. I can hardly bear to think about it. Sam, of course, seems completely unmoved by the news. I know that he isn’t, but that’s how he seems.

Dear Book

I don’t know what Lucy wants from me. We heard horrible, horrible news from George and Melinda today. Cuthbert has suspected meningitis. Lucy’s got herself very upset about it indeed, which I think is unhelpful. There’s no point presuming the worst, after all, and so far it’s only suspected. Of course I understand that Lucy is feeling particularly emotionally raw at the moment where babies are concerned, but I don’t see what she thinks I can do about it. When we heard I said, “Oh dear, that’s absolutely terrible. Poor George and Melinda.” I could see immediately that she did not feel that this was a sufficiently emotionally charged reaction, so I said, “Oh dear” again, but it just sounded worse. It’s frustrating. Of course I’m worried about it and terribly sorry for George and Melinda but I don’t know what else I can say. I rang George and asked if there was anything I could do but of course there isn’t. I felt an idiot even asking. What possible thing would I be able to do?

Dear Penny

No news on Cuthbert. Tests still being carried out.

I went for my interview with the private doctor today. Dr James. He seems quite nice but he won’t actually be doing the operation. All he’ll do is refer me to some clinic in Essex or somewhere else miles away. One ten-minute appointment, one letter, one hundred pounds, that will do nicely, thank you.

I was nearly late for the appointment, in fact, because the address was in Harley Street. 298AA Harley Street. Well I couldn’t believe it, this poxy little flat must have been half a mile from Harley Street! All the way along Weymouth Street. It’s absolutely ridiculous that these doctors can attach a snob value to an entirely false address. I mean, honestly, we might as well all say we live in Harley Street. Anyway, Dr James saw me promptly, which was a new experience for me, and they also offered coffee and biscuits which I did not have as I imagine that in the private sector the going rate for a custard cream is about ten quid. I told Dr James how far I’d got with investigating infertility and as expected he booked me in for a bellybutton broadcast. It makes me feel quite ill even to think about it.

Afterwards I went up to the Royal Free in Hampstead to see Melinda and Cuthbert. It was heartbreaking. All these tiny babies and little toddlers so sick and scared. It just isn’t fair. Melinda is bearing up but has had very little sleep and looks pretty grim. Cuthbert was in an isolation ward and I didn’t see him, but Melinda says he looks so vulnerable and fragile that she could hardly bear it. She says every fibre of her being wants to do something to protect him but there’s nothing she can do. So she just sits and waits, consumed with weird feelings of guilt plus fear and also terrible visions of Cuthbert in pain or dying or becoming damaged. Then she started crying and I cried too, which was absolutely ridiculous as I was supposed to be comforting her. So I told her about Sam and me shagging on top of Primrose Hill which made her laugh, but of course the story doesn’t have a funny ending because it didn’t work. Then she asked me about Lord Byron Phipps and I told her not to be silly and that that was all forgotten about. Little did I know.

Anyway, when I left the hospital I had to go and sit on a bench on the Heath for a while because I was too upset and emotional about poor little Cuthbert. I mean obviously he’s not mine but I know him pretty well and quite frankly any baby in torment has always broken my heart. I suppose it would do anyone. I rang Sam on his mobile just for a chat, but he’s in the process of tying up the loose ends of his old job and I could tell he was busy. “So no news, then?” he said, which really meant, “Why the hell are you calling me?” Sam is very practical in that respect.

Anyway, I wasn’t feeling much better when I got back to work, which I’m afraid was not necessarily a very good thing. You see, when I got to the office, in, as I must point out again, a highly vulnerable and emotional state, the place was empty save for Carl Phipps! He was standing over my desk reading a contract.

There is no point denying that he looked handsome. Very handsome. He’d hung up his big coat and was standing there in a baggy white shirt open to the chest. What with his tight black Levi 501s and his Cuban-heeled boots all he needed was a rapier and he could have fought a duel.

“Sheila and Joanna are down at the Apollo press call,” he began to explain, but then he said, “You’ve been crying.”

“No, I haven’t,” I lied pathetically.

“Tell me what’s wrong, Lucy. I hate to see you cry.”

Well, that was it. Suddenly I was in floods and before I knew it he had his arm around me and was comforting me. I honestly do not think that at this point he was making a move on me. At least if he was it was a very subtle one. No, I genuinely think that he was just trying to be nice. Although I’m not sure if men are ever entirely non-sexual in their actions. Anyway, first I told him all about little Cuthbert and how worried I was for George and Melinda. He was quite wonderful about that actually, genuinely concerned and in fact he knew rather a surprising amount about the symptoms.

“The majority of suspected cases turn out to be just that, suspected.”

“How do you know?” I asked into his chest.

“I’m an actor,” he replied. “It’s my job to know.”

Well, even in my highly charged state this was a bit close to luvviedom for me and I think Carl felt the same because he quickly went on to explain.

“I played a junior doctor in three episodes of Angels a few years back. Tiny part but that’s never an excuse for not doing the research.”

He was stroking my hair now, just in a comforting way.

“The symptoms in these cases are quite generalized and sometimes the real cause of the problem is never known, the baby just gets over it. Babies are very tough, you know, and very brave, even though they don’t look it.”

I must say, he made me feel a lot better about things, although I still scarcely dared hope, but it was just so nice talking to him, such a change from Sam, which I know is a horrible thing to say but it’s how I felt. Anyway, I ended up telling him all about myself, even all my infertility fears. He was a really good listener, which is quite rare in an actor and really seemed concerned. Of course he came up with all the same old stories that everyone comes up with about friends and cousins who tried for years and then had ten, but somehow coming from him they seemed genuinely comforting.