Becoming a parent changes you completely. Not becoming a parent changes you completely, too.

Childlessness gets into every nook and cranny.

Men become broody, too.

One of the nearly people. Underused. Unused. Empty. 

Bonsais grow slowly, Dave. If at all. Looks like you chose the wrong plant.

They’re all mums or mums-to-be. Chatting about infertility over an Americano tends not to be their number one priority.

Oh, it’s a ‘journey’ now, is it? Where did you get that one from? Everything is a fucking journey these days. Stinks of self-help books. 

Even the words hurt: family, children. 

It was like I was wearing a kind of … cultural straitjacket that I couldn’t unbutton.

AMY

The launch-pad at Cape Canaveral. The drugs, the daily injections, scans and blood tests, the procedures, Gary has given his one sample. We’ve got our embryos. The rocket is ready. Then it’s five, four, three, two, one. We have lift-off. Then we wait to see if it reaches its target. The most excruciating two-week wait.

I look at those boys in 7B – even when they’re being cocky little fucking shits – and I think they could be my sons, my cocky little fucking shits. 

It’s just one-upmanship. School gates rivalry. Prams in the playground at dawn.

I hate green. I hate summer. I hate nature. I hate nature! I was in the park during the last two-week wait from hell, looking at fish in the lake. Huge great things. Then I saw the little ones, hundreds of them. They made my stomach turn because even bloody fish have got bloody babies. And here I am with my failure of a body. My ovaries will be joining the hidden ranks of the jobless, thrown on the scrapheap. Obsolete design. An analogue fanny with built-in obsolescence. And to think I spent so many years trying to stop myself from having a baby — caps, coils, condoms. 

DAVE

Ah yes. The three Cs. And don’t forget the pull-out policy.

DAVE

When other guys were taking their ‘garp yar’ before uni and getting their heads together at some orang-utan rehabilitation centre in the jungles of Borneo, I was making money. No time to find out who I was. They may have found themselves, but the only ‘soul’ I had was on the bottom of my shoes. 

AMY

You sure you’re looking after this properly? What have you been doing to it?

DAVE

Nothing.

AMY

Exactly. Nothing. Nurture, Dave, nurture. 

AMY

I don’t know what he was expecting. An oven-ready baby. Like all you have to do is Google it.

AMY

Do you know the one thing that makes infertility impossible to accept?

DAVE

Tell me.

AMY

Hope. 

DAVE

Hope?

AMY

Yes, hope. Great, big, wide hope. It’s like the full moon shining bright on a cold, winter’s night. Big, strange, wonderful, life-changing. I want that. I can’t just magic these feelings away. I’ve got to keep going. Somehow. 

DAVE

Not much need for a penis or testicles now. Just carry on making money, mate. That’s what you’re here for.

AMY

What happens next?

DAVE

More bloody questions. 

AMY

Questions?

DAVE

Yes, they’ll be on our trail, you can be sure of that. Do you have any children?

AMY

Not the last time I looked. I clean forgot. So, do you have any kids?

DAVE

Have you thought of adopting? 

AMY

Have you thought of fostering?

DAVE

It’ll happen when the time is right.

AMY

All you have to do is stop trying.

DAVE

It’s only a matter of time.

VOICES OFF

You only understand the real meaning of love when you have children.

VOICES OFF

Speaking as a father ….

VOICES OFF

Speaking as a mother …

VOICES OFF

At least you get to travel.

VOICES OFF

Lucky you! You get to have a lie-in.

DAVE

You obviously did something bad in a former life. This is your punishment.

AMY

Having children is a woman’s greatest achievement.

VOICES OFF

Have you thought of getting a dog?

VOICES OFF

Have you thought of getting a cat?

VOICES OFF

You can take mine off my hands if you like.

VOICES OFF

You can have mine for the weekend.

VOICES OFF

Think yourself lucky.

VOICES OFF

You can just carry on like you’re still in your twenties. 

VOICES OFF

Christmas is for the kids.

AMY

Enough, enough. 

AMY

No holding of little hands. No cradling after grazed knees. No running helter-skelter down the path. No lullabies. No gurgling. No burping. No messy ice-cream.

DAVE

No guidance. No providing. No reading stories. No baking cakes. No screams of joy. No visits to the zoo. No walks in the park. It’s like grieving for a dead person – except that there isn’t one.

DAVE

Dear, Amy. Will you be my childless ally, please?

DAVE

I could have avoided all this. If I hadn’t been so bloody selfish. My childlessness is a vicious combination of circumstances. But yours, Amy, is one big bit of bad luck which you couldn’t avoid. One fucking great physical glitch. 

DAVE

The chance to live another kind of life.

AMY

A new kind of future. Unknown. Exciting. 

DAVE

And you and me. New kind of friends. In-the-same-boat friends.

AMY

I’m a child again. I’m in Mum and Dad’s living room looking into the fire. Watching the flames. Watching the future take shape. Twisting, turning, dancing, dreaming. 

DAVE

Me too. Having a child. It’ll stay a dream forever. As the years go by, I can perfect that dream – inside myself. 

DAVE

My God, it’s the dawn. Hey, Amy, look! There is the future. 

AMY

What’s it look like, Dave? 

DAVE

Hard to tell. 

DAVE

If … only. 

AMY

If only.