Inconceivable

I went in to see Nigel today. He’d rung me twice from Toronto sounding me out about directors and co-producers. He feels we need to bring some experienced film-making talent into the mix. He’s right, I think. I mean George and Trevor are great but what do they or I know about doing a distribution deal with a chain of movie houses in France? Besides which, Nigel feels that the budget will need to expand somewhat and put it outside the reach of the BBC alone. The reason for this is not because the film has got any more expensive but because Nigel feels it has such potential that we need to take it to a name director, someone with a proven track record. That of course means paying the going rate, which can run into a great deal of cash. It’s a fact that with most movies, particularly the Hollywood variety, a very large chunk of the vast budgets that are quoted so gloatingly in the press is actually spent on the wages of just a few individuals.

Anyway, as I say, Nigel wants to make this movie in partnership with another production company.

“We need someone with experience,” he said to me over the phone with the voices of Canadian TV execs crackling in the background, “but hip. We must remember at all times that we are positioning ourselves at the cutting edge.”

I knew what was coming and I wasn’t wrong. Today I had my second meeting with Justin, Petra and Ewan Proclaimer from Above The Line Productions.

I must say it was a very different affair this time. Petra actually smiled at me and Justin gripped my shoulder saying, “On the money, pal. Kickin’ ass.” Even Ewan stopped snarling and treated me with a degree of civility. It seems that he’s even hotter than he was when I met him at Claridge’s. He’s landed a three-picture deal to direct in Hollywood. I doubt any of these films will be the Aids and Heroin project he showed me. In fact he mentioned something about a sci-fi thing with Gary Oldham and Bruce Willis. Anyway, it seems he has a six-month “window” before he begins pre-production “across the big pond”, and he loves my script.

“I love romantic comedy,” he explained. “I’ve always liked romantic comedy but not shite romantic comedy. I like romantic comedy with edge, with bite, with bollocks! To me Macbeth is a romantic comedy, so’s Oedipus. I mean what could be more romantic than a man loving his ma so much he wants to shag her? And what could be more comical?”

Slightly worrying, but I let it go. After all, Ewan’s name attached to the project certainly ups the ante all round. And of course his timetable makes the whole thing even more urgent, which is fine by me. Every film I’ve ever heard of seems to have spent years in the planning and here I was taking shortcut after shortcut.

That brought us on to the script, with which there are still two problems – one little and one big. The little problem is that I haven’t given the story an end yet. I say this is a little problem because I’ve actually worked out two endings that would work dramatically, one happy and one sad. I haven’t been able to choose which one I want to go with yet. I suppose because Lucy and I are just starting IVF ourselves I don’t want to tempt fate.

The bigger problem remains the woman’s voice in the film. Everyone agrees that I haven’t got it right yet and that it’s crucial. It’s not a big thing, the story’s fine as are the jokes, it’s just a matter of tone and emotional emphasis. I have to try and find a way to make the female perspective more convincing. I’m trying. I’ve been trying for days but the more I try the more Rachel turns into a bloke.

Time’s running out. Petra and Justin are setting up auditions. Ewan is scouting for locations. I must find the woman’s voice.

Dear Penny

Picked up my first sackload of drugs from Spannerfield this morning. Me and a bunch of other women, all feeling a bit self-conscious. I have to sniff the first lot, which I’ll begin tonight. You sort of shove a pump up your nose and give it a blast. It doesn’t sound too difficult so far. Incidentally, although we’ll be paying Spannerfield for the process, Dr Cooper says that he’ll pay for the drugs. Apparently some local health authorities will fund fertility treatment and some won’t. Ours will, which is very lucky because the drugs cost literally hundreds of pounds! Life is such a lottery, it really is.

Sam’s going to Manchester for a night the day after tomorrow. It’s this huge charity concert for the Prince’s Trust he’s involved with. The BBC are broadcasting it and for some reason it’s fallen to Sam to represent them. I could go, of course, and normally I’d love to, but I’ve told Sam that I’m still feeling a little under the weather after the pingogram and I could really use a quiet week.

This is a lie!

My God, I can scarcely believe what I’m writing, but I’ve decided to see Carl. He rang me at work and asked me out to dinner and I said yes! Of course there’s no reason for me to feel guilty or anything, I’m just going to have a bite to eat with a friend. I’m not going to do anything with him, obviously! But nonetheless, I can’t say that my conscience isn’t troubling me a bit. Because let’s face it, I’m not going to tell Sam about it. Well, how can I? I can’t say to him, “Oh, by the way, while you’re away I’m going to have dinner with the dishiest man in England whom incidentally I have already snogged,” can I? Of course, I could say, “Oh, I’m having dinner with a friend,” but then he’d say, “What friend?” and I’d say, “Oh, you don’t know him,” and he’d say, “Him?” and I’d say, “Oh, for God’s sake, Sam, it’s not like that,” and he’d say, “Like what?” and… Oh well, before we knew it the Green-Eyed Monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on would be knocking at the door, suitcase in hand and planning a long stay.

Dear Self

I’m writing this in my room at the Britannia Hotel opposite Piccadilly bus station in Manchester, which is, I imagine, what Kremlin Palace must have looked like at the end of October 1917. Magnificent gilt, glittering crystal, carved marble and hundreds of pissed-up yobbos wandering about looking for the bar and a shag. I love it. It’s real rock ’n’ roll.

Most of the BBC posse are staying at the Midland Plaza (which is a Holiday Inn but posher than most). However, Joe London and Woody Monk always stay at the Britannia.

“Vey understand a drinking man here,” said Joe. “Not vat I bovver wiv all vat now, but I like ta rememba, you know wot I mean?”

“And the disco’s always full of lahvly fahkin’ birds,” Monk added.

On inspection Monk was proved right about this. The disco was full of lahvly fahkin’ birds, but very, very tough-looking. Northern girls never cease to amaze me by how tough they look. I think it’s the temperature. They seem to be impervious to cold. They never wear tights! It’s amazing. In the middle of winter in Newcastle or Leeds you’ll see them, making their way from bus station to club, groups of determined-looking girls in tiny minidresses, naked but for a square inch or two of Lycra, bare arms folded against the howling wind, translucent white legs clicking along the sodden pavement in their impossibly precarious shoes. Never mind Scott of the Antarctic, these girls would have done it in half the time and got back before the chip shop closed.

I must say I’m glad I’m married and past all that trying to pull birds business. I’d be far too terrified to talk to girls these days (actually I always was). Still, you can have a bit of a sad old look, can’t you? And Monk, Joe and I have just celebrated the end of a great night by having a last drink in the Britannia Hotel disco.

And it has been a great night, I must say. A genuine rock extravaganza. Everything went brilliantly, not like on Livin’ Large. Believe it or not my bloody sister rang and actually asked if I could take Kylie! I’m afraid the language I used was not very fraternal. I haven’t sworn at her like that since we were teenagers. Kylie’s such a little anarchist these days, she’d probably try to assassinate the Prince.

The show was at the Manchester Evening News Arena, which is just vast. There must have been fifteen thousand fans in there. Amazing. I had a doddle of a job myself, which was to… well… quite frankly, I don’t really know what my job was. Hanging around, I suppose, while the engineers did all the work. That’s what executives do, isn’t it? And eat lunch, of course, but it was far too late to eat lunch.

We had an incredible bill. Representing the wrinklies was Joe London, Rod (obviously) and Bowie. We were to have had Phil Collins but there was fog at JFK. Besides this, we actually had a pretty impressive turn-out of current acts. Maybe the Prince is getting hip again. I certainly noticed that when the final bill was announced some of my fashion junkie colleagues at BH looked quite miffed not to be involved. The biggest booking of the night was Mirage. They’re colossal at the moment and being from Salford were almost local. The lead singer’s name is Manky (I think) and he hates absolutely everything, particularly, it seems, his own band. I went along to the sound check in the afternoon and he was on stage having a fight with the principal songwriter in the band, an ugly-looking bastard called Bushy. What a show! All the mikes were on and this vast concrete arena was echoing to the sound of these two lads yelling abuse at each other and pushing each other around.

“Ya fookin’ cont! Ya can’t fookin’ sing!”

“Ya fookin’ cont! Ya can’t fookin’ write songs.”

My heart sank because Mirage were the top of the bill (although Joe and Rod were pretending they were) and it didn’t look as if Manky and Bushy would survive until the evening. These boys may have been hooligans but they were professional hooligans. One of the other members of the band started strumming his guitar. “Look, are you fookin’ conts just fookin’ fookin’ about? Or are we fookin’ sound fookin’ checkin’, ya conts?”

“Fook it,” said Manky, turning to the mike while Bushy picked out the familiar opening notes of “Get Real”, Mirage’s current smash. I must say, Manky can certainly sing. He has a wonderful sneer in his voice which really does sound like he doesn’t give a fooking fook.

Some people detect a Beatles influence.

When the song was over, Manky snorted with contempt and burped hugely into the microphone. It was amazing. This colossal belch rang around the vast aircraft hangar, bouncing off the walls and the concrete floor. I thought it would bring the ceiling down.

“Ya disgosting cont,” said Bushy, “I’ll ’it ya with me knob, ya sweaty twat.”

After that the whole band had a fight.

As they left the stage I could see two familiar figures approaching across the vast acreage of the venue. It was my old lunch buddies, Dog and Fish, who were to compere the night and provide the “comedy” element. From experience I knew that basically this would involve them coming on between each act and pretending that they did not really want to be there. The strangest aspect of modern compering (or perhaps I should say post-modern compering) is that the host of the evening invariably seems to feel the necessity to disassociate himself from the proceedings, as if it was all some sad joke they’re indulging in for a laugh. You see it at award ceremonies all the time. Some young blade comes on and basically says, “Look, we all know this is a pile of self-indulgent shit and it’s probably fixed, but welcome anyway.” I think it’s a shame. Bring back Michael Aspel, I say, but you see my problem is that I like things to be nice.

“Hullo, Sam,” said Dog. “Shag the Mrs that day, did you?”

For a moment I was at a loss but then I recalled the circumstances of my hasty retreat from One Nine Oh. I didn’t know what to say, so I laughed a bit and left it at that.

“Yeah, sorry you got shafted out of telly,” added Fish. “You were a straight geezer. Best thing that could have happened to you, though. Radio’s the only truly post-modern no-bullshit medium. It’s the new TV.”

“So my successor didn’t give you a series, then?” I asked.

“No. Bastard,” Fish said morosely. “I couldn’t believe it, even after we stormed it in Montreal and all the Yanks were queueing up.”

Oh well, it wasn’t my problem any more. I had this evening to worry about.

“Now, you do know you can’t swear, don’t you?” I said.

“No fucking problem, Sam,” said Dog and laughed as if this was a brilliant joke and they headed for the stage.

I could see why. Brenda was starting her sound check. Brenda is a singer but her real claim to fame is that she is heart-stoppingly gorgeous. A regular star of the cover of Loaded magazine and a new-lad icon. She usually performs in tiny see-through nighties and sings like she’s having an orgasm. The number she was rehearsing is called “Sex Me Again Sexy Baby”. It’s the follow-up to her big hit “Sex Me Sex Me Sex Me”. Unfortunately “Sex Me Again Sexy Baby” seems to have flopped. And our sound engineer told me he’d read that she was going to have to do another Loaded magazine photo spread to revive her career but that the editor has insisted that this time there was to be none of this coy stuff and it would have to be nipples out. In our sad modern world female pop stars have to be very successful indeed before it’s allowable for them to perform with their clothes on.

Brenda was not doing a proper sound check because she was performing to a tape, but obviously a rehearsal was required so that the director of the concert video could ensure that Brenda’s body would be well covered by the cameras if by nothing else.

Brenda’s voice thundered out of the sound system as she strutted and pouted, miming the words.

It was all a bit too much for me. More of that and I’d have had to have a lie-down. I wandered off to have a mooch around the hospitality section. I can’t be standing about in vast empty arenas ogling young girls like that. It’s not good for me. Besides, what would Lucy have thought? I always feel very close to her when I’m away, absence making the heart grow fonder and all that. It made me a bit sad to think of her sitting at home, probably having a solitary bowl of soup or something in front of EastEnders. I called her, but she sounded a bit distracted. She said she was tired and was going to put the answerphone on and go to bed really early.

Dear Penny

We met at Quark. I’ve never been there before but I know Sam goes quite often on his numerous important lunches. It’s very posh and they give you little plates of nibbles the moment you arrive. I got there first (of course!) and sat there feeling like an absolute slut! I mean of course I hadn’t actually done anything wrong but it just seemed to me that everybody knew I was there for a clandestine dinner with a man who was not my husband.

I knew the rash on my neck was coming up. No red wine, I told myself, in fact no wine at all. My God, if I got pissed there was no telling what would happen.

The next thing I knew was that this dashing maitre d’ was opening a bottle of champagne in front of me.

“Meester Pheeepps ’e ’as call to sigh ’e will be a leetle light. ’E sigh to geeeve the liedy shompine.” Well, long story short, as they say, I’d had two and a half glasses by the time Carl turned up. I didn’t want to but when one is just sitting there like a lemon, one does.

Carl looked incredible. Everybody turned to stare. He’s grown his hair and sideburns again (for a part, Dick Turpin, American cable movie, silly script but fun) and what with his dark curls and big coat he looked as if he’d just come back from writing epic poetry and fighting duels in Tuscany. Anyway, he strode straight across to me and without so much as saying “hello” or anything he kissed me on the mouth! I mean he didn’t try to slip me the tongue or anything but it was quite lippy and totally took me by surprise. Then he stood back, stared at me with his smouldering coal-black eyes and said that I looked absolutely ravishing, which I did not, although I must admit that I was wearing a new silk blouse with no bra (silk does rather flatter the smaller bosom like mine).

Anyway, he was full of apologies about being late, rehearsals or something and terribly important meetings. He said he already felt cheated because he knew that my husband was only away for the evening and that he’d already wasted forty precious minutes of it.

Well, that made me think, I must say.

“How did you know Sam was going to be away?” I asked.

Carl looked me in the eye. “I’m ashamed to say that he wrote to me on behalf of His Royal Highness asking me to read a poem at the Prince’s Trust Concert and instead of agreeing, as naturally I normally would have done, I… Well, it seemed like fate.”

I was amazed. He had waited until he knew my husband was out of town and had then brazenly asked me out to dinner!

“This is a planned seduction!” I exclaimed and he continued to stare me in the eye and replied that he certainly hoped so.

God, I must have been the colour of a shy beetroot.

“Carl, I’m married! I… I love my husband. You can’t possibly be serious! I shouldn’t even be here.”

“Then why did you come?” he asked, and I’m afraid to say he had me there. I mean I could have protested that I had accepted his invitation entirely innocently, but after what had gone on between us before? Hardly. And me sitting there with my hair done and a breast-flattering new silk top on? The truth of the matter was that there was no way that this meeting could be innocent. I was just avoiding the truth because I was scared of it.

Carl answered his own question. “You’re here because you’re lonely, Lucy. Because you need tenderness and passion and you’re not getting it. I can see the longing in your eyes.”

I tried to protest that it wasn’t true, but I’d lost the power of forming a coherent sentence, what with the champagne and the fact that in some ways… Oh God, he was right.

“I’ve tried to do the honourable thing and keep away as I said I would,” Carl said, “but when this chance came along I couldn’t fight it any longer. I’ve wanted you from the first day we met, Lucy. You fascinate me. I don’t know any other women like you.”

This couldn’t be true, surely? I mean Carl Phipps is a star, a heart-throb. He could have the pick of the bunch. I put this to him but he insisted that I was different, that he really did want me above all others. Before I knew it, there we were holding hands again. I really don’t know if I encouraged this but I do know that I had left my hand lying prone between us upon the table and when he elegantly rested his hand upon it, I did not withdraw.

Therefore, I suppose I’m as guilty for what ensued as he.

The hospitality backstage was really buzzing. Charlie Stone was doing some interviews to be cut into the broadcast whenever any of the old rockers got into a particularly long guitar solo. I hung around with him and his recordist for a while, partly to let people know that I did have some status and also, let’s face it, because he was interviewing absolutely gorgeous girls, including Brenda.

“So, Brenda,” said Charlie. “What do you say to people who call you a sexist stereotype?”

Brenda drew herself up to her full height, which was about five feet nothing, and answered the charge.

“Well, I think they’re the sexists because they don’t understand that me being proud of my body and getting my kit off is actually all about being strong, and female empowerment and the me I want me to be.”

“Well, it certainly gives me the horn,” Charlie said, getting to the point, so to speak. Brenda smiled a gorgeous smile as if her point had been proved and honour satisfied.

Next I found myself in Joe London’s dressing room. Woody Monk was there, of course, and Wally, the drug-addled lead guitarist of The Muvvers and Joe’s sidekick for nearly thirty years. Wally looked quite extraordinary, like a mummified corpse. He reminded me of that Stone Age hunter they found after he’d been frozen for twenty thousand years in the Alps, except Wally had a feathered haircut with a spiky top which had only been preserved for about thirty years. They were rehearsing one of The Muvvers’ early hits and Joe and Wally seemed to be having a little trouble remembering exactly how the song went. Joe said, “Nah, man, you go fahkin’ da da da dum after the second line when I sing, ‘Youngest gun, dream won’t stop’ awight?”

This threw Wally completely. “Is that the lyric?” he mumbled with apparent surprise.

“Of course it’s the fahkin’ lyric. I mean we’ve only done it eight trillion fahkin’ times, geezer!”

“Well, that’s amazing, man,” said Wally. “I always thought you were singing ‘Currant bun, cream on top’. In’t that amazing?”

Then Joe saw me. It took a moment for him to focus, but he recognized me, which was nice and he seemed genuinely pleased to see me. I told him how proud and happy the BBC were that he and the band had graced us with their presence and he couldn’t have been sweeter about it.

“I larve a big gig, me. A nice big charity gig. ’Ere, Wally, you remember that one we done for RockAid with Mark Knopfler and the Straits?”

“Nah,” said Wally. Silly question really because it was quite obvious that Wally did not really remember anything at all.

“Mark done this guitar solo,” Joe continued, “you know, the one in the middle of ‘Sultans of Swing’… dabadaba dabadab dabad-aba daaaa daaa, he would not stop, daaaa dabadaba dabadab dabadaba daaaa, people was nodding off, going out for fags, getting married, ’aving kids, dying. Mark’s still giving it dabadaba dabadab dabadaba daaaa. ‘Pack it in, you ponce!’ we was all shouting, but old Mark was off in Dabadabaland. In the end we just left ’im to it. I think it’s still going on somewhere as it ’appens.”

Just then Rod Stewart puts his head around the door to say hello. I must admit it was all pretty exciting.

“Rod! ’Ow’s it going, you old bastard? Orlright?” Joe said. “Nice one. ’Ow’s Britt? Sorry Alana. ’Ow’s Alana?”

This was of course something of a faux pas.

“Not Alana, you pillock,” said Monk. “He moved on.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. ’Ow’s Rachel?” Joe corrected himself.

“I don’t fink it’s ’er any more eiver,” said Monk.

“Well, whatever, ven, the new one, ’ow is she?” Joe seemed impervious to social embarrassment. “I saw that calendar she done. Lovely girl, beautiful.”

“Very tasteful,” Monk added.

“Yeah, that’s right, it was tasty, very tasty, that one with the sand stuck to her bum that was well flipping artistic, that was… Yeah, see ya, Rod, keep rocking, mate.”

Rod having gone on his way, Joe turned back to me.

“Lovely bloke, top geezer. Diamond. ’Asn’t changed at all. Still loves his soccer. That’s what I like abaht gigs like this. They bring out the best in all of us. We’re here to support starvation abroad and drug abuse at home. Just a bunch of top geezers and stunning birds coming together to help uvver people. No ego. No attitude. Just cats wot care.”

At this point, Toni, Joe’s supermodel wife, entered. All seven and a half feet of her. She had to stoop to get through the door. I recognized her from the pages of Hello! She seemed angry.

“Here, Joe,” she said. “I’ve just been having a natter with Iman Bowie…”

“Lovely girl,” Joe interjected, “stunning bird. She ’as been so good for David.”

“Yeah well, they’ve got champagne in their dressing room and what have we got, bleeding Australian Chardonnay, what if Iman or Yasmin or any of the girls come in and I offer them that? I’ll be shamed…”

Seeing as how it was the BBC who were in effect hosting the event and hence responsible for the catering, I made my excuses and left. The show was about to start anyway. I really wanted to ring Lucy to tell her about meeting Joe and Rod and Mirage and Brenda and about the whole fantastic show, but I knew she wanted a quiet night and was probably already in bed.

Three bottles of wine between us, a quick “Perhaps we should have coffee somewhere quieter,” and suddenly I’m in a taxi heading for his place. Yes, we were snogging and, yes, now there were definitely tongues involved and, yes, he was using his hands, upstairs and outside only but when all you’re wearing is a silk blouse, quite frankly it might as well have been inside.

Before I knew it we were in his flat. I know it sounds ridiculous to say “Before I knew it” but it really was. I mean I have never done anything like this before and it felt as if I wasn’t really there, as if some other more wicked self had escaped for the night. Carl was being wonderfully provocative. I mean he didn’t just leap or anything. He was, well, “sensitive” is the best way of putting it. After the initial pash in the taxi he really held back and I didn’t feel at all pressurized. So how did I end up on the couch with him? With George Michael’s Older on the CD and six-year-old brandy being ignored on the coffee table while we writhed together? Because I wanted to, that’s why. The booze had knocked out my inhibitions and I wanted to be there, with Carl breathing sensual nothings into my ear and expertly removing my shoes as if he’d been doing it all his life.

And then suddenly I’m floating through the air as he swept me up into his arms with hardly a jolt or a shudder and carried me through to his bedroom, beautifully neat with a vast king-sized bed covered in crisp fresh white linen. This is a man who has a woman who does, no doubt about that. He laid me on the bed and we kissed a little more and then he began to unbutton my blouse.

That was when I stopped it. I don’t know how I did because I don’t think I’ve ever felt so turned on, but I stopped it. His other hand was beginning to work its way up under my skirt, beautifully and gently but under my skirt nonetheless. It was the absolute final point of no return. Somehow I managed to find a voice and against every desire and hormone in my body I asked him to stop.

He did so, immediately. I mean he was still half on top of me but he suspended his exploratory hand actions, even going to the effort of doing up the button he had just undone. On the other hand, he did not remove his lips from my ear into which he whispered, “Lucy, please. I want to make love to you all night, tenderly and gently and completely. I want to massage your body and touch every inch of your beautiful skin. I want to be a part of you, as one, until the morning.”

Oh God, I wanted it. How many years is it since Sam wanted to touch every inch of my skin? And massage! Christ, it takes me all evening to get Sam to give me even the most perfunctory shoulder rub and here was this gorgeous man… Except all that has nothing to do with anything. I’m married and I love my husband.

“And in the morning? What happens then?” I asked. After all, a night of passion is a lovely thought, but I had a lot more to lose than he did.

“Then we’ll make love again, and again in the afternoon and then I’ll ask you to stay another night, and another and always. I love you, Lucy. I think I want you in my life.”

It’s what he said. He’s a man of strong and volatile passion, that’s for sure. He really has got a thing for me. I swear he meant it too. He wants me to go and live in his flat with him. He thinks life should be lived on the impulse. Did I mention that he’d taken his shirt off? He did that after he’d laid me on the bed. He looked absolutely superb, more muscular than I’d expected but not too much. I think saying no was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

“Carl. I can’t. You’re wonderful, beautiful, and I could fall in love with you in an instant, perhaps I already have. But I’m married. I love my husband, it’s not exciting like this, but then nothing is exciting for ever, is it?”

“Isn’t it? That’s a rather bleak view to have of life, Lucy”

And of course he was right. Oh God, he was right. What an appalling thing to have to say. I want it, I crave it, I need it, but I’m going to deny myself because I believe that life is better lived sensibly and unexcitingly. Nonetheless that is what I believe. You can’t just go doing exactly what you like the whole time. Not if you want to look after the things that really matter to you.

“Please, I have to go now,” I said. “I can’t be strong for much longer. Will you call for a cab? Please?”

And to his great credit he did not try to persuade me further. He just said, “Of course,” and rang for a taxi. I could see that he was as upset as I was. For some strange reason he really has convinced himself that he’s fond of me. Christ, I hated leaving that big beautiful bed.

“This time I really won’t call you again, Lucy” Carl said as he kissed me goodbye (on the cheek). “It wouldn’t be fair on either of us.”

The gig was pretty dreadful. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so loud in my life. The engineers assured me that it sounded better on the radio, but it was rough going for the audience. I think all arena shows should be banned. They’re utterly soulless. I don’t care how good the act is, it could be Elvis come back from the dead but if you have to watch it at two hundred metres in what is basically a concrete aircraft hangar it’s going to be pretty dull. Anyway, the kids seemed to enjoy themselves or at least they acted as though they did. Then again, if you’ve paid twenty quid you’re going to make the effort, aren’t you?

Afterwards there was a line-up to meet the Prince, but I was excluded because the Head of BBC Manchester had muscled his way in and nicked my place. I didn’t really mind. I imagine you’d feel a bit of an idiot in one of those royal line-ups. I’m sure the royals do.

Anyway, as I say, me and Joe and Woody Monk ended up in the bar at the Britannia. I managed not to drink too much, although I did have more than I meant to. Joe kept getting the rounds in. I’ve noticed that about people who’ve given up the booze. They’re always very anxious to buy other people drinks. Vicarious pleasure, perhaps, or else they just don’t want you to think that they disapprove. Anyway, after Joe had got me my fifth bottle of Pils I had to explain that I was taking it easy as I was likely to be called upon to provide sperm samples in the near future.

“Oh, blimey,” he said. “Paternity suit, eh? I get one of vose a veek. Fahking DNA, ruined the art of the casual shag.”

Well I’m home now, drunk and feeling very strange. Angry with myself for so nearly doing something very stupid, and angry with myself for not doing it. I know I’ll feel terrible in the morning, even without the appalling hangover that I’m definitely due. But the main thing is that in the end I resisted temptation. Whatever I may have thought or desired, I did not actually do anything. Well, almost nothing anyway, and that’s what matters. I know I let him feel my breasts, but I’ve decided to pretend even to myself that this hardly happened. Ditto tongue-sandwich style kissing. Yes, I freely admit that I wanted him to shag my brains out for hours and hours, but we didn’t and I’m glad.

One thing I do feel is that I’m very much in love with Sam. I hope that’s not the booze and the guilt talking because I do feel it, perhaps not often, and not in the way Carl excited me tonight, but I do still fancy him. I mean it. It’s not just because I’m drunk. He does still turn me on, and that’s because I love him. And love is something to be cherished and protected. You can’t go through life hopping from bed to bed. You can’t just keep redoing the first few nights of a relationship, can you? Of course not! If you want the love and the security that a proper relationship brings then you have to go for the long haul. Even if you do really really really want to shag another bloke.

Anyway, what I really want to say is that I feel very close to Sam now. I rang him at his hotel and told him so. I hope I didn’t sound too drunk because I have specifically asked him to cut down on the booze because of our IVF business, which I did not give a thought to tonight like the disgusting slapper that I am. Also I hope I didn’t make him suspicious. I mean I do sometimes ring up to tell him I love him. Well, it’s not the first time. I’m far more effusive than he is. Oh well.

Actually I think I’m going to be sick.

I just spoke to Lucy, which I’m really glad about. I’d just been thinking how much I missed her when she phoned. It was so nice. I haven’t heard her as affectionate in ages. I suppose she was feeling the same way I was. It’s not often we’re apart.

I really am a lucky man. A lucky, lucky man. I just don’t deserve a girl like Lucy, she’s beautiful and funny and interesting and I’m just a git. In fact I’m worse than a git. I’m a bastard, a deceiving bastard, because I’ve already betrayed her trust over my movie script, and now I’m planning a second and even greater betrayal that I can hardly bear to think about, let alone write.

I hope I didn’t sound like I’d had a drink.

Dear Penny

Well, it’s been a week since the night I choose not to mention and I feel a bit better about it all. The weird thing of feeling guilty and frustrated isn’t easy to deal with because there’s no doubt that I do like Carl and in another world I could easily see myself with him but I’ve been really trying to push these thoughts from my mind because I’m absolutely committed to my love for Sam and there’s an end to it. In fact we’re really getting on at the moment. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s doing this IVF thing or perhaps I’m making more of an effort because of “you know what”, but we do seem to be happy together.

I think it’s partly Sam, actually. He seems very positive about things and about himself, which is quite a change from the way he’s been, well, for years really. It’s very nice.

I’ve been sniffing my drugs every night. This way of pumping them up your nose is all right, but it does mean that you go to bed making the most appalling honking snorts. I can’t believe Sam can still fancy me, although he assures me he does. It doesn’t matter anyway at the moment because sex is now out for us. I think theoretically we’re still allowed to do it but I don’t feel like it. These weird hormonal drugs are taking effect, I expect. That and concentrating everything on the big day.

Dear Self

Lucy is snorting and honking like a pig in bed, poor thing. It’s these drugs she’s taking up her nose. I’ve had to come through into the spare room, which is where I’m writing this. To be honest I don’t think I’ll get much sleep anyway. You see, I’ve finally made my big decision.

I’m going to read Lucy’s book.

I have to if I want this script to be as good as it can be. If I want to have any chance at all of it having genuine heart and soul then the heroine’s voice must be authentic. I’m sure I could get it right in the end on my own, if I had time. I could talk to Lucy, coax it out of her. I’ve already used lots of her lines. There was one about telling a doctor to sit on a traffic cone and see if he could relax that I put in only today. But you see I don’t have time. This script is hot now. It’s coming together now and I have to finish it.

I mean Lucy would want me to get the woman right, wouldn’t she? Of course she would.

I tried taking a look tonight while she was in the bath. I felt like a thief, which of course is what I am. The damn thing was locked, of course. She’s got one of those leatherbound journals from W. H. Smith. It’d be easy enough to pick but I might break it and then the game would be up. What I must do is go and buy another one. I’m certain that all the keys are the same. They only cost about a fiver.

I feel terrible about this, but what can I do? If I don’t blow it, within six months or so I could have my own movie. The ultimate dream of every single wannabe writer on the planet. Courage, Sam. You have no choice.

Dear Penny

I went into Spannerfield today for a check-up. It seems the sniffing business is not moving fast enough, so they’re going to switch me over to injections, just shallow ones in the leg, which I can do myself, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

There was a lady waiting there who’s on her sixth cycle! I felt so sorry for her. She’s from the Middle East and it’s terribly important to her to have a child. I think the pressure on women is greater in some cultures. At least I don’t have to put up with that! Christ, some men can be bastards, as if a woman doesn’t have to deal with enough sadness when she can’t conceive without a load of pressure and guilt from her husband.

In so many ways I’m lucky with Sam, apart from loving him, that is, which goes without saying. He really is very gentle and supportive in his own way and he certainly never puts me under any pressure. I’ve asked him to give up the booze completely, by the way, in order to get his sperm into tip-top condition. I thought he’d sulk but he’s been very nice about it. He said it didn’t bother him at all.

Dear etc.

Damn, blast and bollocks. I hate being off the booze. Somebody had a leaving do today and I had to drink Coke. It’s surprisingly difficult to kick the sauce. You say to yourself, “It can’t be so hard, I’ll just take a month off,” but then suddenly Trevor’s having a dinner party and you have to drink for that. Then there’s the pub dominos team reunion coming up and you have to drink for that. And of course you’re having beans on toast in front of the telly tonight, and you can’t not have a drink with that.

Ah well. I’m going to stick with it. I love Lucy and I’m not going to let her down, particularly now that I’m actively planning to deceive her. My local Smith’s was out of Lucy’s type of journal today and I didn’t have time to go further afield, but I’ll do it tomorrow. My resolve is hardening. Lucy is being ever so nice to me at the moment as well, which doesn’t make betraying her any easier. We seem to have entered a new stage of affection. Perhaps it’s the treatment. Apparently it plays havoc with a woman’s hormones. Well, that is, after all, the point. Also I imagine Lucy is feeling quite emotional because there is now the actual, real possibility that the treatment will work and in a couple of months’ time we’ll be on our way to becoming parents. My God, imagine that. We’ve got so used to just presuming upon the inevitability of Lucy’s periods that this is a thought that takes some adjusting to. I always stress how small the chances are when I’m talking to Lucy because I don’t want her to be too disappointed, but I suppose it could happen! And what then?!

I got a taste of it today actually. George and Melinda brought Cuthbert round for tea. He’s crawling now, that is when he can find a moment in his busy shrieking, shitting and vomiting schedule. My God, that lad can puke. There seems to be a constant flow of milky vom emanating from his mouth. I mean he doesn’t hurl it, not often anyway. It’s not as if he’s coating the furniture or anything, it’s just always there, sort of falling from his toothless gums. Which of course means that eventually he does coat the furniture because everywhere he goes, and he can get about a bit these days, he pushes his face against things, leaving a stomach-turning slimy, milky, gobby patch behind him. I’ve seen it on George’s shoulder many a time. It’s as if a large and angry seagull hovers permanently above him, waiting for him to put on a decent suit.

Cuthbert also broke a model of a Lancaster bomber I made when I was ill last year and had painted with meticulous care. The model (which I admit was a kit, but a bloody difficult kit) was perfect in every detail. I even sent to Germany for the authentic eggshell blue paint for the underside. Ironic, isn’t it? That you have to send to Germany to get the right paint for a Lancaster bomber. They’re a big modelling nation, of course, and let’s face it, in the end they did win the war. Anyway, I’d thought that I’d put the model way out of reach. “Everything precious three feet off the ground,” Lucy had warned me, but Cuthbert seems to have an extension section in the middle, like a dining room table. Out of the blue he can suddenly reach twice his physical length. You don’t see it happen. You don’t know anything about it until there’s an unholy screaming. Then you turn to see him surrounded by glass or china or in this case plastic (he’d sort of rolled himself on it, crushing it totally), at which point you have to comfort him! It’s unbelievable. I mean, he didn’t spend a week making it, did he?

Penny

I’ll probably be writing to you a bit less from now on. The original intention of the letters was, as you know, in order to become a partner with my emotions and to avoid feeling like a cork bobbing about on the sea of fate. Well I no longer feel like a cork because by beginning this cycle of IVF, gruesome though it is, I really feel a lot better and that I’ve taken control of my destiny. I don’t like to admit it, but I feel very slightly confident. I mean, although the chances are reckoned at about a fifth, I’m top of the list in terms of the perfect patient. I’m still relatively young, very young for IVF, I have nothing apparently wrong with me. My husband appears to be packing a full scrotum. All the signs are good. I don’t even feel strange about trying to get a baby this way, which I thought I might. In fact just the reverse. I’m quite combative on the subject.

I was talking to Joanna at work about it and she said something I hear quite a lot. She sort of shook her head in disbelief and said, “Wow, isn’t it amazing? I mean we really are playing God these days, aren’t we?” Now she wasn’t trying to be mean, quite the opposite. She’s very supportive, but nonetheless I bridled. People do still seem to see IVF as a deeply unnatural process and so it is, but no more unnatural than taking antibiotics or flying in an aeroplane. Left to themselves people’s teeth would fall out in their twenties and they’d die of pneumonia. Everything we do is unnatural but nobody ever shakes their head in disbelief about eating apples out of season or talking on the phone to people in Australia or being able to get from Highgate to Spannerfield Hospital, which is in West London, in under an hour (depending on the traffic). It’s just babies that people get funny about. But I won’t have it. All IVF is, when you get right down to it, is the process of getting the sperm and the egg to meet outside the body. That’s it. It’s my egg. It’s Sam’s sperm. If it works it’ll develop inside me. All they do is create more ideal conditions for the moment of conception than the inside of my plumbing. As far as I’m concerned, it’s like a Caesarean but in reverse. Millions of women have their babies removed by the hand of man. I’m just going to have mine inserted, that’s all. I said all this to Joanna and she said she hadn’t meant to offend and I said that she hadn’t, but I suppose in a way she had. I don’t feel remotely different or weird because I have to go through this, and I can do without people shaking their heads in gentle disbelief at my situation and talking about playing God.

I just took a moment out to inject my leg. Sam hates this and turns away (as if I enjoy it!). Just wait till he starts having to give me my bum injections, that’ll give him something to think about. Actually, he probably turned away because my legs look so horrible. These injections leave awful bruises (maybe I’m not doing it very well). I look as though I’ve been beaten up by a midget.

Dear Sam

Nigel and Justin have been asking again about the ending. They want to know when they can expect to see it. I’ve told them that I’ll do it soon, but I’m not sure when. Lucy’s and my IVF cycle will last a few weeks and I can’t decide whether to commit myself to saying how my story ends before I know our result or after. After, I think, so I’ve told them that it’ll be a month and a half. They don’t like it because we’ve planned to begin shooting by then, but I’m being firm. Surprisingly, Ewan is being tremendously good about it. He says it’s only one out of a hundred scenes and since the whole story is one of doubt, hope and unanswered questions he rather likes the idea of leaving the ending ambiguous for as long as possible. He says it’ll be very healthy for the actors to discover their parts in the same ignorance and confusion that the characters are in themselves. I find myself warming to Ewan.

I’ve now bought four diaries from W.H. Smith identical to the one Lucy uses for her journal. One of them is bound to have a key that fits hers. Tomorrow, when she’s gone off to work, I intend to return to the house and read her story.

Dear Penny

I wasn’t going to write to you tonight but then I thought I would because Sam’s been acting very strangely this evening. From the moment I got back from work it’s all seemed rather odd. He’s been alternately offhand and angry-looking and then suddenly very huggy and affectionate. Normally he doesn’t express much emotion either way but tonight he seems to be aglow with it. Perhaps it’s his hormones. I’ve heard that when women are pregnant their partners sometimes react in sympathy with them, experiencing the same symptoms. Who knows, maybe it’s the same with IVF?

I must say I’m feeling pretty strange myself, in fact. I’ve started having hot flushes, so the injections must be working. Their purpose is to sort of shut down my reproductive system so that the hospital can take over. Amazing, really, and pretty scary. Basically they induce a sort of premature menopause. That’s nice, isn’t it?

Dear Sam

Well, I’m devastated. I just don’t know what I think any more. They do say that eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves. Well, nor do diary readers.

Lucy very nearly had an affair.

I’m stunned. Absolutely amazed. It is the absolute last thing I would have expected of her.

What’s more, I have to seethe in silence. I can’t say anything about it, of course, because the way I found out is absolutely unforgivable. And what would I say, anyway? I don’t really know what I think about it at all. Of course part of me is riven with jealousy. The thought of that fucking shit Carl Phipps sneaking about trying to screw my wife and actually managing to get his hands on her, albeit briefly, makes my blood boil. I’m furious. I’m livid. I want to punch him and give her the biggest piece of my mind in history.

On the other hand, she was pissed, and she didn’t do it, did she? There she was, drunk, with a top star, a star whom she has always fancied, a star who was putting the hardest of hard words on her (That bastard. I’d like to kill him) and she didn’t do it. She pulled back because she loved me. Would I have done the same? Me, who is capable of sneaking about and invading the private diary of the woman I love? I mean if I honestly ask myself, if I was drunk, on Winona Ryder’s bed, and she’d taken her top off and offered to kiss me all over and shag me all night, would I have held back the way Lucy did?

That’s why I feel so confused. Part of me is angry and hurt and jealous and part of me is thrilled. Thrilled that after all these years, and with me being such a grump most of the time (plenty about that in her book), Lucy still loves me the way she does, loves me enough to walk away from a fantasy when the crunch came.

When I read about it I was furious. I literally felt I was burning up with anger, but now I’ve calmed down a bit, in a way I think it makes me love her more. I’m still seething, though, and very angry with her and I still hate Carl Phipps’s fucking guts.

Of course one positive thing is that now I know she nearly betrayed me it makes me feel slightly better about betraying her. Well, I think that’s fair, surely.

Dear Penny

I feel pretty awful, I must say. Now I know how Mum felt a couple of years ago. Looking back, I don’t wonder that she was moody, and I’m not even allowed to slap HRT patches on my bum.

Sam’s not himself either. He seems emotionally confused. He kisses me a lot, but then I catch him glaring at me. I think in a strange sort of way he’s jealous, control of my body now being in the hands of the hospital and him reduced to the role of a near bystander in this dreadfully and intimately intrusive process.

Dear Sam

I’ve read the rest of Lucy’s book now and it’s wonderful. Just what I’d hoped for and exactly what I need. It’s stuffed with really funny thoughts and poignant bits. Quite difficult for me to read, of course, since I’m the butt of most of her barbs, but in the end I don’t feel that I come off too badly. I felt very guilty reading it and not just because it’s so wrong to be doing so but also because it’s clear that I haven’t always been as attentive to Lucy as I should have been. I’ll definitely try to be more sensitive to her needs from now on. Perhaps the appalling revelation of her near infidelity is what the Americans term “a wake-up call” and the pain I’m feeling will serve a purpose. I’m not one for fatalism but perhaps I was meant to find out about what so nearly happened so that I can work harder on my marriage before it’s too late.

Anyway, I’ve copied out loads of good stuff from Lucy’s book and really feel that I can get down to finishing the script. Obviously I’ll give Lucy some kind of co-writing credit, depending on how much of her stuff I use. That’ll of course mean telling her, which clearly I shall have to do anyway in the end. Oh Christ, how am I going to do that?

Dear Penny

Sam came with me to the hospital today to pick up all the needles and drugs for the next series of injections.

The last couple of days have been uncomfortable for me, but not everything has been negative. Since the other night when he went all moody Sam has been very loving towards me. He’s really making an effort, for which I’m very grateful as IVF does make me feel low. The fact that it seems to be bringing out the best in Sam is a great help. He’s also got very enthusiastic about his work, which is a huge relief for me as his negativity had got very wearing. I must say I can’t quite see what the enthusiasm is based on. We listened to a bit of Charlie Stone’s show this morning on our way to Spannerfield and it struck me as being about the most puerile thing I’ve ever heard. I said so and Sam agreed with me, so I asked him how he’d managed to get so absorbed in it. He said that he had things in the pipeline. I definitely get the impression that there’s something Sam isn’t telling me, but I don’t mind. He’s allowed his secrets. After all, I have mine. Looking back I can scarcely believe that episode with Carl ever happened. How could I have been so stupid? To so nearly throw away everything I have. I feel particularly strongly about that now that we’re really moving on with the IVF. Could it work? Will we be parents soon? I try not to let myself hope too much, but I can’t help it.

Sam

I’m filling in the final details on the IVF part of the script now. Well not the final detail – I still can’t decide about the ending – but I’m very pleased with the way I’ve dramatized the process. Ewan is delighted, too, as are the rest of the team. We had an excellent meeting at his house this evening. His wife Morag made us a fabulous dinner and was very interesting about the script. She’s one of those uniquely Scottish beauties, almost eerily white with green eyes, a hint of pale freckles and a great mane of strawberry-blonde hair. Quite gorgeous. Not a patch on Lucy, though. Well, let’s face it, no woman is. It’s probably an awful thing to admit, but I think the terrible shock about Phipps has sort of reminded me of how beautiful Lucy is. I mean of course I knew anyway, but maybe I’d begun to take it for granted. I think being brought up sharp against the fact that other men fancy her has rocked my complacency a bit and shown me how lucky I am.

I really really do love Lucy. More than ever, I think. And that’s not because of how much she’s improved my script, although let’s face it she has.

Ewan laughed and laughed at the new stuff. Particularly the business about the injections. The surprising thing was how excited he was at the thought of being able to put a needle on the screen that wasn’t full of heroin. He seems to think that this in itself is an incredibly original idea.

“So liberating,” he said. “Hasn’t been done in years. Although it did cross my mind that we might be missing out on some comedy here. What if somehow the IVF drugs got mixed up with Colin’s drugs stash and Rachel injected that instead? Could be big laughs.”

Instantly I sensed some confusion. A fundamental misunderstanding, in fact. I said that the idea would be great apart from the tiny fact that my character Colin doesn’t take drugs.

Ewan was genuinely surprised at this. “He doesn’t?”

At first he thought I was joking, but I managed to persuade him that I wasn’t.

“That is fascinating,” he said. “And that business about the arse injections, about you practising on an orange, that’s actually true, is it?”

I assured him that it was. In fact Lucy and I were doing it only yesterday. Ewan turned to George and Trevor, who were attending the meeting, and commented on the extraordinary idea of grown men and women having to actually be taught how to use a hypodermic needle. George and Trevor assumed suitably sympathetic expressions of surprise that there could be such naivety. What a couple of idiots! Trevor knows about needles because of Kit’s various health crises, but both of them would run a mile from hard drugs. Trevor may have had an E at some point and he and Kit certainly smoke grass, but that’s it. George is strictly a Scotch and beer man. What suburban souls we must be.

Dear Penny

Well, Sam administered his first injection into my bum this evening. He had his last practice try on an orange and then prepared to go for the real thing. All I could say was what I had been saying ever since we first saw the bloody things at the hospital, which was, “That fucking needle is four inches long.” I mean honestly the damn things are not needles at all, not in any normal sense. More like spears or lances. They belong in a museum of military history. The doctor explained that they have to be like that because the purpose is to administer an inter-muscular injection. I said, “That fucking needle is four inches long.”

Ewan is anxious to know all the details about the process, which I think is healthy. I explained to him that the inter-muscular injection introduces a hormonal drug, which provokes the female subject into a sort of hyper-ovulation, producing far more eggs than is natural. It is, of course, physically intrusive and rather upsetting. Quite aside from having a four-inch-long needle stuck into your arse.

Ewan was sympathetic about this and Morag, who was sitting in on the meeting, nodded vigorously.

“Exactly,” said Ewan. “This is a crucial scene, a crucial image. Actually, I think we should call the picture My Arse Is an Orange.”

To my dismay there was a lot of enthusiastic nodding at this from Nigel, Justin and Petra. Even Morag (whom I had thought seemed sensible) murmured that it was a “brilliant idea”. I felt rather alone but nonetheless tried to fight my corner.

“Yes, brilliant idea, except that the film is called Inconceivable.”

“Oh, aye, at the moment,” said Ewan casually.

I turned to George and Trevor for support, but they just stared at the bowl of Kettle Chips.

Anyway, the deed had to be done. Sam looked as nervous as I was as he filled up the ghastly weapon with the ampoules of hormone solution, tapping the damn thing to make sure all the air was out. If you don’t get rid of the air, apparently it can kill you. How nice.

“Are you ready?” he said.

“That fucking needle is four inches long.”

“And it’s not going to get any shorter,” Sam said. “Drop ’em.”

And so that was it. Up went the skirt, down came the knickers and there I was bent over the bed like a condemned woman with Sam hovering at my arse end with a spear in his hand. Most undignified. I could feel Sam drawing an imaginary cross on my right buttock with his sterilizing swab. Upper outside quarter is the rule. That way there is less chance of skewering a major nerve centre and rendering the patient paralysed. Very comforting, I must say. One, two, three, and in he plunged. You have to do it all in one easy movement, holding the needle like a pen or a dart. I must say he did it very well, I hardly felt a thing until he depressed the plunger and pumped in the hormone solution, which wasn’t very nice, but bearable.

I must say Sam looked quite pale when I came up for air. He said he felt he’d earned a drink, but that of course he wouldn’t have one. He said it nicely, as a joke. I really think this whole business is bringing us closer together.

Later on, after we’d all left the Proclaimers’ house, I turned on Trevor and George for not helping me defend my title.

“Oh, come on, Sam,” said George. “It’s a pun, for Christ’s sake. Inconceivable is just a rather poor pun. Surely after all the years we’ve spent at TV Centre deleting crap puns you don’t expect me to defend one now.”

George can be a hurtful bastard when he wants to be.

“You liked it before,” I said.

“Oh yes, before,” he said airily. Yes, before a fashionable young director with a three-picture deal in Los Angeles said he didn’t like it. God, I never thought George could be so spineless. We’re all caught in the headlights of fashion and fame.

I’m going to sleep now. Sam’s still at the dressing table doing his book. It’s amazing the way he’s come round to the whole thing. I wonder if he’ll ever let me read it. I’d never ask because that wouldn’t be fair, but I’d love to have a look. Maybe one day when we’re both feeling very secure in our love. Of course I could never let Sam read mine, not unless I removed the Carl Phipps entries. Like Stalin rewriting history.

I must be sure to lock my journal very carefully. I found it open in the drawer today, so I must have forgotten to lock it last night, although I can’t think how, I always check. Perhaps I didn’t turn the key the whole way. Oh well, lucky Sam didn’t find it open. He might not have been able to resist a read. Actually I think that’s unfair. I think he’d do the right thing. I’m not sure if I would.

After the disagreement over the title, which I think I won, we got back to discussing the hypodermic scene. Nigel was not sure about the “You might feel a bit of a prick” line, which I was appalled at because it’s one of my favourite lines. I also think that objections on the grounds of taste are pretty rich coming from a man who virtually ordered me to make sure there were more sheep-shagging gags on our Saturday variety shows.

Of course I admit it’s pretty broad humour, but the whole scene is meant to be a bit over the top. It’s a big comedy moment. Colin is bending over Rachel with the needle (which should be funny in itself if they get a decent actor) and he says that the nurse had told him that as long as he does it quickly and confidently it won’t hurt, so he jabs it in, she screams and he faints. Brilliant stuff, I think, and Ewan loved it.

Anyway, when Colin comes round Rachel says, “The nurse said it was me who was meant to feel a bit of a prick,” which I think is a very strong line. I mean it’s good to give the girl some rude, earthy lines. Quite feminist, I think.

Nigel just said he didn’t think it was funny and George, damn him, said it was a very old joke and a pun to boot.

Anyway, I was just getting all heated and defensive as we writers do when Ewan really alarmed me by saying, “It doesn’t matter, anyway, we won’t be hearing the dialogue. I always play thrash metal music over my injection scenes. It’s a personal motif. I’m known for it. Have you ever heard of a Boston grunge band called One-Eyed Trouser Snake? They’d be perfect.”

A bit worrying, that, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Everyone knows that in movies the writer is lower than the make-up girl’s cat.

Anyway, then Nigel asked Ewan if he’d given any thought to casting.

“Well, the girl’s what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?” Ewan replied.

I quickly interjected that in fact I’d been thinking early thirties and unbelievably Ewan just laughed! He could see he’d shocked me, so he tried to explain himself.

“Look, Sam. I think we’ll need to be pretty non-specific about the girl’s age. I mean obviously we’re not looking at teenage waifs but she’s got to be vaguely shaggable, for Christ’s sake. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll accept anything from an old-looking twenty-one-year-old to a young-looking twenty-eight.”

I couldn’t reply. His pragmatism (I might almost say cynicism) had temporarily rendered me speechless. There was worse to come.

“What about the man?” Nigel asked.

“I was thinking in terms of Carl Phipps,” Ewan replied.

I can’t write any more tonight. All I can say is that it’ll be over my dead body.

Dear Penny

I saw Carl Phipps again today for the first time since what I think we must describe as “that night”. It was a bit of a shock. I knew it would happen soon but I still didn’t find it easy. I mean it’s not as if I’ve suddenly stopped fancying him or liking him just because I’ve decided I must not do anything about it. Anyway, I don’t know if he was as flustered as I was because we avoided each other’s eye. He’d come in to talk to Sheila about a movie script that’s come through. It’s small-budget, mainly BBC money, but Sheila thinks it’s interesting.

“It’s a pretty funny script,” she said, “although it hasn’t got an end yet for some reason. I’ve never heard of the author, but Ewan Proclaimer’s slated to direct and you can’t get any hotter than him.”

Carl enquired what the theme was and you could have knocked me down with a feather when Sheila said infertility.

“It’s absolutely the theme of the moment,” she said. “Lucy you’re our expert on the subject. Would you like to cast an eye over this script for us? Tell Carl what you think.”

I wonder if there’s a scientific name for the depth of the colour of red I must have gone.

“No thanks,” I replied with as much dignity as I could. “I can get all that at home.”

Dear Sam

We held auditions today for Rachel, which was very exciting and also most disconcerting since the casting director has definitely erred on the lower end of Ewan’s age range. The venue was a church hall near Goodge Street on the Tottenham Court Road. Ewan sat behind a long trestle table with Petra, also a PA with blue hair and an earnest-looking young man with a ponytail who is to be the second assistant director. George and I slunk around at the back trying not to ogle the actresses too much. Trevor had come down but had left again; he said he found me and George too sickening. George as usual could not resist doing battle.

“Look, Trevor, when I fancy a girl I just look at her. I don’t try and shag her behind a tree on Hampstead Heath.”

“We don’t all do that,” Trevor replied. He really will have to learn not to rise to it.

Ewan was getting the girls to read one of Rachel’s speeches, which I had basically lifted straight out of Lucy’s book. It’s from the bit where she tried a guided fantasy. Wonderful stuff. There were a couple of actresses who made it sound absolutely marvellous.

“‘I mean, why the hell should I have to imagine a baby? Why can’t I just have one! Far less nice people than me have lots. I know that’s a wicked thing to say but I know I’d be a better mum than half the women I see letting their children put sweets in the trolley at Sainsbury’s… I’d read my child Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh and the only glue it would ever get involved with would be flour and water for making collages.’”

Listening to it was both exhilarating and excruciating. I mean it works so well and yet of course it’s Lucy’s voice, Lucy’s feelings. I really have done a terrible thing. Standing there watching all these gorgeous young women, all ten years younger than Lucy, mouthing her thoughts, made me feel very awkward about myself indeed. But what’s done is done. It’ll be worth it for us both in the end. And I can’t go back now. George was thrilled.

“Very nice speech, Sam,” he said. “The woman’s voice is so much more clearly defined. You’ve obviously really unlocked something.”

That made me feel both better and worse.

Perhaps I should just tell Lucy, make a clean breast of it. But I can’t. Not while she’s all hormonally messed up with IVF. Besides, supposing she stopped me? This is my big break, my chance, and the BBC would probably sue me for the money they’ve already spent. Anyway, Lucy said to me that if I did this thing that I have done she’d leave me, so I can’t tell her, can I? Not yet.

There was one girl who I thought read particularly well. Her name was Tilda, I think. How is it that all these actresses have such ridiculous names? Darcy and Tilly and Saskia and the rest. They’re their real names, too. I don’t think they assume them. It’s as if their mothers know at birth that they’re going to be actresses and christen them accordingly. Or else possibly it’s the other way round and that any girl who has to go to school with a name like Darcy has to get so mouthy there’s nothing else for her but to become an actress.

Anyway, Ewan clearly thought that Tilda had talent, as did I, although like all the girls attending the audition she was ridiculously young for the part.

“Now then, Tilda,” Ewan said.

He was studying the script as he said it and did not even look up from it as he spoke. He did that to all the girls, just to show them how important he was. Power definitely does corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Well you don’t get power more absolute than that of a movie director. In their own little world, they are absolute monarchs and it can lead to some pretty off-hand posturing, I can tell you. Especially where nervous quaking little twenty-one-year-old cuties are concerned.

“Now then, Tilda,” Ewan repeated. “Bearing in mind the nature of this story, I’m anxious to underline the fact that despite Rachel’s fears for her fertility she remains a sensual and a sexual being. Would you have any problem with that?”

Tilda was confused. So, actually, was I.

“Uhm, no, I don’t think so,” she said. “In what way exactly?”

“Well,” said Ewan. “I think it’s thematically absolutely essential that we see Rachel’s breasts.”

I must say I was nearly as taken aback as Tilda was. She went bright red, which was of course highly attractive, gulped a bit and replied, “Well… I don’t suppose I’d have a problem with that, probably, if the part really required it.”

“Good,” said Ewan perfunctorily and for a minute I thought he was going to ask her to get them out there and then. I could feel George craning forward in eager anticipation. Thank God he didn’t. I mean I bow to no one in my appreciation of the youthful female form, particularly the bosom, but there are limits.

“Thanks. We’ll be in touch,” said the PA and Tilda retreated as fast as she could. I suppose in some ways Ewan’s question was perfectly fair. It does seem to be something of a rule these days that, whatever the movie, at some point the girl will have to get her tits out. I’m sure that if they were making The Wizard of Oz today poor little Judy would have been caught in the shower when the hurricane struck or at the very least it would have blown her dress off. Some more right-on directors try to make up for it by including an equal and opposite shot of the leading man’s bum, but it’s not the same. I don’t think you’ll find many women sat on their own in front of their videos late at night trying to freeze-frame the bum shots.

Reading back over the last few pages I note how much I seem to be mentioning attractive women. I think that this is possibly a symptom of the fact that Lucy’s and my sex life is currently nonexistent. I must say, I’m seriously beginning to miss it, but there you go. Yet another irony in the life of couples like us, infertile couples, IVF couples, is that when we try for a baby, we stop having sex.

Dear Penny

Drusilla has come up with another plan. I blush even to report it. She rushed into the office at lunch today with a map of Dorset and the train times from Paddington. She says that Sam and I have to go to the West Country, walk to the village of Cerne Abbas, go out onto the hillside and prostrate ourselves naked upon the penis of the great chalk man that is set upon the slope. Then, well, you guessed it, we have to have it off! It seems that this is an even more fertile and spiritual place than Primrose Hill, far far more so, in fact. Drusilla says that hundreds of couples use it and the conception rates are considerably higher than with IVF. On summer nights apparently there’s a queue and the local druid has to bless one of the big toes as a sort of backup bonking area. Drusilla says that in reflexology the feet are connected to the genitalia so doing it on the foot is nearly as good.

I must say the idea of standing in a queue of hippies waiting to have it off on an ancient penis which would no doubt be still warm from the last lot did not appeal to me much, but Drusilla claims that there’s actually a colossal sense of community. She says people who meet there often become lifelong pals, going off to India together in their camper vans and swapping partners. The very least they do is exchange cards at the winter solstice. Anyway, she demanded, what’s preferable? Standing in a queue with some horny hippies or having my body taken over by a gang of mad scientists from outer space (she means the doctors at Spannerfield).

Well, I told her that I was now committed to the IVF cycle and that I certainly did not intend to interrupt it now. After all, if the ancient spirits have waited since the dawn of time for Sam and me to shag on top of a huge chalk knob then they can wait a bit longer. I told her I’d think about it for future reference. I’ve kept the train timetable, just in case. Not that it’ll be of any remote use in a month or two. These new railway companies keep changing them and they don’t even mean much in the first place.

I will say this, though. If this cycle doesn’t work (which statistically I know it won’t, although I can’t help feeling sort of hopeful), I might give Dorset a go. Sam and I could use a bit of a holiday and I do love him particularly at the moment. We had such a good time on Primrose Hill (until the arrival of the squirrel) that I think it would be fun to do a little tour of the fertile spots of Britain and shag on all of them.

Dear Sam

Rather an unpleasant day on the movie. We were back in the church hall near Goodge Street looking at men, and of course that complete fucking bastard Carl Phipps was reading for the part of Colin! I have to tell you that it was excruciating sitting there being quiet while the smug, philandering, wife-snogging rat was saying my lines. Honestly, it felt like he had Lucy’s tits in his hands all over again, but no I mustn’t dwell on that, it makes me bloody livid and I know that I’ve no right to get on my high horse. All the same, I wanted to punch him.

We were seeing the men one at a time instead of bringing in a crowd like we did for the women. This is because Ewan wants a “name” for the bloke and so they have to be handled a bit more carefully. Actually, I’ve begun to notice that there’s quite a lot of casual sexism in the film industry, which is surprising considering that they’re all supposed to be so right-on. It’s the old rules of the market. There are far fewer decent roles for women than there are for men and so even the talented women are more desperate, hence they can be paid less and treated worse.

Ewan was using the scene where Colin gets his sperm test results to hear the actors read, and I must say it was quite exciting to see the scene come to life. The little blue-haired PA was reading in the part of Rachel. She was wearing a pair of hipsters that hung so low you could almost see her bum, most distracting, particularly since she had a tattoo of a naked Chinese devil at the base of her spine. Girls these days, eh? Amazing.

“‘Forty-one per cent swimming in the wrong direction,’” she read out in that peculiarly depressed delivery that only people who “read in” can achieve.

Carl Phipps brushed her aside and addressed Ewan directly.

“I’ve got stupid sperm!” he shouted, far too loudly in my opinion. Anyone can shout. “The stuff’s been backing away up my dick all these years. What is it with sperm! It’s lazy, it’s sluggish, it’s got no idea where it’s going. It sounds like a pub full of blokes!”

Ewan laughed heartily, which was fair enough because it’s actually a bloody good line, but I thought the delivery was abysmal. Crap, absolute crap. A performance hewn from solid mahogany. Personally I thought that what with the disappearance of the rainforests it was ecologically unsound of him to produce such a wooden performance and I whispered as much to George.

“Actually, I thought it was pretty good,” said George. “The line’s a bit obvious, though. You don’t need to spoonfeed us the gags, you know. Trust the audience.”

I hadn’t really noticed before quite what a pompous arse George can be when he wants.

“Superb, Carl, absolutely superb,” Ewan was saying.

“Yes, and so good of you to agree to come in and read for us,” Justin added.

This was a reference to the fact that Carl is a star and hence should not really have to do such a mundane thing as actually audition for a part because we should all be aware of how brilliant he is anyway. As if the fact that he turned in a passable Tenant of Wildfell Hall should instantly alert the world to the fact that he’d be brilliant at playing a frustrated and infertile executive at the BBC.

“No actor is too big to read for a part, Ewan,” Carl crawled.

What a pretentious twat.

After the low snake had slithered off (no doubt pausing on his way out to try and shag the cleaning woman) we all gathered round to discuss his paltry efforts. I had expected an instant and resounding raspberry, and was bitterly disappointed when Ewan announced happily that he felt we’d found our Colin and everybody readily agreed. I was horrified and protested loudly. Normally I wouldn’t have had the guts, but this was personal.

“Oh no, hang on,” I said. “I mean, hang on! I completely disagree. He’s wrong for it. Totally wrong. I mean, everything he did was wrong for Colin.”

“How’s that, then?” Ewan enquired.

“Well, he was anal, uptight, repressed and terminally stiff.”

“Exactly,” said Ewan happily. “A completely convincing Englishman.”

Dear Penny

I’m writing this entry in my book with an extremely sore arse. Well not with my arse obviously, but you know what I mean. Sam, who has been very good up until now, made a bit of a mess of tonight’s injection and it really hurt. He didn’t mean to, I know, and he was really apologetic. I was telling him about the script we had in at the office about infertility and IVF. It’s called Inconceivable and is to be a co-production between the BBC and Above The Line Films. I’ve been feeling a bit bad about it ever since I heard, having stopped Sam from developing exactly the same idea. He told me not to worry about it, but I do worry. I mean I’ve always been on at Sam to search within himself for his writing and the one time he did, I banned it. What’s more, I actually think that it’s quite a good idea that they’re doing the film. Sam seemed surprised at this – eager, almost. I wonder whether he still harbours dreams of persuading me to change my mind. Not much point, I’d have thought, now that someone else has had the idea. Anyway, I’m not going to change my mind, I’m afraid.

Nonetheless, I do think it’s a good thing that the BBC are covering the subject. It’s important for people like us who are actually going through these things that the issues are brought out into the open and discussed. They need to be normalized so that infertile people don’t feel so marginalized. I do think that comedy can help with that. I know it’s not very fair to be saying all this, particularly to Sam, but then again it’s not really so strange. I like to see sex in a movie but I wouldn’t want my own sex life exposed on screen (not that it would make much of a movie, I’m afraid).

I explained to Sam that whereas I shall definitely go and see Inconceivable when it comes out I just couldn’t have borne for it to be based on our story directly. I mean it would all go just too deep. The pain and all.

Dear Sam

I got a bit of a shock tonight. I’d just been getting ready to give Lucy her nightly injection when she started talking about Inconceivable. I should have expected it, of course. I knew that the Phipps fucker was on Sheila’s books or how could he have stalked Lucy in the way he did. Nonetheless, it was still a shock. For a little while I was thrilled, actually, because Lucy was being very positive about the whole idea. She seems to think that bringing the subject of infertility into the realms of normality via the medium of comedy is a very empowering thing. I could not agree more, of course, especially if I win a BAFTA.

I was soon to be disappointed, though. She still hasn’t relented about her own privacy and I can see that it’ll be a little while before I can even think about telling her.

Anyway, I was just getting the needle ready for the plunge, having prepared my target on the outer, upper quarter of her bum as I have done every night for a week, when she brought up the subject of casting. She said that there’d been an offer put in on Carl Phipps to play the husband. I gritted my teeth and resolved to change the subject when she started to eulogize about the bastard. Saying that she thought he would be superb, being such a nice man and a truly sensitive actor and of course so good looking. I swear I did not mean to jab the needle in so clumsily, well obviously I didn’t, I’m not a thug. I just jerked involuntarily, hearing her being so nice about the snake. It brought back all the memories of what I’d read and shouldn’t have read and reminded me that although Lucy had maintained her honour she had done so reluctantly and that she still fancies him.

Anyway, I feel terrible now for being such a clod with the needle and have just brought her Horlicks and some toast in bed. God, she looks gorgeous, sitting there under the duvet cupping her mug in both hands. I resolve this night to look after her for ever and never let her be hurt. After, that is, I’ve broken her heart by revealing my black treachery. But she’ll understand, won’t she? I mean surely.

Dear Penny

I did something today that I swore I wouldn’t do. I went to Mothercare. Only for a few minutes at lunchtime, but it was probably not a good idea. Everything looks so lovely. The clothes, the toys, all these amazing new buggies with their great big fat wheels. I love all that stuff. I don’t know why. I bought some things too. Well, why the hell shouldn’t I? Just a couple of baby-gros and a fluffy ball with a bell inside it. I don’t see how it can do any harm to have a positive attitude and if the IVF does fail then my cousin’s just had one and I can send it all to her.

Dear Sam

Things are moving at an incredible pace on the film. One of the good things about it being produced by a television company is that they’re not afraid of tight schedules. And with Ewan set to begin pre-production on his first US feature in only five months, the schedule could not be tighter. It’s all cast now; Carl Phipps as Colin (my God, fate has a sick sense of humour) and Nimnh Tubbs as Rachel. Nimnh is not as big a star as Carl but she’s very highly regarded, having played most of the younger Shakespeare totty at the RSC and recently a “Hedda Gabler for the Millennium generation” (Daily Telegraph) at the National. I have not yet discovered how to pronounce Nimnh but I must make sure I do before rehearsals begin which, believe it or not, is at the beginning of next week. Normally you don’t rehearse much with film, but apparently Ewan always does a week with the principals “Just to create a sense of community,” he says.

Dear Penny

I went to the Disney store in Regent Street in my lunch break today. I really must stop this. Except actually I’ve always wanted to own the video of Snow White, which is a genuine movie classic. As for the other toys and videos and the little Pocahontas outfit I bought, well, they’ll be useful to have around when friends come over with their children, even if I don’t have one of my own. I’ve been thinking a lot about where we’ll put the nursery if we succeed (which I know is statistically unlikely). The spare bedroom is the obvious place. We only ever use it occasionally when Sam gets drunk and snores so loudly I make him go away. It’s got a lovely tree outside it so it’ll be possible to watch the seasons change and with a bit of encouragement I’m sure we could get birds to nest in it. One of those hanging bags of nuts from a pet shop, I should imagine. I’ll buy a book.

Look, Penny, I know what you’re thinking, or what you would be thinking if you existed, in fact I know what I’m thinking and you’re wrong. I mean I’m wrong. There’s nothing sad or unhealthy about me occasionally buying toys. Why shouldn’t I dream? Why shouldn’t I indulge in a few delicious fantasies? And just supposing they’re not fantasies. Supposing they come true, eh? Oh dear, it would be so wonderful I can hardly bear to think about it.

Dear Sam

Whatever I may think about Ewan casting Carl Phipps, I can’t fault him with Nimnh Tubbs. She’s wonderful. Beautiful and heart-breaking. She was going through some of the stuff I pinched from Lucy’s book today and you could have heard a pin drop. She manages to make it funny and sad at the same time. When she read out that stuff about praying and feeling guilty for only believing in God when she wants something, people clapped, as indeed did I.

And I suppose if I’m absolutely honest, Carl Phipps isn’t bad either. He does seem to have a kind of natural intensity which doesn’t look forced or anything. When he does the lines it’s possible for me to almost forget it’s me talking. They were looking at the part where Colin tries to explain to Rachel about what she thinks is his indifference towards the idea of kids and he admits that in the abstract sense he doesn’t want children…

“‘But as a part of you, as an extension and expression of our love, that I do want and if it happened, I’d be delighted. No, I’d be more than delighted. I’d be in Heaven.’” Phipps sort of paused here and looked into Nimnh’s eyes. I swear they’d both gone a bit teary, both the actors, that is, not both Nimnh’s eyes, although that as well, obviously. I’d heard that actors achieve the watery-eyed look by pulling at the hairs in their noses but if they did that they did it bloody slyly because I didn’t notice. Anyway, then Carl took Nimnh’s hand and said, “But if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t. That’s how I see it. If we have children it’ll be another part of us, our love. If we don’t then we’ll still have us and our love will be no less whole.”

Well, it’s exactly how I feel about Lucy. Not surprising, really, seeing as how I wrote it, but still, it was very moving. Even George, who’s a tough, thick-skinned bastard, seemed quite emotional. He told me that it was good stuff and I told him that I’d meant every word of it.

After that Ewan called a short break and went off to sit in magnificent, moody isolation while cute girls with spiky hair and yellow-tinted glasses brought him coffee. All the actors and crew made a beeline for the tea and biscuit table as actors and crew always do. I decided to introduce myself to Nimnh who, being an actress, was holding a cup of hot water into which she was jiggling some noxious herbal teabag or other.

“Hi, I’m the writer. I’m so glad you’ve decided to do this, Nimnn… Nhimmn… Nmnhm…”

Of course it was only then that I realized I’d forgotten to check up on how to pronounce the woman’s name and that I had absolutely no idea. I think she was used to it. Well she would be, wouldn’t she?

“It’s pronounced Nahve. It’s ancient Celtic,” she said and there was a delightful hint of Irish in her voice which I could tell she was rather proud of. “I feel my Celtic roots very deeply. My family hail from the bleak and beautiful Western Isles of the Isle of Ireland. My blood is deep, deep green.”

Well there’s no answer to that, as they say. As it happens, I didn’t need one because just then Carl came up, all blokey and matey.

“I’m Carl. You’re Sam, aren’t you? I know your wife slightly. She works at my agency.”

Yes, you know her slightly, mate, I thought, and slightly is as much as you’re ever going to know her, you lying sneaking bastard.

“Tremendous script, mate,” Carl continued. “Really tremendous.”

I thanked him and then when his back was turned managed to surreptitiously put ketchup in his tea. A small but important victory. Then the PA called the company back to rehearse. As Nimnh passed me she pointed to the script and the speech Ewan wanted to look at.

“I cried when I first read it,” she said.

The terrible thing is, so did I.

I’d only just put it into the script that morning. I couldn’t put it in earlier because Lucy hadn’t written it. She takes her book to Spannerfield and if the queue’s long, which it normally is, she sometimes jots down her thoughts.

Nimnh sat on a chair in the middle of the rehearsal room, with a pen and a book in her hand (I’ve even used that device in the film. It acts as a sort of narration), and read the speech.

“‘I don’t know. As we get closer to the day that will either see me reborn or on which I’ll just die a bit more, the longing inside me seems to become almost physical, as if I’ve swallowed something big and heavy and very slightly poisonous. A sort of morning sickness for the barren and unfulfilled. Do I dare to hope that perhaps soon the longing will end?’”

I could hardly bear it. Nimnh was reading the speech (and reading it very well), but all I could hear was Lucy. All I could see was Lucy, sitting in a crowded waiting room all alone. Scribbling down her thoughts, thoughts I was now making public.

“‘… every mother and child I see begs that question, a simultaneous moment of exultation and despair. Every pregnancy is a beacon of hope and also a cruel reminder that for the present at least there is nothing inside me except the longing. And perhaps there never will be. I don’t know why it is that women feel such a deep need to create life from within themselves, to yearn for a time in which their own flesh will bring them comfort, but I know that they do. That’s the one experience that women who have children easily miss out on in life… The intensely female grief which accompanies the fear that those children might never exist.’”

Everyone was very positive about the speech. Ewan loves the way I’m “building the script in layers”, as he calls it. George said that he really felt I’d cracked the female protagonist.

“Nothing to do with me, mate,” I told him. “Didn’t I tell you? I took on a woman co-writer.”

Dear Penny

I’ve just re-read some of the stuff I’ve been writing recently and quite frankly I’m a bit embarrassed. Mawkish, self-pitying drivel. I’m sorry I bored you with it. All that stuff about the “longing within” and “morning sickness for the barren”. Great Christ, three-quarters of the world is starving! How can I be so self-indulgent? All I can say is thank GOD no one will ever, ever read it. Still, it does help to get it all out, even if I do sound like an absolute whinger.

I went for another blood test today as per. That’s about it. Nothing else to tell.

Not long now. My ovaries feel like sacks of potatoes having got about fifty eggs on them apiece.

Dear Sam

I’ve now officially handed in my notice at BBC Radio. It’ll mean going into debt because the advance they’ve given me for my film is nothing like enough to keep us, but it has to be done. I’ve taken so many days off in the last couple of months that they’d even begun to notice at Broadcasting House. Normally, if you don’t push your luck they’ll let you bumble on until you retire but even they have limits so I thought I’d better go before I was pushed.

I dropped in on Charlie Stone’s studio on my last morning, to say goodbye.

“Right, OK, nice one,” he said. “Who are you?”

Which is, I think, a fitting epitaph for my career in youth broadcasting.

I haven’t told Lucy about me chucking my job. How can I? She hasn’t got the faintest idea what I’m up to. Oh well, one lie more or less won’t hurt.

There was a big script conference today prior to commencement of principal photography. It was held at Above The Line in Soho because Ewan didn’t want to schlep all the way out to White City. Therefore George and Trevor and even Nigel had to schlep into town. Interesting, that. It strikes me that Nigel’s not as tough as he’d like to think he is. The BBC are putting up most of the money but Nigel lets the Corporation get treated like junior partners to three haircuts with half a rented floor in Soho.

And why?

Film, that’s why. The whole world is bewitched by film, the inimitable glamour of the silver screen. Or at least the whole of the London media world, which is the whole world as far as we who live in it are concerned. All other narrative art forms have come to be seen as drab and joyless compared to film. Novels, theatre, TV? All right in their way, but in the final analysis boring. Boring and old-fashioned, to be seen as a stepping stone, no more than that, a stepping stone into the only real place to be, the glorious world of film! If a novelist writes a novel the first question his first interviewer will ask is, “Will it be made into a movie?” If an actor gets a part in a ten-million-pound TV mini series they’ll say to their friends, “Of course it’s only telly.” The directors of subsidized art theatres sweat out their time commissioning plays which are as much like movies as four actors and a chair will allow them to be, waiting for that longed-for day when they’ll have amassed enough credibility to get out of theatre and into film. It’s Hollywood, you see. After ninety years we’re all still mesmerized. We still want to get there. Nobody working at the BBC is going to get to Hollywood but somebody from Above The Line might and in Ewan’s case will. Which is why we come to him.

Fortunately for me it was a very positive meeting indeed. Everybody agreed that the current draft of the script is good. Superb, actually, was the word being bandied about. Ewan made it clear that he was very happy.

Taking her cue from Ewan, Petra produced sheaves of faxes and declared that LA and New York are also very happy, that everyone in fact is very happy.

It was an absolute love fest.

Then of course came the inevitable caveat. This is a thing that always happens to writers in script discussions, no matter how enthusiastic those discussions might be. Somebody says “except for”. I’ve done it to hundreds myself; “Everybody is absolutely delighted, except for…”

“The ending,” Nigel said, and they all nodded.

It was a fair call, I had to admit.

“Vis-a-vis the absence thereof,” said Petra putting the unspoken doubt into words.

I knew I would have to stick to my guns. With Lucy and me so close to a conclusion for better or for worse, I just don’t feel that I have it in me yet to decide how my story ends. It turns out that Lucy was right all along. You do need to write from the heart. It does have to come from within, and at the moment I don’t have the heart to decide on the fate of my characters. I don’t know how I’ll feel when the news comes through, so I don’t know how they’ll feel. That doesn’t mean I’m going to make Colin and Rachel’s result the same as Lucy’s and mine. I might but I just don’t know yet.

“It’s only the last page,” I said. “The last few lines, in fact. I’ll hand it in when I said, in a few days.”

“But Sam,” Nigel protested. “Ewan starts filming next week.”

“Well, he doesn’t need to start with the end, does he?” I said, looking at Ewan, who stared into his Aqua Libra in a suitable “I shall pronounce my conclusions in my own time” manner.

“With respect,” Petra said – in fact very nearly snapped – “it’s a bit difficult keeping the American distributors and their money in place when we don’t know how the story comes out.”

“Well, I don’t know how the story comes out,” I protested. “I’m sorry but I don’t.”

Ewan hauled himself from the depths of his futon and reached for an olive.

“Look, it’s my movie, you ken?” he said, which is directors all over for you. I’d written it. Various people were paying for it. Hundreds of people were going to be involved in making it. But it would, of course, be “his” movie, a “Ewan Proclaimer Film”. On another occasion I might have said something (although I doubt it), but it turned out that Ewan was on my side so I let it go.

“As I’ve made clear before,” he continued, “if Sam wants to hold back on the ending then that’s fine. It’s good motivation for the actors and it keeps us all on our toes. They’re playing two people over whom hangs a life or no-life situation. I’m very happy to help them to maintain that ambiguity. Improvisation is the life blood of creative endeavour.”

Well, that shut them up, let me tell you.

There’s a church in Hammersmith next to the flyover which I call “the lonely church”. I call it that because it’s been almost completely cut off by roads from the community it was built to serve. Millions of people see it every year but only at fifty miles an hour. Its spire pokes up beside the flyover as the M4 starts to turn back into the A4. It’s a beautiful church, although you wouldn’t know it until you were about ten feet away from it. I found myself there today. I’d just sort of wandered off after my appointment at the hospital and I must have walked two or three miles because suddenly there I was standing outside the lonely church of Saint Paul’s as I now know it to be called. I’d never seen the bottom two thirds of it before but I knew it by the vast elevated roads that roar and fume around it. I didn’t go in, but I sat in the grounds trying to find the faith to pray. I don’t know whether I managed it. I don’t know what it would feel like to really believe in a prayer, I don’t suppose many people do. I mean, you’d have to be pretty majorly religious. I do know that I concentrated very hard and tried to think why I deserved a child and came up with the answer that I deserved one because it was the thing that I wanted more than anything else on earth. I suppose in a way that was a prayer, whatever that means. A prayer to fate, at any rate. Not long now. A couple of weeks at most and then we’ll know.

George and Trevor took me out to lunch today. We begin shooting tomorrow and they absolutely insisted that I join them for a final conference. I was delighted to. Now that I’m no longer a BBC exec and on a budget to boot I don’t get to dine at Quark quite as regularly as I used to and I thought it would be almost like old times.

They were both already seated when I arrived and looking very serious. George didn’t even bother to stare at the waitress’s backside, which must have been a first for him, and Trevor refrained from commenting on the fact that though he did not require wine himself he had no hesitation whatsoever in encouraging us to imbibe.

All in all, it was not like old times one bit. They got straight to the point.

“Sam,” said George, but I could see that he spoke for both of them. “You’re going to have to tell Lucy about this.”

It took me completely aback. Silly, really. George and Trevor are both good friends of Lucy and it should have occurred to me that they would be worrying about the obvious autobiographical details that I was exploiting even if they were ignorant about the depths of my betrayal.

“I can’t,” I said. “Not now. We’re just about to complete a cycle of IVF.”

“Yes, do tell us how it turns out,” said Trevor, slightly acidly. “Or perhaps we should wait to read it in the script.”

They were both genuinely concerned. It was as obvious to them as it was to me that a pseudonym would not disguise me for ever.

“People are very excited about this project,” George insisted. “What are you going to do if it’s a hit? You won’t be able to hide from the media, you know. My God! Imagine if they found out before she did and she read it in the papers, or, worse, got doorstepped by a hack?”

“Even if it’s a flop you can’t possibly keep the fact that you’ve written a movie a secret,” Trevor insisted. “She’s your wife, for heaven’s sake.”

They’re right, of course, and I certainly didn’t need a fifty-quid lunch (courtesy of the licence payer) for anybody to tell me. They meant well, of course, but in the long run it’s my business, mine and Lucy’s.

I told them that I’d tell her when I know how the story ends.

Dear Penny

Sam gave me the last injection tonight before egg collection, which we go in for at seven a.m. the day after tomorrow. Rather dramatically, the injection had to be done at midnight. It’s now twelve fifteen but I know I shall have trouble sleeping. Sam’s been very good about the injections. Apart from that one time, they haven’t hurt at all. Talking to some of the women at the hospital, it seems that some husbands (partners, I should say) can’t bring themselves to do it at all, so the poor women have to go in at seven every morning for weeks. Imagine that. It’s boring enough just going in to keep them topped up with the endless amounts of blood they seem to require. Sam told me that he was scared at first but he’d got used to it. I know that I wouldn’t like to have had to inject him with huge needles. I think he’s been quite brave. In fact I think he’s been very good about the whole vile business which I know he would never have got into at all without my insistence. He’s given me a lot of strength. Taking such an interest and always being around when I need him. Some husbands hate it all so much that they try to pretend it isn’t happening. Sam hasn’t been like that at all. Quite the opposite. He’s been fascinated, which has made things much easier for me. I tried to thank him a bit tonight because I know he’s never really, really wanted children. I mean not really.

She’s wrong about me not really wanting children and I told her so. I told her I really do want us to have children, that I want it with all my heart, and I do. I told her I wanted it because I love her and that our children would be an extension and expression of that love. Another part of us. But if it doesn’t happen then we’ll still have us, that our love will be no less whole… and then I realized that I was quoting the bloody script! And I couldn’t remember whether I’d said it before, or written it in my book, or made it up for the film, or nicked it from Lucy’s book! I suddenly realized that I no longer knew whose emotions were whose. I thought I’ve got to tell her, right now. And I did try. I started to, but I couldn’t. Not now. She’s having her eggs collected tomorrow.

Sam was a bit distracted, actually. Probably the fact that he’s got to have another hospital wank tomorrow. He hates that so much. Oh well, maybe it’ll be for the last time. Who knows? If we could only score. Anyway, he didn’t say much. I think he wanted to but he didn’t and I didn’t press him. We just held each other. In fact it got quite heated for a minute, but I reminded him that if we made love tonight we could end up with twelve. So we stopped. I feel incredibly close to Sam tonight. I told him that I love him and that it gives me strength to know that whatever happens I’m safe in that love.

I thought he was going to cry. Then I thought he was going to tell me something. Then he didn’t say anything.

Dear Sam

This morning Lucy and I went to Spannerfield for the big day of egg and sperm collection. We got there at 6.50 a.m. for 7 as instructed, to find a lengthy queue of cold, sheepish-looking people already there. Most of them were women in for injections because they don’t have husbands like me who have the sheer iron guts to do it themselves. Some of us, however, about ten couples, were in for the full business and we were duly led off to a ward with a row of curtained-off beds in it.

There was a rather nice nurse called Charles. Lucy knew him already but it was all new for us husbands (or partners).

“All right, Lucy,” said Charles. “We’ll just pop this on and hop into bo-bos and, Sam, we’ll be wanting a little deposit from you for the sperm bank, so I’ll just leave a paying-in pot here and I’ll call you when there’s a service till free.”

Another wanking pot. Great. When I was a kid blithely spanking the plank at any opportunity that arose I never would have even dreamt that I was in fact rehearsing for what would one day be perhaps the most important day of my life.

Lucy had to put on a sort of nightie-smock that was entirely open at the back. She made a comment about it that nearly made me drop the tossing instructions that I was idly perusing, as if I didn’t know them by heart by now.

“Dignified little number,” she said. “Think I’ll wear it to a première.”

For a moment I was completely thrown.

“Première!” I said with what could only have been incriminating alarm. “Première of what?”

“Nothing, just any old première,” she replied, looking at me rather strangely. “I was joking.”

Just then Charles returned and summoned me to do my duty. He did this by poking his head round the curtain and beckoning me with an ominous-looking finger.

“Your chamber awaits,” he said. And with grim resignation I took up my pot and went.

There are at least two rooms at the actual unit so the pressure of the queue was somewhat alleviated. In fact Charles told me that I had as much time as I liked because we were all in for the whole day anyway.

Well, that was some small comfort, but having said it you’ve said everything, because this was the most pressurized visit to Mrs Hand of them all. This, as they say, was shit or bust time and as I sat there alone, in the little room, trousers round my ankles (having duly washed my knob as instructed) I contemplated the awesome nature of my responsibilities. My wife, whom I love very very much, has just gone through six weeks of the most appallingly intrusive therapy. Drugs have been pumped into her at every hour of the day, forcing her body to shut down in a premature menopause prior to it being taken over and coerced into a grotesque fertility, over-producing eggs until her ovaries have become heavy, bloated and painful. Every other day for weeks she has traipsed across London to sit in queues with other desperate women, waiting to have various body fluids taken from her and to have her most intimate womanly self probed and manipulated. The reason for all this is of course her desperate, heart-rending longing for a child, a longing which this day may possibly heal.

Now if at this point I fail to ejaculate successfully into a pot, making absolutely sure that I catch the first spurt, this whole dreadful business will have been a total waste of time. So there I sat with all that pressure, alone in a room, attempting to coax my penis into a firm enough condition for me to masturbate successfully and fulfil the trust and the dreams of the woman I love.

Sam looked quite pale when he returned from doing his duty. He said he thought he’d got enough. I said I damn well hoped so. They only need one.

The egg extraction was a rather weird experience. Being there with Lucy while the doctors take over makes you feel like an awkward guest at your own party. When our time came they wheeled Lucy into the theatre, while I padded along behind feeling a complete prat in my green gown, raincap and plastic galoshes.

I sat up at the non-business end and Lucy was soon snoring rather fitfully, having been put out for the count. They had her legs up in stirrups and a doctor lost no time in getting down to business. There was a little television screen on which he could see what he was doing through some ultrasound technique or other and he talked me through it.

“So the white dot on the screen is the needle. Can you see it moving? I’m lining it up with the follicle, which I pierce. Can you see it deflating?”

I didn’t answer because it was clearly more of a statement than a question. Besides, I felt too intimidated to speak. I didn’t wish to distract anybody by word or deed. Nonetheless, I could see what he was describing – shadowy translucent bubbles being popped by the little white dot and then collapsing as he sucked them out.

“Now we’re removing the fluid from inside the follicle, within which should be the eggs.”

Sure enough, they were siphoning out test tube after test tube of pale red liquid and then handing them through a little kitchen hatch into what I presumed was the lab.

It was extraordinary. The lady through the hatch kept shouting, “One egg… two more eggs… another egg,” like a dinner lady. It reminded me of that scene in 101 Dalmatians where the nurse keeps rushing out excitedly saying “More puppies!” Anyway, in the end the doctor had got the lot and so he backed up the Pickford’s removal van between Lucy’s legs and started to dismantle the scaffolding rig he’d put up her.

On the way home in the car Sam told me all about it. I was feeling pretty woozy anyway and I can’t say that stories of doctors sucking eggs out of my vagina made me feel much better. Still, at least it’s over. Sam says they told him they got twelve eggs, which was about what they wanted. He said he hoped he’d managed to provide twelve sperm, but I think he was joking.

It was so strange to think that at that very moment, as we drove home, back in the hospital his sperm were being whirled round in a centrifuge prior to being shaken up in a tube with my eggs.

We both agreed that the whole experience was one that we were not anxious to repeat. I said that perhaps we wouldn’t have to. After all, twins are quite common with IVF, even triplets (my God!). Sam told me not to jinx us, but I don’t know. I just have this funny feeling that it’s going to work.

“I feel good inside,” I told him, and then I was sick into the glove compartment, but it’s all right, the doctors said that might happen. All right for me, that is, not Sam, who had to clear it out.

Dear Sam

We began principal photography today. God, it was exciting. We’re filming in an old warehouse in Docklands, which they’ve done out as the hospital. I took the light railway which is not a bad service. They offered to send a car for me but I said no. Lucy might have wondered why commissioning editors of Radio were suddenly being treated so grandly. When I left she was still in bed. I took her a cup of herbal and longed to tell her where I was going. It would have been so wonderful.

“Bye, darling, I’m just off to a film location where about a hundred people are working on MY FILM.”

It’s the thing I’ve dreamt of all my life. What’s more, Lucy has shared so many of those dreams, and now they’ve come true I can’t even share it with her. How cruel is that? Fate can be an absolute bugger.

I’ll tell her soon, I swear it. The moment we’re through this IVF cycle. George says it’s pointless to put it off and that there’ll never be a good time, but I can’t possibly tell her now, she’s too fragile. She’s taken the week off work (although they say you don’t have to) and seems to be in a world of her own. Sort of serene, but very delicate. She says she’s trying to be entirely relaxed and meditative. Aspiring, apparently, to an absolute calmness within. Well, I don’t think she’d be very calm within if I said to her, “Oh, by the way, darling, I’ve turned our mutual agony into a movie and what’s more you’ve unwittingly written half of it”

How did I get into this? I can’t believe it’s such a mess. I’m sure I had no choice. Didn’t I? I definitely seem to remember having no choice, but it’s all gone a bit hazy.

I must say, though, that the day was wonderful. Incredibly exciting. Just seeing all the cameras and cables and trucks and catering and actors and crew, and all because of me. It felt fantastic. People kept coming up to me and asking if I was OK for coffee and saying, “It’s a wonderful script. When I read it I cried.”

Ewan was starting with Rachel’s laparoscopy and at first I thought he must have sacked Nimnh because an entirely different actress was on set in the operation smock. I was just getting up the courage to protest to Ewan because I think Nimnh is wonderful when I noticed Nimnh sitting in a folding chair smoking a cigarette. On further investigation it turned out that the new actress was a bottom double! Imagine it! Grand, or what?

It seems there’d been a row earlier that morning when despite Nimnh’s protests Ewan had been adamant about filming Rachel from behind getting into bed with the open-backed smock on.

“For Christ’s sake, it’s not about perving on her arse! It’s about her vulnerability! Can’t you see that?” he exclaimed. “This woman is a piece of meat, stripped of dignity. Her arse is quite literally on the line and we need to see it!”

Well, Nimnh had simply folded her arms and refused point blank. She said she did not do two Desdemonas and a Rosalind at the RSC in order to have her bum used to sell videos. I thought she was absolutely right, actually, although like every man on the set I would have loved to see the bum under discussion.

Thinking about it, that’s probably another good reason why she shouldn’t have to show it. Frankly, I find balancing my sexual politics with my sexual desires is a constant struggle.

Dear Penny

It’s three days now since the egg extraction and today was the day to have it all put back in. That is if there’s anything to put back, which was the first anxiety. All the way in in the car we were quiet, both of us wondering if our eggs and sperm had even managed to conceive at all, which they might very well not have done.

Well it turned out all right, in that we had managed to create seven embryos, which they said was good. A doctor took us aside into a little room and it all got very serious as she explained that some of the embryos are good and some are not so good, and one was useless because although the egg had been fertilized the embryo had already gone wrong, etc., etc.

Anyway, the long and the short of it was that we had two very good and two pretty good. The doctor said that they were prepared to insert three if we insisted, but she strongly recommended that we do only two, which I was very happy to go along with. I mean the possibility of triplets is pretty daunting. I had been hoping that they would freeze the other two good ones but they don’t seem to encourage that at Spannerfield. I don’t know why. Anyway, although the consultation was presented as a series of choices for us, in the long run, let’s face it, you do what you’re told, don’t you? I mean I don’t know one end of a two-celled embryo from another (if indeed they have ends). That’s why you have doctors. Anyway, that was it. We agreed that two embryos be reinserted and the rest would be donated to the hospital for research, which is apparently their usual procedure if the donors have no objections, which we didn’t.

The reinsertion was very quick indeed. No anaesthetic or anything. They just wheel you in, spread your legs, and squirt them up. It’s incredibly low tech really when you consider the dazzling medical science that has led up to it. First they show you the fertilized embryos on a little telly screen, then a big tube appears on the screen (actually it’s about a hair’s breadth) and sucks them up. Then a nurse brings the tube through to the doctor (it’s like a very long thin syringe). The doctor puts it up your fanny and, guided by an ultrasound picture, she injects the embryos into your womb. It takes about a minute unless the embryos get stuck in the tube, which they didn’t with us.

It’s a hell of a lot easier than the egg extraction. The only real discomfort is that they make you do it with a full bladder because for some reason this makes for a clearer picture. Afterwards they won’t let you wee for about three quarters of an hour, which is absolutely excruciating and you keep feeling that the terrible pressure must be crushing the life out of your poor embryos.

Then they let you go home. As we were getting ready to leave, Charles, the nurse, came in with a printout of the computer image of our two embryos, both of which were already dividing into further cells.

“This is them,” he said. “Good luck.”

When we got home Sam made some tea and I just sat in the sitting room staring at the photo, thinking that this could be the first photo in an album of our children’s lives. It’s not many kids who get to see themselves when they were only two or three cells big.

Sam reminded me that the chances are that these ones won’t either and I know that, of course, but I’m sure that mental attitude has an effect on the physical self. I know I can’t will it to happen, but the least I can do is give Dick and Debbie the most positive start in life that I can.

Yes, all right, I’ve given them names! And I’m not embarrassed about it either. They’re mine, aren’t they? They exist, don’t they? At least they did when the picture was taken. And now? Who knows? I could see that Sam was not at all sure about personalizing things in this way. But why not? They’re fertilized embryos! That’s a huge step for us. Something we might easily not have been able to do. We have to be positive, we’re so far down the road.

Sam reminded me yet again that it’s only a one in five chance. Well, I know! I know. Of course the odds are long, but they’re not impossible. Twenty per cent isn’t a bad shot. When my photo was taken they were alive.

“Think about that, Sam,” I said. “Two living entities created from you and me. All they have to do now is hang on inside for a few days. They just have to hang on.”

It’s funny, but Lucy’s enthusiasm, the strength of her will, is infectious. Because the more I looked at that photo, the more real those two little translucent splodges became. They are, after all, already embryos. They’ve already passed the beginning of life. And I couldn’t deny that in a way they looked pretty tough, I mean for three-celled organisms, that is, obviously.

“Of course they’re tough,” said Lucy. “Think what they’ve been through already! Sucked out of me by vacuum cleaner, pumped out of you into a cold plastic pot. Whirled around in a centrifuge, shaken up until they bash into each other, smeared on a microscope slide then sucked up again and squirted through a syringe. It’s a positive assault course. Dick and Debbie are SAS material!”

She’s right, of course. If they do make it back out of her they’re going to be either commandos or circus performers. And they might make it. They could make it. I mean, why the hell shouldn’t they? If they can just hang on for a few more days while they grow a few more cells.

Then Lucy whispered at her stomach.

“Come on, Dick and Debbie,” she said. It was sort of as a joke, but I could see that she meant it, so I said it too but louder.

“Come on, Dick and Debbie!”

Then we started shouting it.

Funny, really, the two of us sitting there, laughing and shouting at Lucy’s stomach.

Whatever happens now, that was a good thing to do.

Dear Penny

I wonder if this will be the last sad letter that I ever write you? The long wait is coming to an end. One more vaginal suppository is all I have to take (there’s been nine, plus three more spikes in the bum). I hope Dick and Debbie realize what I’m going through for them. Sam says that if they’re as tough as we hope they are, in eight and a half months I’ll be able to tell them. I hope we’re not hoping too much. It’s only a one in five chance, after all.

Sam said that any child of mine would be one in a million.

Then we kissed for ages.

I can’t deny that I feel good. I’m not even slightly periodic and normally I can feel my period coming for a week. Sam agrees that that has to be a very good sign.

Oh well, the day after tomorrow we’ll have the blood test and then we’ll know. I’ve made Sam promise that he’ll take the day off. He’s been working so hard recently (God knows what on – Charlie Stone just seems to say the first thing that comes into his head, which is usually “knob”). Anyway, I definitely don’t want to get the news alone.

After we had kissed, Sam got very serious and said that when it’s all over, for better or… well, hopefully for better, he wants to talk. I said fine and he said, “No, really talk, about the last few months, and all that we’ve been feeling and going through together.” This is a very encouraging sign for me because as I’ve said before, Sam is not always the most communicative of people. He says he wants to talk about where he wants to go as a writer and what sacrifices we would both have to make for it and, well, lots of other things.

He says he wants to go away this weekend. Whatever the news is and… well, talk.

I said that I thought it was a great idea. We can take Dick and Debbie on their first trip.

We thought about that for a while and then we kissed again and then he said he loved me and I said I love him and there was more kissing and Sam put his head on my tummy, where it is now. One thing is for sure: whatever happens, whether Dick and Debbie make it or not, IVF has been good for Sam and me. It’s really brought us closer together.

It’s twelve-thirty at night. Lucy and I have had a lovely evening together and we’ve agreed to go away together next weekend. I’ll tell her everything then.

She’s been asleep for an hour now. But I couldn’t sleep because as I lay there thinking about Dick and Debbie I decided on the way my film is going to end. I’ve just written it up and faxed it to Ewan, who, as far as I know, never goes to bed.

INT. DAY. COLIN AND RACHEL’S HOUSE.

The news comes in the afternoon. Colin and Rachel are sitting, anxiously awaiting a phonecall. They take strength from each other’s presence. They hold hands. The phone rings. Colin tries to answer it but Rachel is holding his hands too tightly. There’s a moment of comedy and emotion as Colin has to remove a hand from Rachel’s traumatized grip in order to pick up the receiver. He listens for a moment. In Rachel’s eyes we see the hope and the fear of her entire life. Colin smiles, a smile so big, so broad it seems to fill the screen. He says, “Thank you,” and puts the phone down. He looks at Rachel, she looks at him, he says, “They made it.” The End.

That’s it. Whatever happens to Lucy and me, that’s the end of my movie. It’s the ending I felt tonight, the ending I want.

Ewan just phoned. I hope he didn’t wake Lucy.

“It’s mawkish, over-sentimental, middle-class English shite,” he said. “I love it.”

Everybody seems to have been up late tonight. Petra called as well and George, who never sleeps at all any more because of Cuthbert.

Petra was hugely relieved. “The right decision, Sam,” she said. “I might as well tell you now. If I’d gone to LA with anything other than a developing foetus, they’d have withdrawn their funding.”

I’d unplugged the phone in our bedroom and was having a last whisky (which I’ve been allowed since making my last deposit) when George phoned.

“Well done, mate,” he said.

I told him it was what I felt like writing.

Somehow I think that now everything will be all right.

Dear Penny

Today I got my period.

It started at about eleven this morning. It came without warning but it’s a heavy one and it means that all my dreams are dead.

I’m not pregnant. I’ve never been pregnant. The two embryos I called Dick and Debbie died a week ago.

I sat on the lavatory for about an hour, crying. I don’t believe I’ve ever cried as much in my whole life as I did today. My eyes are swollen and sore. They feel like they have daggers in them.

I wasn’t just crying for the loss of the babies that never existed. That was only the beginning of my trouble, the beginning of the nightmare that was today. I’ve been crying for the loss of my whole life, a life I thought I knew but it turns out I didn’t know at all.

I’m writing this alone in bed. I’ll be on my own from now on. Sam isn’t here and he won’t be coming back. I don’t know where he is and I don’t care. I’ve left him.

I’m going to write down what happened so that I never forget.

After I’d cried so much that I thought I would dehydrate I knew that I should tell Sam. We’d been through it all together and I felt that he’d want to be with me at the end of it. Besides, I needed him. Having gone about for a week half believing that I had a child inside me, or even two, I suddenly felt more desperately alone than I could have imagined possible.

But when I spoke to his office at Broadcasting House I was amazed to discover that Sam no longer worked there. The woman I was speaking to said that he’d left weeks ago. She didn’t want to tell me where he was, either, as she said it was very private. I told her that I was his wife and I was ill and that she had to tell me where he was. She gave in in the end but she didn’t want to. I could tell that she was wondering why Sam’s wife didn’t know where he was, or that he’d changed his job. I was wondering that too.

When I was riding in the taxi I think I believed he was having an affair. That’s what I expected to find at the address the woman had given me. Sam in the arms of another woman. I wish that that’s what I had found.

The address was a film location. A big warehouse in Docklands with the usual trucks and trailers and generators outside and inside, a vast darkened hangar where a number of sets had been constructed. There were people everywhere. I passed a group dressed as nurses and as I walked in I could see immediately that one of the sets was a hospital operating room for women, with stirrups and that sort of thing. I stood there for a while, hidden in the shadows, not knowing what to think, not really thinking at all. Everything was so confused, and I felt scared. Scared of what I was about to discover. Slowly it all began to swim into focus. I could see that all the lights and the attention were concentrated on what was a bedroom set, a bedroom very like my own, in fact. There were two actors on the set, one of them, to my astonishment, Carl Phipps. The other was a woman I recognized as Nimnh Tubbs from the RSC. Someone called for quiet and the two of them began to play out a scene. It was a rehearsal. I knew that because I could see that the camera was not being operated. Carl sat at a desk and pretended to type into a laptop.

“What the hell do you find to write about?” he said. “What an emotionally retarded shit I am, I suppose. I know you secretly think I’m holding my sperm back. You think their refusal to leap like wild salmon up the river of your fertility and headbutt great holes in your eggs is down to a belligerently slack attitude which they’ve caught off me.”

I could feel myself going cold. Surely that was exactly the sort of thing that Sam always used to say to me? What was going on? Why was Nimnh Tubbs sitting on the bed holding a journal just like I do every night? Just like I’m doing now, in fact.

Then a young Scottish man who was clearly the director stepped into the scene.

“Obviously we’ll pick up a reaction from you there, Nimnh,” he said. “Semi-distraught, emotionally dysfunctional, pathetic little woman stuff OK?”

Nimnh nodded wisely. She knew that type.

Perhaps I’m stupid. Maybe the last few months have made me stupid, but at this point I still didn’t know what was going on. I just stood there, convinced that I was in some horrible dream. They started rehearsing again, more words I knew.

“I just happen to believe that when God made me he made me for a purpose beyond that of devoting my entire life to reproducing myself.”

And she replied, “When God made you he made a million other people on the same day. He probably doesn’t even remember your name.”

Then I knew. Those were my words! My actual verbatim words! Just then I saw Sam. I don’t know whether I’d realized what was going on before or after he appeared, but either way I was no longer confused. I knew what had been done to me.

The director had called Sam over. Nimnh was having trouble with the motivation behind the scene and the director wanted her to hear it from the writer.

The writer. I was the bloody writer.

“You see, to me, Nimnh,” said the man who had been my husband, “this scene represents the beginnings of her descent into a sort of sad madness, a kind of vain obsession. To me the line about not crying outside Mothercare on the way to the off licence is crucial…”

Then I realized the full extent of his betrayal. I’d never told Sam about Mothercare and the off licence. I’d only told you, Penny. He’d read my book.

Sam wittered on, posing importantly, loving himself.

“Don’t forget that this woman is beginning a journey that will see her lose all dignity and sense of previous self,” he said. “Before she knows it she’ll be making a fool of herself at hippy visualization classes, adopting a baby gorilla and claiming it’s got nothing to do with her infertility. She’ll have reduced her sex life to a series of joyless, soulless, cynically calculated servicings, treating her poor, hapless hubby as some kind of farmyard animal, brutally milked for its sperm…”

They laughed at this. They laughed at it all. Why wouldn’t they? It’s funny, I suppose.

It was then that I walked forward on to the set. I still can’t decide whether it was a good idea, but I was in a daze. Some young woman with blue hair and a walkie-talkie tried to stop me, but I was not to be stopped. They all heard the young woman’s protests and turned and saw me. I don’t know what Sam thought.

But I knew what I thought. One word.

“Bastard,” I said. It was all I could say. “Bastard.”

Carl was nearly as surprised as Sam was, but I had no time for him. My whole being was taken up absorbing this new Sam, this Sam whom I’d never known.

“You bastard, Sam, you utter, fucking bastard.”

I hated him and I still hate him. He tried to speak, but I wouldn’t let him.

“I got my period if you’re interested,” I said. “We failed. Dick and Debbie didn’t make it.”

I didn’t care that the director and Carl and Nimnh and the woman with blue hair could hear me. I didn’t care about anything. They all began to turn away with embarrassment, but I told them to stay. I told them that they might as well listen now because they’d hear it all soon anyway, that Nimnh would be saying it all tomorrow.

George ran up. My God, George! They were all in on it. I remember wondering if Melinda knew as well.

Carl seized the moment to ask me what I was doing, what was going on.

“Ask him!” I said, and all eyes turned from me to Sam. “He’s told you everything else about me… My God, Sam, you’ve been stealing my book. Stealing my thoughts and feelings, like a thief!”

I don’t know whether I actually said all that or whether I just stuttered at him. I do know that I was crying, which astonishes me, looking back on it. I’m certainly not a person who makes scenes in front of strangers lightly. I think that failing IVF had already pretty much destroyed what emotional defences I had. And then all this.

Then both Sam and Carl tried to take my arm to lead me away. Sam was stuttering apologies. Carl was trying to get me to calm down and explain. Then Sam rounded on Carl.

“You keep out of this!” he said, and he looked like he was going to cry too. “I know all about you!”

Carl was astonished. It was the last thing he expected.

“Now look here…” he started to say, but I didn’t let him get the chance, I just went for Sam.

“Yes, that’s right, Sam!” I shouted. Everyone really was backing away now, even the Scottish director, who did not look like a man who would embarrass easily. “You know all about Carl! That he took me out and that I kissed him. You know everything about me, don’t you? Because you’ve stolen my bloody thoughts! Well, here’s another little piece of me and you can have it for nothing. You won’t have to sneak about picking locks on people’s diaries for this! I hate you! I hate you more than I ever believed I could hate anyone, and I never want to see or speak to you again…”

That’s what I told him, in that or so many other words, and I meant it. I still do.

Then I ran out of the building with both Carl and Sam running after me. If it wasn’t the worst thing that has ever happened to me it would be funny.

We stood there, the three of us, on a pavement in the Docklands, Sam desperately protesting that he’d never meant it to be like this, Carl hanging back wondering whether to intervene or not.

“I meant it, Sam, what I said,” I told him. I was calmer by this time, calm enough to look him in the eye. “I told you once that if you did this thing I’d leave you and that’s what I’m going to do.”

He tried to say that I wasn’t myself, that I was over-reacting because we’d failed IVF. Over-reacting. That’s a phrase I won’t forget in a hurry.

“You’ve read my book, Sam,” I told him. “You know that having a child with you was the thing I wanted most in the world. Well, it isn’t any more, it’s the thing I want least. I’m glad Dick and Debbie are dead! Do you hear! I’m glad they never fucking lived!”

He looked at me for a moment. He was numb, I could see that. Then he started to cry. He knew he’d lost me.

Tonight is the first time I’ve opened this “book” document on my computer since that night when I finished my script and Lucy and I held each other for the last time and I was happy for the last time.

That was three months ago and not one minute has gone by since then, waking or sleeping, when I haven’t missed Lucy with all my soul.

I don’t know why I’ve decided to write something in this book now, I just thought I would. I suppose the truth is that I’ve bored my friends enough with how unhappy I am and the only person left whom I can safely bore without risk of further increasing my solitude and isolation is myself.

I made the biggest mistake of my life when I did what I did to Lucy. Every day I’ve asked myself how I could have been so stupid and I still don’t have an answer. I suppose that I just never thought Lucy really meant it when she said that she’d leave me. I keep going over it all in my mind and I still think that if she hadn’t found out about it in such a terrible, brutal way she might not have reacted quite as she did. I don’t know, maybe she would. Either way it’s academic now, and one thing’s for sure: it’s all my fault.

We haven’t started divorce proceedings yet, but I imagine that it won’t be long. We’ve scarcely even spoken, although there have been numerous exchanges of notes, just practical stuff, not nasty but very cold. I imagine that the final separation when it does come will happen in that tired inevitable modern way. No court case, no drama, no dreadful scenes or confrontations, just the required passage of the allotted amount of time. Lucy won’t have to stand up in court and cite my pathetic career and ambition as a co-respondent. The fact that I betrayed and deserted her is of no concern to the law. It’s enough that Lucy no longer wishes to be my wife. These days marriages just fade away.

The film is finished, or at least what’s known as principal photography is finished, and the editing process has begun. I take no interest in it, of course. In fact I’ve had nothing at all to do with the project since the day I ran out of the studio chasing vainly after Lucy in an effort to persuade her to forgive the unforgivable. George and Trevor keep me informed. They say that everybody remains very excited. Funny, this is the fulfilment of a lifetime’s ambition and I don’t care. In fact I actually tried to stop the whole thing. How many writers have done that? After the full extent of my appalling behaviour was so ruthlessly exposed I felt that the only honourable action I could take was to put an end to the film immediately. It turned out that I couldn’t. It was no longer mine to stop. The BBC own it in partnership with Above The Line and having already spent over two million pounds on it they were reluctant to cancel. Saving my marriage was not number one on their list of priorities.

I told Lucy what I’d tried to do and she wrote me a pretty caustic note about it saying that she didn’t care whether the film progressed or not, that what I had stolen from her she didn’t want back anyway. Perversely, I think that the fact that our story no longer belongs to either of us but is instead the sole property of a large corporation has made it a little easier for her. Further evidence of the fact that we as a couple had ceased to exist.

I’ve given her all the money I got from the film. It’s not a vast amount, although I’m told that if it’s successful I’ll get more from what’s known as “the back end” (George said “Ha!” to that). Half of it’s Lucy’s anyway and the rest is to go towards me buying her out of her half of the house. She doesn’t want to live in it any more. She couldn’t even bear to enter it. She got her sister and her mother to organize her things. That nearly broke my heart. In fact it did break my heart.

She’s bought her own place now but it appears that she doesn’t live there very much. The final level of my torment is that she and Carl Phipps have become an item. Lucy hasn’t told me this herself, of course, because as I say we don’t speak, but she knows I know because she tells Melinda and Melinda tells George. It’s not a very satisfactory line of communication but it’s all I have. I torture myself trying to find out more, begging George for every gruelling snippet. It makes us both feel pretty uncomfortable, but what can I do? I’m desperate. I think about Lucy all the time. Apparently the relationship between her and Phipps is all very perky and positive and keen at the moment, which of course I’m very happy about and which of course I loathe and despise.

I do hope Lucy’s happy, though. I really do and I hope Carl Phipps realizes how lucky he is. Not that I’ve any right to say that. I didn’t.

I’ve started writing another script. I’m doing what Lucy told me to do, drawing it from within. It’s about a stupid, lonely, pathetic, weak, useless bastard who deserves everything he gets. It’s a comedy.

Another six weeks gone by.

Six miserable weeks.

I’ve discovered something interesting during the long grey days since I destroyed my life. I’ve discovered that despite what they say, time is not a great healer. Every morning I wake up hoping that the simple fact that a few more restless empty hours have elapsed will in itself provide me with some relief from the pain of my self-inflicted wounds, and every morning I’m disappointed. Time has healed nothing. I still have the sickness in my stomach and the hopelessness in my head. I still loathe myself and I still love Lucy, who is at this very moment in bed with Carl Phipps (it’s two in the morning). Trevor says that four and a half months is not long enough and that if you want time to have any real chance of healing then you have to be thinking in terms of years, possibly decades. This, not surprisingly, is little comfort.

I’m afraid to say that I’m in danger of turning into a very sad act indeed.

I get pissed every night and I haven’t washed my sheets in a month.

I’m writing this entry in my book, by the way, because I got a letter from Lucy today and I don’t know what else to do with myself. Actually it’s not a letter, it’s an email. This amazed me, incidentally. When we lived together Lucy couldn’t even work the timer on the cooker. I suppose the bastard has taught her. I shouldn’t think someone as cool as him would want a girlfriend who did anything as terminally unhip as post a letter.

I’d written to her asking if she wanted a divorce and also if she knew where the key to the garden shed was, because the lawn is now about a foot high.

I’ll download Lucy’s reply into this file. I want to keep it and this book seems as good a place as any.

Dear Sam

The key to the garden shed is under the second fuchsia pot on the right of the door. If this is the first time your thoughts have turned to the garden then I imagine that all the plants will be dead. If they are not, please give them TLC immediately. There is plant food in the shed. If greenfly or similar is in evidence fill the hand spray with soapy water and administer a gentle soaking. Do NOT use chemicals as the garden is entirely organic. Actually I should imagine that it’s entirely cat shit by now because you have to go round and trowel it up once a week or it mounts up.

I suppose that I want a divorce in that we’re clearly not married any more and perhaps it’s time to formalize that. However, I don’t think it’s fair that it’s me who has to say to you that I want a divorce. After all, I clearly don’t want a divorce in that I never wanted our marriage to come to an end. The only reason I want a divorce is because of what you did and I wouldn’t want a divorce if you hadn’t done it, therefore in a real sense it’s you that wants a divorce. Having said that, I suppose I do want a divorce. But not right now. I just don’t think I could face it at the moment.

I can’t believe it’s come to this, Sam. How could you have been so stupid?

Yours, etc., etc. Lucy.

She actually wrote “etc., etc.”. I don’t think I’ll open this document again.

Dear Sam

Four more months have passed and once again I find that I feel the need to collect my thoughts.

Next week is the première of Inconceivable. Everyone is very excited about the film and the opening is to be rather a grand affair. We’re promised television cameras and the presence of celebrities. The film is already being spoken of as the new British movie. I must say, there seems to be a the new British movie about once a week these days. I don’t want to be cynical about my own film, but the phoenix of British cinema has risen from the ashes so often it must be getting quite dizzy.

Lucy is going to attend the première.

I didn’t think that she would, but the publicist has just confirmed that she’s coming, and will of course be on the arm of Carl Phipps. The publicist assures me that she expects them to be very much the golden couple of the night and to attract a lot of press. Along with Nimnh and Ewan Proclaimer, that is. Ewan has left his wife Morag for Nimnh. This sort of thing is of course very common in the world of films. He really is the most appalling bastard. One gorgeous, sensitive woman isn’t enough for him. He has to have a whole succession of them. Well, I’ve discovered that one gorgeous, sensitive woman was certainly enough for me and I lost her and now I’m not remotely interested in any other and don’t think I ever will be.

The première is of course a real emotional issue for me. At first I thought I’d stay away, not knowing if I could face seeing Lucy with Phipps. George and Trevor, however, say that I have to come. They point out that the film is very good and that this should be celebrated. Actually I’ve seen a tape and I think that it’s good too. Ewan Proclaimer may be an arrogant, heartless bastard, but he certainly deserves his reputation as a hot director. Perhaps the two go hand in hand. George and Trevor also point out that the story is mine (and Lucy’s) and that if anyone should be present at the moment of triumph it should be me. After all, George argued with his customary brutal honesty, I’ve fucked up my entire life and sacrificed the only thing I had that was worth having in order to write this movie. I might as well go to the party.

Dear Penny

I never expected to open this book again. It ended so sadly I imagined I’d want nothing more to do with it. Now, however, I have something to say that should be recorded here because it’s the end of the story and also the beginning. Besides this, I have no one else to talk to, Penny. I don’t want to talk to Carl because it might be nothing and if it is nothing I’d prefer never to have to think of it again, and if it isn’t nothing then I don’t want to speak until I know for sure. This is why you, Penny, must be my only confidante.

You see, I think I might be pregnant. I’m three weeks late and the tester from Boots has proved positive. I’ve made an appointment to see Dr Cooper tomorrow.

I can hardly allow myself to believe that it might finally have happened.

PENNY!

Dr Cooper has confirmed it. This is the single happiest moment of my life. I am numb with joy.

I must stay calm, however. These are very early days; it could all still go wrong.

I’ve been concentrating very hard on my breathing.

A baby, Penny! Imagine it. It’s all I’ve ever wanted from life.

It’s now a little later. I’ve been making some camomile tea and attempting to centre myself. My heart has been pounding so mightily since I got back from the surgery that I’m scared I’m going to shake everything right out of me. I must struggle to control my joy.

Perhaps it’ll help if I confess to you, Penny, that this joy is also tinged with one tiny element of sadness. You know what it is, of course. I’ve written to you so often about my love for Sam that you will not have expected the passing of that love to leave no mark on me at all. It is of course very sad that Sam, whom I loved so much and for so long and with whom I shared so many disappointments, can be no part of this wonderful moment.

It’s not that I wish that the baby was his, not at all. I loved Sam with all my heart but love when it is not reciprocated is a pretty useless thing and I walked away. I thought that Sam loved me and I’m quite sure that he thought he did too, but he didn’t. What he did to me proved that. If you love someone you do not use them and abuse them, you do not betray them utterly. Love has to include respect and consideration and trust. It’s a partnership in which one partner protects the other. Sam didn’t protect me and he didn’t love me. He didn’t love anyone, certainly not himself. Poor Sam.

It wasn’t easy getting over him or coming to terms with what happened to me, but thank goodness I had Carl. Carl has been a true and loving friend and has seen me through the most difficult time of my life. I don’t think I could have got through without him.

He wrote to me the day after the awful scene on the film set and asked if he could see me. I admit I flew to him, I was so upset and confused about everything that I was happy to get comfort and affection wherever I could find it. I’m very glad I did.

We didn’t sleep together that first night, or the next, but I admit that it was not long afterwards.

My God, Penny, it was wonderful!

Perhaps it was the rawness of my emotions and also the rather defunct nature of my sex life in the preceding months that made me so receptive, but credit must also go to Carl. Some men just have a knack, that’s all. I know that now. He made love to me as if it was the only thing that he wanted to do on earth at that moment. And do you know? I think it was.

It went on for weeks, Penny, that first glorious fling. I just took a complete holiday from everything and pretty much lived to make love to Carl. Sheila issued all sorts of dire warnings about being caught on the rebound and displacement of unhappiness and things like that but Drusilla said that passion is its own reward and she was right!

Carl is the first man I have ever been with (there have not been exactly many) who really seems to relish massaging a woman. I don’t mean feeling her up prior to leaping aboard, I mean massaging, properly applying himself to the job of soothing and relaxing her with no other thought in mind than that. It’s a wonderful thing. He still does it (although perhaps not quite as often). We lie together naked on his bed and he’s happy to work at my neck and shoulders for an hour or more. One thing I did notice is that he likes to watch himself while he does it. He has a large mirror at the end of his bed and I often catch him drinking in the rippling muscles of his image as he massages me. Fair enough, I suppose. No reason why he should be watching me. I can assure you he has a lot better muscle definition than I have.

We don’t actually live together, but we spend a lot of time in each other’s place. I love the weekends. Carl is very big on Sunday mornings, lots of croissants and real coffee, big dressing gowns and the papers, just like being in a hotel, which is lovely. Those are some of my favourite times. That and occasional trips to a little cottage he has in the Cotswolds, all logfires and stone walls, very Wuthering Heights. We do have a lot of fun together, we really do. I can’t say it’s been perfect, of course. I’ve had my low moments, as, no doubt, has he. The truth is I was in love with Sam for six years and you don’t get over something like that in a couple of minutes, particularly if you had no idea that the thing was going to end. Carl also carries baggage with him. It’s not another girl, it’s more… well, Carl loves himself rather a lot, not in a horrid way, don’t get me wrong, in fact it’s quite charming. It’s just I sometimes feel that simply being Carl Phipps is often enough for Carl. He doesn’t need anyone else.

That’s why I must be very careful about this business of our baby. Carl often says he loves me and how much he regrets the fact that I seem to be unable to have kids, but I don’t know how he’ll feel when confronted with the fact that I’m having one. I shan’t force him. Of course I want more than anything for him to be as pleased as I am and for us to be a family, but if he’s not ready for it then I’ll simply have to think again.

I do love Carl, I know I do. It is not the same as my love for Sam was, of course. I don’t think that any two loves can ever be the same. If they were they’d be interchangeable and what would be the point of that? In one way my love for Carl is more exciting (I think you can guess in which way, Penny) and I suppose in other ways it’s less so. I must say it’s very strange living with a man who likes to talk so much. By rights I should love it. Sam, of course, was famously the man hidden behind the newspaper and I hated that. It’s just that Carl’s preferred topic of conversation is himself. It’s great fun and very charming and terribly interesting at times and it’s also rather impressive. I’m constantly astonished at the skill with which he seems able to bring the most unlikely topics back to the subject of Carl Phipps. Mention metaphysics and Carl will tell you that he has for a number of years been working on a verse play about John Donne; mention Schleswig Holstein and Carl has made a toothpaste commercial in Flensburg. It’s his work, really It possesses him. Basically Carl is and always will be a very very dedicated actor. His art means everything to him, and that is as it should be. It’s just that occasionally I do want to say to him that there might be tougher and more emotionally draining jobs than acting – fireman, for example, or paramedic. In fact I did say that to him quite recently and he told me that in fact it has been scientifically proven that the amount of adrenalin released into the body when an actor tackles a lead Shakespearean role is equivalent to that experienced by the victim of a car crash.

Perhaps I just attract men who are obsessed with their work. At least Carl is enthusiastic about his, unlike gloomy old Sam. At least Carl believes in himself.

I’m writing this at Carl’s flat. I have a key and of course I want to tell him the wonderful news as soon as I possibly can. I tried his mobile but he’s on set and mobiles are banned. Not the Inconceivable set. That was finished months ago. He’s guesting on an ITV detective thing, playing a charming killer. I’m sure he’s wonderful in it (he says he isn’t but I can see he knows he is). Inconceivable is about to be released and there seems to be rather a lot of excitement about it. In fact, I’ve agreed to go to the première, which is the day after tomorrow. At first I was adamant that I wouldn’t, but in the end I was persuaded. The whole thing is still sort of unfinished business, and I think that seeing the film might finally draw a line beneath it all.

Also I do want to see Sam again and perhaps at his moment of triumph (our moment of triumph; I’m a credited and paid-up writer, ha!) will be a good time. I can hear Carl letting himself in. Time to tell him the news.

I’ve told Carl and he’s absolutely thrilled. He went all misty-eyed and talked a lot about fatherhood and his own father and the circle of time and the scheme of things and replacing himself on earth. Then he put on his big coat and went for a very long walk, returning looking windswept and very serious. I suggested that we should go out and celebrate but he didn’t want to. He says that creating a life is a huge responsibility and he wants to spend some time in meditation. Each to their own, of course, but nonetheless it would have been nice to chink glasses for a moment even if I can only drink water.

Perhaps he’ll be more fun at the première. I know there’s to be quite a party.

Dear Sam

I’m writing this on the evening of the première of Inconceivable. I should be tying my bow tie because it’s all going to be rather a posh do, but I can’t find it. I can’t find my trousers either. I can never find anything in the house any more. This is because everything is on the floor, which also happens to be where I keep my pizza boxes and my empty bottles and cans. Therefore there’s much confusion. George is in the other room waiting for me. He’s kindly agreed to be my date for the night but only if I wash my hair and trim my beard. This I’ve done. I’m also wearing the brand new underwear that Melinda kindly sent round. I must presume that I was beginning to smell.

I’ll see Lucy tonight at the première. I think that’s why I’m writing this now, just to sort of focus myself.

I don’t know how I’ll be able to bear it when I see her, particularly when she arrives with another man. I love her so much, you see. Every day I’m amazed at how much I love her. I certainly didn’t know that I felt this strongly when I had her. When I think of all the evenings when I turned down the chance to hold her and to touch her because I wanted to work or read the paper. My God, if I had my time again.

Actually, I’ve finally finished my next script and it’s about just that. It’s called Don’t It Always Seem to Go and it’s about a bloke fucking up his life and then realizing what he’s lost. Amazingly, I’ve got it commissioned. George and Trevor think it’s even better than Inconceivable. Lucy was right. All I needed to do was draw from within.

Dear Penny

Tonight has been very strange. I hardly know what to think.

This evening I attended the première of Inconceivable, which, first of all, I must say I thought was wonderful. Sam really did do a marvellous job. I always knew what a good writer he is. I won’t say that it was easy seeing all that pain played out again on screen (and revisiting my own thoughts), but it was done very sensitively and also extremely amusingly. I do think that it’s good to be able to laugh about the subject. It’s sort of empowering. Perhaps it’s my current happiness that made it possible for me to enjoy the film, but I don’t think so. I really believe that I would have appreciated it anyway, although it would of course have been much more difficult to watch.

The whole evening was much more glamorous than I expected and also more exciting. Well, I suppose it’s a pretty exciting thing, going to the première of a movie you didn’t even know you’d half written. I went with Carl and it was a very strange experience to be at the centre of all that attention. Cameras flashed, microphones appeared from nowhere, and people with autograph books shouted “Carl! Carl!” and also occasionally “Gilbert!” which I know he didn’t like because he made The Tenant of Wildfell Hall nearly three years ago. He looked lovely, I must say, like James Bond’s intellectual brother. I had on a new dress from Liberty’s, which I was quite pleased with, very posh and rather daring at the front. The Wonderbra has of course done wonders for the smaller bosom, and now I’m pregnant perhaps I’ll grow my own.

Of course a great deal of the excitement that surrounded Carl and me was that it was our first time out at a big event as “an item”. Lots of journalists wanted to know about our future plans but we just smiled gaily and said how thrilled we were about the film.

Tonight has been the most extraordinary and may just possibly turn out to be the happiest of my life.

And not because the film was a great success, although it was, which was wonderful. They cheered at the end and I don’t think they were just being nice. We had a real star-studded première with lots of celebs. Quite a few that I used to know had rallied round which I was touched by. There was a real crush in the foyer with TV and radio people grabbing interviews from anyone they recognized. I was trying to fight my way through to the booze and I heard Dog and Fish being very nice about the film.

“Brilliant,” said Dog. “If you like your comedy with big laughs, this is it.”

“Personally we prefer our comedy with a small side salad,” Fish added. I think they’re improving.

Charlie Stone turned up, which was very nice of him because he really is hip at the moment, and the press went mad. Particularly because he had the gorgeous Brenda on his arm as well, which guaranteed pictures.

“Gagmongous!” I heard him saying to a Morning TV crew. “Megatastic! And what about that Nimnh totty, eh? Did she give me the horn or what!”

“Yeah, she’s a real strong babe,” Brenda added.

Even Joe London was there with his wife Toni, and also Wally the guitarist. Joe was positive about the movie if a little faint in his praise.

“Not bad,” he said. “Fort it was a bit of a bird’s film myself. What jew fink, Toni?”

“I loved it,” Toni bubbled, “’cos it was funny and sad. In’t that weird? I mean, you wouldn’t think it could be both, would you?”

The interviewer asked Wally what he thought of the film.

“What film?” he said.

Anyway, all this is beside the point. I’ve only written it down because it was exciting and I don’t want to forget it. The main event of the evening was about to happen, and it was not the film at all. It was Lucy.

Well, now comes the crunch, Penny. There are no future plans. Carl and I are not an item. I’ve left him and I think that he was mightily relieved.

Well, let’s face it. From the first moment I told Carl about me being pregnant I knew in my heart that he doesn’t want to have a baby. He said he was delighted, but he was lying. Although in fairness I will say that I think he was lying as much to himself as he was to me.

I finally tackled him about it in the limo on the way to the première. As good a time as any, I thought. I asked if he really was genuinely happy that I was pregnant.

“Happy? Of course I’m happy, darling, I’m delirious.”

Oh dear, Penny. He’s a better actor on screen than he is off. There was a long and uncomfortable pause before he added, “I’m happy because you’re happy. That’s what matters.”

Which is as much as to say, I’m devastated, my beautiful little life is about to be completely ruined by your bloody baby.

“But you have to be happy too, Carl,” I said, “or it won’t work.”

He sat quietly for another minute, trying to find the courage to start to wriggle out of it. He looked magnificently tortured in his beautiful dinner jacket.

“It’s a shock, that’s all,” he said finally. “I mean, you said you couldn’t have kids, that’s why I didn’t use protection.”

“Well, I thought I couldn’t, but now it seems I can.”

“And that’s great,” said Carl, not looking at me at all. “Really great.”

And that’s when I realized, finally realized, what I’d known all along, but was afraid to admit to myself.

He doesn’t want a child, Penny, why the hell would he? He’s happy. He has everything he wants, except to be big in the States, and a mewling, puking infant won’t get him that. The truth is, Carl doesn’t want to be tied down at all. He wants a girlfriend, not a wife, and he certainly doesn’t want a mother.

We suddenly found ourselves facing each other in the crush at the bar.

Oh my God, she looked lovely. So glamorous, so sexy, so beautiful. I was crushed by her presence, I just wanted to stand there and worship her. I did stand there and worship her.

I think it was the saddest moment yet. Here I was on the greatest night of my life, standing before the woman of my dreams (and I mean that literally) who looked more gorgeous even than I remembered her. We’d written a hit movie together, and yet I knew I’d lost her, that she hated me.

We made smalltalk for a moment and then she told me her news. It came absolutely out of the blue. Lucy’s pregnant.

I really was happy for her, honestly I was, although I also just wanted to die. I told her that I was thrilled and delighted and that Carl is the luckiest man on earth. I meant it too, I really did. Jealous as Othello though I may have been, I knew that I wished Lucy all the happiness she desired.

Then the evening began to take an unexpected turn.

“I’ve left Carl,” Lucy said, and my heart lurched. “This evening, in fact, just before the film started, during that speech when the Chairman of BritMovie was telling us that the phoenix of British film had risen from the ashes.”

I just stood there, open mouthed.

“He doesn’t want a child, so I’m going to go it alone. No more men for me. It’s the modern way, you know, and at least I’ll have a bit of money, thanks to you and our film.”

Well, I was aghast. Was this my chance? After all, he’d caught her on the rebound, why shouldn’t I? The second bounce, the double whammy. The possibilities of the situation were only just beginning to sink in when a publicist came over to get Lucy for an interview. She was in far more demand than I was this evening, by the way, even though I was the top-billed writer. Hardly surprising, really. She was gorgeous and in a sexy frock and I was Mr Beardy in an unironed dinner jacket. I know who I would have wanted to interview.

Suddenly she was leaving.

“Well… goodbye, Sam,” she said.

I made my decision. Well, it was more of an impulse than a decision. Let’s face it, I was desperate. I had one chance.

“Lucy,” I said. “Come back to me! Please, please come back. I’ll do anything. I made the stupidest mistake of my life, but I didn’t mean it. Tell me how I can make it up! Please, I love you…”

“Sam,” she said. “Don’t be absurd. We can’t go back. I’m pregnant with another man’s baby.”

Then inspiration struck. Maybe I could get her back after all.

“I’ll look after it!” I blurted. “I’ll help bring it up. I’ll be its father.”

And I meant it too. I’d love to bring up Lucy’s child. I don’t care who else’s it would be. Lucy’s child would be part of her and there’s nothing about Lucy that I would not love.

It was a stunning thing to say. I felt winded, suddenly everything seemed to be in slow motion, like I wasn’t actually there but was sort of hovering above it all, watching. The publicist kept tugging at my arm. She can’t have heard what Sam said, or if she had she didn’t care. Publicists at premières have to be very single-minded. After all, you only get one shot at a thirty-second grab on Greater London Radio.

“Sam,” I said. “You didn’t even want children of your own, let alone somebody else’s.”

Perhaps it was just the noise of the crowd but my voice sounded very strange to me. Sam looked absolutely desperate, wild even, like Rasputin, although I think that was mainly the beard. The crowd around us were getting louder, everybody calling for drinks and congratulating each other.

“Can’t a man make a mistake, for fuck’s sake?!” Sam shouted, inevitably choosing the very moment when the room went quiet.

It was fate’s favourite practical joke. Kill the volume just when the idiot with long hair and a beard is shouting obscenities. Everybody turned to look. Lucy went red. God, I wanted to ravish her there and then.

For a second I thought she was going to hit me. Instead she just stared at me for a moment and then left with the publicist scuttling after her.

Dear Penny

This morning when I woke (I hadn’t thought I’d been asleep at all but I must have been, I suppose) there was a huge bunch of flowers on my doorstep.

This is what the card said:

If I have to serve a life sentence for what I did, can’t I at least serve it with you?

Which is not a bad line, I must say, and I swear if he ever uses it in a script I’ll kill him.

I am of course very confused. So much is happening at once. I do love Sam, of course I love Sam, but I can’t just pick things up as if nothing has happened.

Can I?

Except of course something has happened. Something really extraordinary. Sam has offered to help me bring up my child. He loves me, there can be no better proof of that. I do believe that my joy is complete.

I’ve just received an email from Lucy. She will have me back. We are to be a family. I have never in my entire life been so happy as I am now.

Dear Penny

Today has been a very upsetting day, although now that it’s over I feel curiously strong.

I’m not pregnant. Dr Cooper says that I was pregnant, at least he thinks I was, but I’m not any more. He says that I’ve suffered a very early miscarriage, which is very common, if indeed I was pregnant at all. Whatever the problem is with me and fertility, it’s not yet solved. Sam came with me to the doctor and afterwards we sat in the car and cried a little together. After that we went and got pissed.

Dear Sam

Lucy and I have been back together for six months. The happiest six months of my life, despite the fact that we’ve just been through our second IVF cycle and failed it. The doctors said that there were some signs of it having begun to work (they know this from the blood tests) but that ultimately Debbie and Dick Two could not hang on. Lucy was very upset, of course, we both were, but we’re OK. We had a wonderful holiday in India afterwards, no replacement, of course, but still absolutely fantastic and something we’ve always wanted to do.

I’m writing this sitting on the bed in a lovely little room in a country hotel in Dorset. Lucy is wearing nothing but a silk slip and is making my heart ache with love and desire. She’s packing up a knapsack with champagne, chocolates and a big rug. It’s a beautiful warm summer evening. In an hour or so we’ll creep out into the night and make our way up the hill to the great and ancient chalk giant’s penis. It might work, it might not. Either way, I can’t wait.