I was taken aback. I’d made a girl pregnant and it wasn’t my wife. I was filled with an immediate sense of dread and the horrible thought of having to admit the fact to my wife. It wasn’t a good move. My reaction did not endear itself to Rhonda and was something I regretted immediately. The ultimate cause of the way I acted was the shame of what I had done, not shame borne of my own conscience, but that created by social consideration – what would people think of me? For the first time in my marriage I also considered, really considered, life beyond Christine.

It would take a few days to find my voice on Rhondas pregnancy, to become comfortable with it enough to say as much to her. It still wasn’t, looking back, a complete realisation that a life had been created and a baby would be the result. Perhaps I didn’t really believe it would happen or maybe even felt the foreshadow of what was to come. Still, for a time, there was an understanding between Rhonda and I that this was going to happen and it was ok.

The call eventually came. I could hear Rhonda was upset and I couldn’t have imagined why until she broke the news. She had lost the baby. I was devastated.

One may look back at the situation and think that losing a baby simplified the situation and even perhaps let me off the hook. I don’t see it that way. I realised what I had lost straight away and felt the pain even though, physically speaking, the ‘child’ had been no more than a small clump of cells. Perhaps it was the loss of a promise or possibility that stung so much or perhaps that the strong tie that would have existed between Rhonda and I had been severed. I cannot separate the two in my mind so therefore have to assume it was both. So it was that after a couple of weeks of assessing my situation I decided to try to make my marriage with Christine work. Rhonda had also come to the same conclusion – she would try to make hers work too.