True story.

The year was 2000.

The man was 48. He had been single for a while. Through a dating network, he met a woman who was 38.

They saw each other for a few dates. They might have had sex three times. She told him she was using a diaphragm. Then she went away to America to see her family for three weeks and when she returned she told him she was pregnant and he was the father. She was going to keep the baby because she wanted to be a mother. She expected him to provide for his child.

I’m not close enough to this guy to know if he would have favoured a termination or whether he ever wondered if he might not truly be the father. All I know is that, in his words, he was given no choice.

“I was effectively manoeuvred into parenthood after three dates,” he says.