I had no idea how deep his deception ran until I received Belinda’s phone call. It was mid-2011 and I was in Somerset on a weekend retreat. Belinda had just received the court papers formally notifying her that I had begun proceedings on a contact case.

I was in the garden. Slowly, she drip fed me the truth. Spluttering down the phone, she dismantled my life in under five minutes. She believed that Henry was not my son. She had plotted and arranged a secret trip with Paul to a leading fertility clinic in Spain nine months before Henry's birth. She had swapped my sperm for his.

I went completely numb. I couldn’t process what I was hearing; I could think only of Henry.

When he had been born, Belinda was under anaesthetic – it was a caesarean birth. I had been the first person to hold Henry properly. As his eyes and my eyes had met, we had shared a profound moment that made the joy I’d felt during the scan pale into insignificance. It was I, not Belinda – and certainly not Paul – who made that first human connection.