Some people our age are grandparents.  Look at that couple on Ant and Dec's Takeaway tonight. They sent out for a pizza, and a presenter from the programme turned up with three thousand pounds for them.  Not only are they grandparents, but the jammy sods win money for babysitting!           

          That's not a scenario that could happen to us any more .Since my menopause began last year, at age 39, we can't have another child.  We know that now for sure.

         Chris and I have a good life together. We both work and do the things that make it seem you're enjoying life to the full.   We've travelled the world, practically.  Others, I know, have looked at us enviously. While they've been ‘stuck' with getting on with the family, we've just had ourselves to bother about. Yet, how I've envied them. How WE'VE envied them. A child making a mess of the house? Measles and mumps and all sorts of worries. Bring them on, I say.

          We've got every gadget going, have a nice house and all. It's not that we've had terrific salaries, just no family to spend it on. The only university fees we've had is when I did the Open University and got my Honours degree.  The OU saved me. I was merely cruising through life, not really feeling much of anything that anyone could fathom. Except the deep misery I didn't let out. I kept it caged up inside me. The OU was the ransom which freed it.

            Oh, the joy of discovering things I should have known when I was much younger. Being introduced to what was to become my passion: History of Art ...classical music, architecture...and to rediscover my previous love of English Lit.  To go away to a week's Summer School and find all of these soul mates  who were suddenly my best friends.

              But then, I'd come home and find I was selective in which one of these new friends I  wanted to keep up with.  They mostly had families of their own. Talked of their grandchildren, or their new babies.  So I stuck with the ones who were on their own, who had no children or who didn't get on with their offspring.

              I never talked of my dark secret with them. It was mine. Trouble is, though, it wasn't just mine. It was Chris' too. He was the one who suggested the OU to me.

              But at some point Chris' sorrow dissipated.  How could he let that happen?       One night I sobbed on thinking that the next day our dead daughter would have been 16. (she died when she was five) and Chris more or less told me to pull myself together!  That was yet another sorrow to bury inside me.  That I no longer had my husband's understanding cut me deep.

         Yet, it was cathartic.  I had now to think of Chris. Something I hadn't been doing.  Soon after that we got a dog. I fell instantly in love and became alive again. I exercised like I'd never done before.

            Friends, (non OU ones) had said that when I was away at my Summer Schools with the OU, or off on one of my many trips to Stratford-Upon-Avon (oh, didn't I say? I'm a Shakespeare fanatic), Chris would always look miserable. 

              Then when we got our Dalmatian puppy...well...Chris was only too willing to take time off work to look after him while I was away. Cheered us both up no end, getting that wonderful dog.

                 My darkest pain  now in the background, I moved on at last.  You see, what I haven't told you yet, is that Chris and I did try, oh, ever so hard, once our daughter had been dead for a few months, to have another child. It never happened.

           I even went out in desperation  and picked men up, seedy    one-night-stands in the grass, or back to whomsoever's flat. Trying to get pregnant. In the end, it wasn't that Chris had a  low sperm count. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with me internally. I believe now it was my mental state that prevented my falling pregnant again. 

         Chris and I weren't trying to supplant our darling daughter. We wanted someone to love. Did we still love one another? We tried. But that deep hole in your being stops tender love. Anyway, most couples don't have that initial closeness after a time with one another. Fondness, yes, great fondness too. But not raging fire-of-love stuff.

           You see parents on telly, parents who've lost children to murderers and your heart goes out to them. You watch them, tears gushing. But all the time you're saying, what about us? What about our hurt?  My, our, daughter was ripped from us during that heart operation as surely as your child was taken from you. Only thing is, our daughter was asleep while vile things were being done to her.

            That was another thing. For the first couple of years I knew only too well that I'd killed my child. Not only had I put her through the operation on her heart, but I'd caused the heart condition in the first place. I'd smoked during pregnancy. Oh, I didn't know that that was so harmful.  

       And, didn't I say? I didn't want to be married and have a child, and when I fell down a flight of stairs I didn't say anything  to anyone, hoping that I'd bring on a miscarriage. I was only seventeen. What did I know?

         However,  when that little baby was placed in my arms for the first time I fell so utterly in love with her I apologised profusely for having wanted to be rid of her while still in my womb. I promised to make it up to her. I'll give you the best life ever. It might not be full of material things, but I'll love you so very much my darling.        

           I'd been staying in the hospital with our precious,  before her operation, keeping my promise to hold her dear at all times. I'd made friends with another mother living in. Her daughter didn't die. When I phoned her for some solace afterwards, she cut me down.

            Don't want to have anymore to do with you, sorry, but I don't want to be reminded that my child could have died. Selfish or what? I hope she reads this and is ashamed of herself!

             No I don't. I don't hate anyone now. I don't really love anyone either. Chris and I are still together and are extremely fond of one another.                             And as for all of you grandparents. Well, you have your crosses to bear, some of you at least. Ditto parents. What with drugs and all, live children can be a heartache.

              Me? I've got my MA to keep me going. A half decent job and not too bad salary. Chris and I have other dogs now. I treat Chris, currently, more tenderly than I've ever done. Keeping him precious to me.

         We're all we've got after all.  We're  trying hard to hold onto that loving feeling.