Some months later, well into our relationship, Sally told me that when she first noticed me across the auditorium, she thought to herself, "Oh, he looks nice," at which point a voice in her head clearly said, "That's the father of your child!" Surprised at this sudden intrusion, she did a double-take, saw me holding hands with the woman next to me and assumed I was already attached. It was only when I got up to give my talk that Sally realized I was running the clay workshop she had signed up for.
Years later, she told me that if intuition hadn't happened, like others before her, she might never have entered the relationship once she'd heard about my past. It also came as quite a shock, because motherhood had not been part of her plan; she was a free-spirited, well-travelled journalist and music presenter on a national radio station. When we discovered Sally was pregnant a year later, we were even more surprised, because problems during an earlier operation had nearly resulted in a hysterectomy to save her life. Yehudi Gordon, the brilliant gynaecologist who had saved her womb, described the pregnancy and subsequent birth of our daughter as "a miracle."
