Ten years after my husband threw me out in the rain while I was carrying his twins, I watched him tell a television audience that his one regret was never having children.

I told him to watch it. He shrugged and said he was establishing the facts, and Lilja laughed so hard she slid off her chair.

And then he went serious again and said he would come.

On one condition.

Ten per cent of whatever we got.

"And what exactly do you need that for?"

"Capital."

He is ten years old. He has never met that man in his life.

I sat at that table and looked at my own son and could not work out where to put my face.

And then Lilja got up on her chair and announced that she was wearing the blue one with the sequins.

"I want him to see what he missed."

That sentence took something out of me that an hour of television had not managed.

Ten years ago Soren Vale stood on a step in the rain and decided that I had nothing in me worth keeping.