Most rooms are very quiet afterward and four or five people always come up and one of them always has a story of their own.

Once, in the second year, a nurse manager at one of the hospitals asked me afterward, quite kindly, whether I might soften the fourth one, because she was worried that partners in the room would feel accused.

And I said no.

And she said, “It’s just that they’re frightened too.”

And I said: “I know they are.

Mine was.

That’s exactly why I have to say it to them while they’re sitting in a chair in a church hall at seven in the evening with nothing happening, instead of waiting until they’re in a corridor at four in the afternoon on the worst day of their life.”

She thought about that and then she said all right, and she has had me back twice.