We sit around a glass coffee table. The room is clean and modern, the furnishings are that chicken soup colour favoured by architects β and expensive private clinics. Which is just where they are heading. The Gunns want a baby girl. The couple seem slightly bemused. Not so much because they are travelling halfway round the world for a fantastically expensive and invasive treatment. But because they can't quite understand how they ended up having three boys in the first place. No red wine, no red meat, no coffee, and you had to have white rice and fish and chicken.
It was quite bizarre. My friend was on it, too. He had a girl. Robert and Susan had a second boy. Very weirdly, most of our friends have got two boys, and the ones who did go on to have a third child had a girl.
Irrationally, I began to think to myself, 'Oh, this is how it is going to be⦠you have two boys and then you get a girl. They are, of course, thrilled. This is an area of our lives that we can't influence unless we pay for it. But we work for it. And they did work for it. They spoke to him on the phone. They booked in. Susan had the blood tests and has started the course of drugs, and soon they'll be off to LA. They'll take the boys with them, and visit Disneyland between the egg harvesting and implantation.
Steinberg's clinic is a slick operation. The couple have told a couple of close friends, and Susan's mother. Nobody else. The issue does come up at dinner parties. Hosting weddings is just one of Nicola's businesses.
Another is a cosmetic surgery clinic offering skin tightening and laser liposuction. A side benefit is treatment on the house. Nicola lifts up her shirt to reveal a perfectly flat, bronzed tummy. Ten years ago, the Trathens were in much the same position as the Gunns. They had three boys and wanted a girl. Then Nicola got pregnant again. At 27 weeks she had a private scan to find out the sex of the child. But I didn't do the pink nursery thing.
