Following the trauma surrounding your parentage, I don't remember too much about the following months up to your birth.

I do remember an occasion where Marie and I went for a drive down to Arundel and walked around the grounds of a nature reserve chatting and talking all the way.  Nothing too deep and meaningful, but what I do remember is being struck by how wonderful Marie looked in her lightly pregnant state.

I even remember that she was wearing one of a few mohair jumpers which her mum had knitted for her. I seem to remember it was blue, similar to the one she's wearing in the photo.

But I think that the times which we actually met over the last few months of her pregnancy were very few, if non existent.

In fact it's fair to say that I didn't speak with her for about three or four months prior to your birth.  I think I must have reverted to the mind set I had when she first got married, that it was only right that I should let her get on with her life with her husband, without any interference from an ex-boyfriend.

I had been out of contact with Marie for some months and that year I had been over to Paris a few times for long weekend trips.

It was on my return from one of those trips when I decided that I should call on Marie.  It wasn't such a long way from Gatwick airport to East Grinsted and I was aware that it was close to the time when she would have given birth to you.

I approached the house with some trepidation, but decided that I should be confident in approaching up the drive in case her husband was at home.  I didn't want to look like I shouldn't be there to anyone looking on.

I went up the drive along the side of the house to the back door, which was a full length French Door with quartic glass windows, so I could be seen from the inside.  The back door was the door to the kitchens dining area and sat at the table, wearing a blue and white striped night dress was Marie.

To say she was surprised to see me is probably under stating the obvious.  Nevertheless she was happy to see me and I was astonished to learn that you had been born some 2 weeks earlier.

After a short time Marie went to get you and my recollection is that she gave you to me almost immediately.  I say that this is my recollection because I seem to remember being surprised that she gave you to me to hold the minute she brought you into the room.  There was no period of her holding you and showing you to me, it was straight in with it and hold on to this bundle of joy.

Of course you were beautiful and very quiet and I just loved holding you.  We joked that you probably were comfortable with me because you'd heard my voice so many times whilst you were in the womb and you might have recognised it.

It might have been that day or perhaps another one around the same time, but you, Marie and I went into East Grinsted to a coffee shop, just so that I wouldn't be in the house.  We packed you up in your car carry cot, gathered together all of the additional things which new born babies need when they go out and arrived at this coffee shop mid afternoon.

I can still see in my minds eye a table of elderly ladies having afternoon tea, smiling in that mumsy kind of way at Marie and me and trying to catch a glimpse of you in your carry cot, no doubt thinking that here were the proud parents of this lovely fresh little baby. 

Well clearly as it turns out they were right, but at the time Marie was and I didn't think I was.  That feeling of wanting to be your proud father has stayed with me since then (hence my recalling it now)  and there have been many more than one occasion when I've remembered that first time I went out with you for a mid afternoon coffee.

To be honest, I have little recollection of the following few weeks, but I know that there must have been a lot of contact between Marie and I.  This is because the next few weeks all culminated with Marie finally summing up the courage to leave her husband, when you were just eight weeks old, and she came up to Manchester with me.