‘And Don, I’m thinking of moving back to Australia, remember. Before the baby is born. I won’t be around to drink it.’

I had moved my weekly discussion with my mother forward by thirty minutes to accommodate the party and made a decision to lie in order to avoid inflicting emotional pain.

‘Has it arrived yet?’ my mother asked.

I told the truth. ‘It arrived on Thursday.’

‘You should have called. Your father was in a state about it. It cost a fortune to send. God knows what he’s spent on it already. He was talking to people in Korea—Korea—half the night and then the boxes arrived and he had to sign all these documents about patents and secrecy and of course he had to read every word—you know what your father’s like, he’s worked on it day and night, Trevor’s had no help in the shop for weeks… I think you should speak to him.’ She turned away and called out, ‘Jim, it’s Donald.’

My father’s face replaced my mother’s. ‘Is it what you wanted?’ he said.

‘Excellent. Perfect. Incredible. I’ve tested it. Meets all requirements.’ This was true too.

‘What does Rosie think?’ asked my mother in the background.

‘Totally satisfied. She considers Dad the world’s greatest inventor.’

This was a deception. I had not shown Rosie the crib. It was in Gene’s closet. After the pram problem, I considered there was a high probability that she would reject my father’s most amazing project.

The first to arrive for the study-group celebration was a couple, vindicating my decision to be present. Rosie introduced them.

‘Josh, Rebecca, Don.’

I extended my hand which they shook in turn. ‘I’m Rosie’s partner,’ I said. ‘What would you like to drink?’

‘We’ve brought some beer,’ said Josh.

‘There’s cold beer in the fridge. We can drink it while yours returns to optimum temperature.’

‘Thanks, but this is English beer. I worked in London in a pub for six months. Got a taste for it.’

‘We have six real ales on tap.’

He laughed. ‘You’re kidding me.’

I showed him to the coolroom and drew off a pint of Crouch Vale Brewers Gold. Rebecca followed and I asked if she wanted beer or would prefer a cocktail. The social protocols were familiar and I was feeling very comfortable as I mixed her a Ward 8 and performed a few tricks with the cocktail shaker.

Other guests arrived. I mixed cocktails to their specification and handed around the salted Padrón peppers and edamame. Rosie turned off the music I had selected and replaced it with a more current recording. The noise level remained high, lights low, alcohol consumption steady. People appeared to be having fun. Gene’s formula was working. So far, there were no indications that I had embarrassed anyone.

At 11.07 p.m. there was a knock. It was George. In one hand he had a bottle of red wine and in the other a guitar case.

‘Revenge, eh? Keeping an old man awake. Mind if I join you?’

George was our de facto landlord. It seemed inadvisable to refuse him entry. I introduced him, took his wine and offered him a cocktail. By the time I returned with his martini, all of the guests were seated and George had started playing and singing. Disaster! It was 1960s-style music similar to that which Rosie had turned off earlier. I assumed George’s performance would be similarly unacceptable to young people.

I was wrong. Before I could think of a way of silencing George, Rosie’s guests were clapping and singing along. I focused on refilling drinks.

While George was playing, Gene arrived home. We had an apartment full of young people, a significant percentage of whom were unaccompanied women, disinhibited by alcohol. I was worried that he might behave inappropriately, but he went directly to his bedroom. I presumed his libido had been exhausted.

The party finished at 2.35 a.m. One of the last to leave was a woman who had introduced herself as Mai, age approximately twenty-four, BMI approximately twenty. We spoke together in the beer fridge while I selected liquor for her final cocktail.

‘You’re so not like what we were expecting,’ she said. ‘To be honest, we all thought you’d be some kind of geek.’

It was a notable milestone. Tonight, at least in this limited domain of social interaction, I had managed to convince a cool young person, and apparently her fellow students, even in the face of a preconception, that I was within the normal range of social competence. But I was concerned with how the preconception had arisen.

‘How did you deduce that I was a geek?’

‘We just thought—well, you’re with Rosie, the only person on the planet doing an MD and a PhD at the same time. And the way she just says what she thinks, how we’ve got to drag her into doing anything social…and then it’s like, oh yeah, I’m having a baby but let me get these stats done first. We thought she’d have gone for someone the same and here you are with the apartment and the cocktails and the muso buddy and the retro shirt.’

She sipped her cocktail.

‘This is awesome. Is it okay to ask, is she getting any help with the clinical thing?’

‘What clinical thing?’

‘Sorry. I’m sticking my nose in. But we’ve talked about it because we want to help. She’s so obviously using the pregnancy as a way out.’

‘Of what?’

‘Her clinical year. I mean she wants to do psych, and she’ll never have to touch a patient after next year if she can get some help to get through it. I gather there was some sort of trauma in her childhood—a car accident or something that’s freaked her out about emergency medicine.’