I have doubts sometimes, of course I do. But then I remember the strained-looking mother on our flight to Sicily trying to fit five bags into the overhead compartments with a child screaming at her about which parent he loved the most, while I put in my noise-cancelling ear buds and started editing a manuscript, which doesn’t make me a lot of money, but enough for two adults to spend two weeks in Sicily.

In a village in the Atlas Mountains, I briefly lost David and found him patiently doling out high-fives to a crowd of children, who squealed with laughter as they jumped to reach his hand, and I thought, that’s a man who should be a father. He’d be a good one: fun and fair. I, on the other hand, don’t have it in me. I know in my heart I’d be a bad mum. I just don’t have the energy or the interest. I can’t cheer on a child as they do 50 million shit cartwheels. I can’t listen to endless facts about dinosaurs. I want to sleep in on a Saturday morning, then cross the road to buy the newspaper I will spend a whole day reading. I want that more than I want a baby. Even if it’s different when it’s your own, even if there’s no love like the love you have for a child.

When we were moving to London, we talked about getting a dog, and I started to picture what I thought might just be a perfect life. A little flat in Hampstead, a job at Daunt Books, and taking the dog for a walk on the Heath. This vision lasted about a month. But then I remembered, dogs leave fluff everywhere. And we’d need someone to look after it when we went on trips. And we’d have to walk it every day. Even if it’s raining. And that’s why I know I’d be a bad mum, because even a dog requires something beyond the limits of my care.

I know that to have made this decision means there’s a chance I’ll be lonely at the end of my life. David has the immune system of a sickly Victorian child. The chances of me outliving him are high. Loneliness is, to me, the worst of feelings, but I can’t use the fear of being alone to justify having a child to look after me. What if they refuse that role, as they have every right to do? When I’m tempted to fear this loneliness I feel even more resolutely that I want to live a good enough life now that when I’m alone, maybe lonely, it will have been worth it.

When you look at the natural world, entities exist to propagate themselves, and in doing so, gain a kind of immortality – not for themselves, but for some essential thing about them that carries on down a line – a second death coming only with the extinction of their species.

“My partner and I are dinks – are our lives ‘enough’ if we don’t have children?”