Afterword

‘They can’t travel.’ The clerk at Gatwick was charm personified, but the message was clear. ‘If a British passport holder is born in America, that person has to travel to America on an American passport. It’s OK to travel back from America to the UK on a British passport,’ he added reassuringly. ‘But they can’t get there in the first place.’

It was the boys' first half term holiday. This was the first time I was proscribed about doing what I wanted with them when I wanted to do it. School came first even though it meant that the airport was packed. ‘Will these do?’ I pulled out the blue booklets that had been small curios for me for several years. ‘Nicely’ was the response. ‘They can always renounce their nationality, of course. But they’ll always need a certified renunciation.’ With the feeling that they should have some say in this at a later date, I completed the formalities and set off. There I had been thinking that my boys were as British as could be and that Her Britannic Majesty’s request and requirement would ensure worldwide travel. The Americans were keen to keep their own.

We had a long-standing invitation to see friends who have a ranch in Texas. The boys would love to see their cows and horses. Ten hours to Dallas. I had toyed with the idea of a small extension to the trip. Surely another three hours would make no difference, for that is all it is from Dallas to San Diego. A few e-mail exchanges later and I had made up my mind. We would see the boys' mothers in California.

It was a few seconds after takeoff, that the realisation came that I may have made a mistake. Ten hours later, I was quite sure I had. From the moment of sitting down on the American Airlines jet to the touchdown a lifetime later, my sparky little Ian became a boy on a mission - a mission to leave the plane. He screamed to do so, he cajoled, attempted persuasion, coercion, threat and finally tantrum. His small frame shook with rage. ‘But they’re getting off,’ he insisted as people moved around the aisles. ‘I just want a walk.’ His eyes were on the emergency exit. Momentarily surprised by a kick on the shins, I let my hand slip from his and he was off along the length of the Boeing 777. Only when he reached the impenetrable pilots’ door was his progress halted. ‘Tell the pilot to stop.’ His words were directed to those in the first class section, but ultimately to daddy who gathered him under an arm and, clutching his thrusting feet in two hands and made his way back to steerage. Ignoring the illuminated seat belt sign, along with most of the passengers, I walked him round the fuselage, pausing in the expanse at the rear. He ran round me, dancing a fandango. ‘It’s been really hard for him to sit still,’ I confided to a female official. ‘And it’ll be even harder for him when he injures himself’ came the tart rejoinder. ‘But there’s been no turbulence for hours’ failed to elicit a response. Seeing a small child brought out the protective instinct of a steward. ‘Resume your seat.’ Glancing at the morbid line of the undead waiting for the duty free trolley to move, I hesitated. ‘Resume your seat NOW.’ On the assumption that I would be stood in a corner if I dallied, I fled.

‘Welcome to the United States’. The boys whiled away the hour waiting for an official greeting from Immigration by disconnecting the retractable barriers and watching them spring back to the next post, the gap creating a tempting short cut. Ian entered the United States several times trotting through the holes in the maze and skipping past the booths. Those travellers who had not had his company on the flight smiled at his antics. The adrenaline trickled down my back.

So my three small, almost completely British boys arrived in the United States for the first time. Previously they had only left it. Three little boys with dual nationality, one father and two mothers on a journey to explore who had created them.

They loved the ranch, were kitted out with cowboy hats and charmed the locals with their RP British accents. After a few days enjoying the Texas plains, we journeyed west for just those few extra hours. We arrived in San Diego almost five years to the day since my last visit to meet my sons for the first time and take them home - or try to take them home. Then I had no right to them in the UK. How different now. My only concern was how to manage four cases and three children distracted by all kinds of unaccustomed diversions.

'No, Ian, away from them.' His small legs, now free from the confines of an aeroplane seat, were a blur as he made for the moving travelator, escalator, elevator or whatever he could find to explore. The following day, my sons and I were to visit the place of their conception. In a sense, my boys were coming home and I knew I would meet friends.

For the children, these were experiences that were at the same time brilliant - and baffling. How could I explain the day that just kept on and on - the day they arrived in America when we were chasing the rising sun? Certainly, they had no conception of the distance. I had packed a finger puppet for Piers, but it was not his favourite. This was a navy bear which he rather sweetly called 'Little One'. How he complained that he didn't want the one I had brought; he wanted that one. And he absolutely wanted to go back and get it. No amount of cajoling from me would dissuade him. He wanted to go back. Lars tried to help him. For the first time, he picked up a telephone and dialled a number. As this was in the hotel, it was, I imagine, one of the staff. Lars, however, was calling the pilot of the plane. He told him that he needed to go back, either with or without him, to collect Piers's finger puppet. Whoever was at the other end went along with the plan for Lars seemed quite satisfied when he replaced the receiver. Maybe he was sure that the pilot would go back and collect the puppet for his brother. Suddenly what had been an issue stopped being so. Its expected arrival must have been imminent.

We decided to meet Melissa at a children's museum where two could play with the exhibits while the other was meeting their mother. Just before the meeting, I ran through the 'eggs and seeds' scenario that I had rehearsed with them in the shower and over breakfast in preparation for the encounter to come. 'She's the one who gave the eggs and you know I told you about the seeds that fertilise the eggs. These were from daddy.'

I had expected no reaction and that is precisely what I received. The anticipation of hands-on activities was a more attractive prospect than meeting their mummy. Mummy was a concept that hardly ever arose and, when it did, it was in connection with those belonging to other children rather than something that connected a boiled egg with a scrotum.

Melissa arrived, dressed in black and looking simply stunning. How the other children would envy them if she arrived at the school gate to collect them. I kissed her.

'Really great to see you. Thanks so much for...' I looked around to try to find her sons amidst the exhibits, 'One, two, three... You look fabulous. Here they are. What do you make of these? This is Melissa, boys. She's your mother.'

Piers pricked up his ears and looked, curious. He smiled. She knelt and held out her arms in welcome. Piers edged back, unsure. I encouraged him forward. He embraced her briefly and moved away. Melissa beckoned him. He remained held, his eyes on the toys around him.

Ian was squabbling with Lars over a pretend supermarket conveyor belt. They stayed together, each trying to stop another doing what he wanted even though there were enough exhibits for each of them to have four play areas to himself.

Lars was fascinated by an exhibit involving suction. Hoses which blew and sucked could be moved into apertures causing objects to rise and fall, or they would have risen and fallen had not most of them been replaced by plastic fruit and vegetables from the next-door exhibit, objects of a similar, but not exact, shape and size that given a hefty push fitted into the tubes, thus blocking the air supply.

'Look, Lars. This is Melissa. This is your mummy.'

He carried on, engrossed in his play. I removed his hand from a plastic onion and encouraged him to embrace her. He buried himself into her.

'When Lars cuddles you, you know you're being cuddled.'

'Waaaah, Ian pushed me.' Piers came running over rubbing his head, howling, followed by Ian. He was much exercised by being thwarted in having an entire exhibit to himself, but allowed Melisdsa to give him a brief hug, one eye on his brothers now making their way towards the game he wanted to play on.

I had not expected a 'Mummy! Mummy!' as they rushed, arms outstretched towards her. I had not expected her to dissolve into tears at seeing what she had given birth to without having given birth. I would have been distraught had either occurred. As it happened, she was clearly thrilled to see them. They hardly reacted to her.

They drifted back to the machines, leaving Melissa and me to chat. It was exactly as it had been five years ago in the less glamorous surroundings of the coffee bar car park by the freeway. She was articulate and rational. There was no obvious emotion other than kindness. She had brought the boys some books that had been important to her when she was growing up and me one, too, with wise words about life. I found that she did a great deal of voluntary work with children who had no love. Clearly, she enjoyed children vicariously and that was simply ideal by me. I asked if it would be aceptable to her if I were to remain in touch with her so that, when the time came for the children to understand fully what her role was, they could contact her if they wished. She was happy with this and let me have her e-mail address and telephone number. It was everything I had wished for. She went off to play with the children. Piers held back. I couldn't resist it.

'Come along, Piers, do what your mother tells you.' It was the first time I had ever been able to say this.

It had been a simply glorious day and I looked forward to the next morning when the boys would meet Tina.

She had been the heroine of the surrogacy. We were to meet her in an open-air playground. Full of sand and objects to climb and swing on, the venue was a great one for the boys. It was a warm, sunny afternoon and, although their body clocks remained out of sync with their surroundings, the children swarmed all over the swings, frames, pits and artefacts, interacting in their usual way, sand flying, voices raised along with the occasional hand. Other small children and a couple of large, awkward ones were playing rather more quietly than mine. Between the trees, I could see a familiar. She hoved into view.

'This is Tina, boys.' I could not bring myself to say the word 'mother' - or even 'surrogate'. I fumbled for the right expression that would describe her, describe her function. 'She is the lady who gave birth to you.'

Tears streamed down her face. She was as uncontrolled as Melissa had been restrained. We kissed briefly. I had never seen Tina as the mother of my sons. She was not. Most clearly she was not. Though she had done a fantastic job and I admired her tremendously, now more than before I could not identify with her. I realised that the large young men I had assumed were interlopers into a children's environment were her sons who I had found so gauche in my home. I spoke to them briefly and reaffirmed the regard I had for their mother, a sentiment they told me they shared.

I hoped they were tears of joy that were coursing down her cheeks. Tina told me they were. The three tiny dependent babies she had last seen were now sturdy and good-looking boys. They spoke to her politely in strange accents, but we could see that they were straining to be back on the swings. They had seen and been seen. They were nowhere near the age at which they could talk to Tina about how she had given them life and why and what it had been like for her. Maybe this would come, but this was not the time. She, too, was happy to stay in contact. Indeed, I am sure she would be devastated if this were not so. I looked from boy to boy and to Tina.

There was one more person to meet - and, in a sense, another four before we flew back to the UK. The really spooky part would be meeting the remaining fertilised embryos from the IVF procedure that had created the boys six years earlier, but the rest was putting a face to a name and a voice over the phone; a name and voice that had, like all the dramatis personae, changed my life and made new lives. I would, at last, be able to thank him personally.

Dr David Smotrich was youthful, dark curly-haired, bespectacled and exceedingly circumspect in his delivery.

‘This is a blessing’, Dr Smotrich said, among the pipes, tubes and storage jars in that part of the hospital reserved for his IVF surgery. Piers, Ian and Lars were drawing with felt pens his behind-the-counter staff had provided, captivated by the three five year-olds who had left his Center six years earlier as embryos. They had in an odd sense come home, sporting strange accents and un-American polite behaviour. The latter changed after some hours when they were invited to run around outside and play under a gigantic fir tree shedding football-sized pine cones which Ian drop-kicked outside and in.

Dr Smotrich continued with his description of the life of the cell while the boys crawled around me. Ian poked his finger up my nose and Lars became the bottom pinching monster of the nursery.

‘Would you like to meet your other four?’

This was going to be the high spot of the visit and one I had been awaiting with awe and dread. The boys and I stood on a sticky pad while lab tech Rick, face only visible under a protective blue swaddling cloth, appeared from a dark recess with a matching thermos flask.

‘When I take the lid off, blow.’

A cloud of freezing gas wafted from the top of the open jar. The children, feet stuck like flies in a trap, craned forward. Inside was a single stick identified with a yellow label by which it was pulled from the misty depths to reveal a tiny mustard coloured section. An elongated ice lolly.

‘There they are. The siblings.’

‘Chilling out’ was my instant throwaway reaction, but my heart skipped several beats as I looked from one of my children to another. I moved Ian away from the stick. He had been particularly provocative on this trip and might make a grab for this iced confection.

There is no ‘use by’ date, although in the United Kingdom embryos are routinely destroyed after five years. ‘There are 400,000 frozen embryos in storage in the United Statges,’ one of the staff told me. I was momentarily relieved that I was not alone. Thousands of others were in the same quandry. What to do? Snowflakes in Los Angeles was one option. They donate frozen embryos to infertile couples so that they can give birth to what they might more readily see as their own baby. What would my children make of their brothers or sisters being given away? Would they track them down. Would I be able to know where they were? Would I want to? I knelt down and talked to my sons.

‘Which would you like, boys, if daddy decided to have another baby, a little brother or a sister?’

Lars and Ian both plumped for a sister. Piers, who had long ago despaired of the silliness of his siblings, clearly thought that a fresh start might be possible with a new one. I knew the thought exercised him. His hands flapped as they always did when his imagination was captured. ‘Brother. Um, please!’ he added.

‘But on the other hand, would you really prefer a doggie? So, brother, sister or doggie?’ Needless to say, the chorused response was ‘Doggie.’ It looked as if those incipient humans in the freezer would be kept waiting indefinitely.

Our visit to the hospital where my sons were conceived had, like all my visits in San Diego in early 2006, a surreal quality. Here was a satisfied customer and here were the Center’s products coming in on foot. Here was where the ‘Brave New World’ had happened and where they had been decanted. They might even be Alpha Pluses. I had been lucky. The risks inherent in a triplet delivery are considerable and, in the absence of the new screening procedures, could have resulted Epsilon Minuses or nothing. How fortunate I had been.

At the end of our day in La Jolla, I asked Lars what his feeling was about Dr Smotrich. ‘He's the man who made us,’ was his simple reply. I handed the felt tip pens back to the staff and looked at the three drawings. Circles. Each circle speckled with dots.

‘Cells dividing within eggs?’

‘No, daddy. Biscuits.’