‘But how do you think your clients will view all this?’ Will Halm was saying

‘They trust me with their children. It will have no effect.’

‘But what about when you come out? We don’t have people staying in the closet.’

‘Coming out as what? What closet? I realised you were a gay organisation, but I didn’t think you dealt only with gays. Won’t you deal with someone who isn’t gay?’

‘Our surrogates only do it for gay people. That’s what motivates them.’

‘But you’ve said that I would make an excellent parent. If your surrogates trust your judgement, surely one will accept your word that I’m suitable.’ I was desperate. I could see it all slipping away.

‘We have two Englishmen whose surrogate is about to give birth to twins. We have secured the right that both men be named on the birth certificate as parents. That’s a major achievement. You can see it on our video.’

What I had thought was an organisation that enabled children to be born was more complicated than this. It appeared to be almost a by-product of the real aim, which was to present gay families as being as normal as heterosexual families. That was the drum they were beating and I was marching to a different tune.

The mood in the room changed. The silence was awkward. It was clear I was about to be out on my ear.

‘We could recommend you elsewhere.’

‘But I’m here for just another couple of days and tomorrow’s Saturday.’

I imagined that another agency would take me down the same tortuous track. I gave them my mobile number and we left. I really thought I had blown all my chances. It occurred to me that perhaps under Californian law they couldn’t discriminate against non-gays, but I knew that I would not test this out.

'No Daddy, I want this one.'

Piers, as the oldest, had been offered the top bunk first of all. He planted his bottom firmly on the bottom bunk. Lars had put his Pooh Bear on the single bed and was already trying the springs.

'OK, Ian, it's yours. Up you go.'

Mindful of his fall from the ladder to the tree house some weeks before, Ian put a foot gingerly on the bottom rung.

'Put your hands here, on the rail, and pull yourself up.'

This one was angled and easier. He found himself at the top in no time.

'I can touch the ceiling.'

Satisfied that the choices had been made without a ruckus, I turned to the wardrobe to get their pyjamas. There was a thud.

'Aaah!' He was ashen-faced and winded. In my arms, he composed himself. 'Not going up there again.'

Quite how he had done it, I shall never know, but Ian had stepped off the raised side by the pillow, landing on a soft rug I had put there just in case. Lars bounded up the ladder.

'I'm the king of the castle.'

And there he remained. Each one had, in the end, got the bed he wanted. If only all choices could be that simple. Within a day, Piers had personalised his part of the bunk's leg.

''It's my Christmas.'

His stuffed snake had been wound round it as a decoration. Inside the snake, he had tucked several trophies: the fanned paper from the previous day's nursery activity, a plastic hammer, a snowman and the adjustable spanner he liked to comb his hair with. Failing to find a similar upright on his single bed and not to be outdone, Ian immediately piled koala on top of flamingo on top of Bob the Builder on top of Pilchard the cat.

'That's MY Christmas.'

He stood back to admire the pyramid of clutter on his duvet.

'And I'll make one for you, Daddy.'

'Thank you, Ian.'

'Yes. When you're dead.'

Like toys and bodily functions, death had become a topic touched on casually and frequently. It was not that, for them, a visit to their grandparents was to a cemetery in Chieveley, nor that one of the cats, Claudius, who had broken his leg when he slipped off Lars's chair in the kitchen and had spent months with it in an external pin, had succumbed to his eighteen years. They had recently visited a former teaching colleague and friend of mine at the seaside. They had walked along the shore holding his hand. They had watched the waves roll in, picked up pebbles, pocketed shells and pulled seaweed from their sandles. They had stroked his dog and had the cuddles that he gave his six year-old daughter.

'Is that the sea?' they had asked, for weeks afterwards, waving hands vaguely in the direction of the horizon. 'When can we see Nick and Gemma again?'

That was the hard part. Just after our visit, Nick had checked into a small hotel in Weymouth, torn up a bedsheet and hanged himself from the door.

'I'm sorry, boys, we won't be able to see him again. He's died.'

'Why did he die, Daddy? Did he break his leg like Claudius?'

No, darlings, I'm afraid he broke his heart.'

How to explain that the healthy fifty year-old that they had come to know just a few days before had decided to die?

'Won't we see him any more?'

'Afraid not. When people die, you don't see them again.' I resisted muddying the waters with speculations of immortality or excursions into religiosity. The next question was totally expected.

'Will you die, Daddy?'

'Yes, Daddy will. Everyone does, but it won't be for a very long time.

'And we won't see you again?'

'No, but you'll always remember me, I hope.'

'Can we have your bed when you die?'

I bequeathed this to them, glad that they could extract something positive.

'Can I cook for you, Daddy?' Ian asked.

'That's a kind thought, darling. Of course you can.'

I had spoken too soon. He hadn't finished his question.

'When you're dead?'

'What are you writing, Daddy?' Piers had seen me scribbling in the notebook I always kept at hand.

'What you come out with is so funny that I need to write it down when it happens. It's for the book. When you're older you'll be able to read it.'

The stream of discourse with my sons had the evanescent quality of dreams. Unless I wrote it down at once, I would either forget it or impose on it my own logic. As it was, the logic was there. It was just not immediately obvious.

Piers's forehead wrinkled. It often did that. If there was an assumption going around, he would want to question it. He pointed his finger and fixed me with his blue eyes.

'But when I can read, I'll be you.'

'Why.'

'Because you'll be dead and I'll be you.'

'And who will be you, Piers?'

'Don't be silly, Daddy. Ian will.'

'So you will be Daddy and Ian will be you. Do we all change into each other when we die?'

Ian did not seem impressed.

'I won't.'

Momentarily distracted, he returned to dissecting his Jaffa Cake.

'The plate's not right. The animals have to be the right way up.' Piers liked everything to be just so. The design on his Winnie-the-Pooh plate was asymmetrical.

'How about at this angle, Piers?'

'No that's wrong. They must be straight.'

'What about this Daddy plate? It's all white. How should this be on the table?'

Piers turned it all the way round and frowned, unable to reach a conclusion.

'Lars broke a plate and Daddy put it in the bin.'

'Yes, he did. Where is it now, do you think?'

'In a dustcart.'

'Yes, that's right, but what happens to the rubbish that's put in a dustcart?'

'Well,' Piers creased his brow, considering the possibilities. Mind made up and with all the certainty of his four years he fixed me with a stare. 'The dustman takes it home and puts it in his dustbin. Then the dustcart comes and takes it away.'

'Where to?'

'To the other dustman's home, of course.'

Buoyed by his success in elucidating to me the refuse collection system, Piers felt confident enough to raise an issue that had evidently been troubling him for some while.

'What was my name before I was 'Piers', Daddy?' As was becoming the norm for him, Piers's brow was furrowed.

'It's always been 'Piers' ever since you were born, darling.'

'No, but it wasn't. When I was a baby it was something else?'

'Really, it's never been other than 'Piers'.'

No, it was something different.' Piers was insistent.

'You mean 'little darling' or 'my precious'? Hold that thought, Piers. Let's say you were all those names.'

'You're Ian.'

Lars looked me full in the face. For almost four years I had relinquished my name. Become used to being 'Daddy'. I remembered answering the phone with my name when they were under three. They were incredulous.

'But Ian's here!' Lars motioned to his brother who had disengaged himself from his porridge at the mention of his name. 'He's here!' He flapped his hand to attract my attention and remind me that I was Daddy, not Ian. This time, he was giving me a knowing look.

'Who told you that, Lars?'

He mentioned the name of one of the staff at nursery school.

'But I'm not 'Aidan' as well. I have a different middle name from Ian's. It's the same name as one of your friends.'

'No, it's not.'

Middle names were clearly linked to first names in his scheme of things.

'Well, it is, Lars, and Piers's middle name is his grandfather's middle name. What is it, Piers?'

'It's 'Thomas', Daddy?'

'And why is this, Piers?'

As I said it, I sensed what his answer would be. Memories of a cold January morning on a railway line came back to me.

'Because we went on Thomas the Tank Engine', Daddy.'

Fortified by his rectitude, he could not resist reverting to his former theme. 'And... And... when I'm big' - his eyes skittered as he hunted for the perfect conclusion to his sentence - 'you'll be small.'

Piers leant back in his high chair, basking in the certitude of this assertion. I did not disabuse him. It might well be so.

Had I enjoyed the cut and thrust of metaphysical speculation when I was four? Or was it that exploring the interplay of ideas between three boys of the same age was too tempting for me not to exploit. All I had to do was pop an idea into one of their heads and who knew what it would provoke. One thing I was sure of. Life as a triplet was far more complex than that of an only child. I knew that only too well. But was it more than this? Was life in the early first half of the twenty-first century so very different from that of the early second half of the twentieth? If so, it had crept up without my conscious mind realising the enormity of the change. I felt the same, but there I was, father to three children conceived in a test tube and born via surrogacy. That was pretty cutting edge. Having lived with the fact for some years, it all seemed so normal. Or had I come so far from it that I had forgotten what normality was?