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UPFRONT:RACING TO THE TOP of my list of resentments of late is my own biological clock. Not for some incessant, deafening ticking – this one’s a silent little bugger, which may explain how I’ve made it to my mid-thirties without issue. No, what really incenses me about my biological clock is its very existence: silent or otherwise, this domineering, dictatorial timekeeper makes me every day more aware of how deluded I was to think that my fertility was ever really within my control.

I’m 35. The age at which fertility declines like an ailing dowager, and the last remaining eggs slip through the narrow funnel and join all their unfertilised sisters at the bottom of the upturned timer. And due to the undeniable relationship between scarcity and value, my dwindling number of eggs can only make the last remaining more valuable than the Fabergé variety.