Seán Moncrieff: My son’s girlfriend said she was worried. Her period was late

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Cork for the day. I arrived home feeling tired and a bit spaced out from the driving. Perhaps that’s why I reacted the way I did. That’s what I told myself afterwards.

I opened a beer, had a bit of chat with Herself and Daughter Number One and was just about to head to bed when a message popped up on my phone from Son Number One.

For nearly a year, he's been living in Colombia. He went there by himself and knowing no one, yet in that time he's managed to learn reasonable Spanish and construct a social network that includes a woman. Not a girlfriend: there is some opaque distinction here that I don't fully grasp. This is a woman he's been seeing regularly for some months now. But not a girlfriend.

His message read: this isn’t good.

The first months in Ireland were a learning experience. It was a bit of hell

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Hilary Fannin: There are two types of banshee – good-girl and bad-girl banshees

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By the time I'd finished reading all this and absorbed what it meant, everyone else had gone to bed. I got another beer and tried to think of what help, if any, I could give from the other side of the world

There followed a series of screenshots of a text conversation between Son Number One and the woman who isn’t a girlfriend. In the first, she was pleading with him to answer his phone. Why, he asked. What’s up?

She told him that she was worried because her period was late.

Son Number One replied with a not very reassuring platitude, which did little to calm her. Instead, she’d bought a pregnancy test kit, and in the second screenshot, sent him a picture of the result.

It was positive.

"Why were we so stupid?" she wrote. "We are f***ed."

Rather disappointingly, all Son Number One could think to write was: "what are you going to do?"

The answer was contained in the third screenshot. Although abortion has been recently legalised in Colombia, the facilities for it are not yet in place. And she seemed to have severe doubts about taking such a course of action anyway. Her family were very religious and she didn’t seem to feel that she could keep this news from them. She was going to go to a doctor to have another pregnancy test.

By the time I’d finished reading all this and absorbed what it meant, everyone else had gone to bed. I got another beer and tried to think of what help, if any, I could give from the other side of the world. I told him he should go with her for the second test, that it was crucial that he be supportive; that he should also try to get his head around the idea that he might be going to become a father.

My phone finally buzzed just after I got into bed. A short message that put everything else into context: if I hadn't been a bit spaced, I might have noticed that the pregnancy test looked suspiciously like one for Covid

He didn’t answer: and so, I filled in the silence with my own fears. Was he feeling terrified and alone, but trying not to admit to it? Was he tempted to run back to Ireland? He’d only planned to stay in Colombia for a year, so what now? Would her family pressure them to get married? Should I get a plane in the morning?

I should have called him, of course. But I wasn’t thinking straight. I was punchy from all the driving. I messaged him to tell me as soon as they got the second result. No answer.

My phone finally buzzed just after I got into bed. A short message that put everything else into context: if I hadn’t been a bit spaced, I might have noticed that the pregnancy test looked suspiciously like one for Covid; I might have remembered that it was April 1st, and this is just the sort of thing Son Number One would do.

He and the non-girlfriend had worked out a script, then texted back and forth so he could send on the screenshots. I forgot to tell him how ingenious that was. I was too busy with my unprintable reply.

Yet as I was drifting off to sleep, I did remember that one of my first reactions to the fake news had been that Son Number One would make a really good father. He likes children. Didn’t tell him that either. I will when he’s grown up himself.