'Whenever I write fiction, which is not very often these days, there always turns out to be some sort of fake baby, or something otherwise unreal or uncanny about a relationship. In one story, a glassblower is making marbles that symbolise his life’s regrets, until he comes to making the baby he never had; the glass baby eventually shatters on the floor. In another, a woman wishes to understand what being widowed will feel like and takes her pretence so far that her husband divorces her. In yet another, a husband and wife cannot agree on whether they had a child at all.' (Introduction)
