GG had been very busy since his divorce from J.

Not long after he and his wife had split up, he’d become a father for the fourth time. I guessed that the mother of this child had something to do with the end of his marriage.

Now, he told me, he was in a more permanent relationship, and he and his new partner were excited to be expecting their first baby. Out of his girlfriend’s earshot, he also confessed that three other infants living in his home town of Newton Abbot were his. I calculated that he had fathered eight children in total.

I guessed that the reason I was the one struggling to bake smoked haddock soufflés (overflowing) and an apple crumble (burnt) in the tiny oven in his galley kitchen was that he was too busy procreating.