She is still living at home, aged 19, since there is an excellent course at the local CFE which gives her skills and qualifications which would be recognised by any restaurant, institute or hotel where she might want to work. She has already completed four separate weeks of 'work experience' and cooks once a week in the restaurant attached to the college. As far as Sarah and Mark can see, Nell is surrounded by admiring boys but does not have a particular boyfriend. She accepts their admiration easily and goes to a concert with one boy, one evening in the week, and ten-pin bowling with another boy the next evening. The third evening she will be out somewhere with a group of girls.
We left Peter and Linda saving money, possibly for a mortgage for a house, possibly to support Peter if he decided to buy his way into the bicycle firm. In 1991 the housing market was very unstable; nobody knew how prices were going to change in the next two years - would they go up or come down or stay much the same? If you are buying a house on a mortgage such kinds of uncertainty make the future look very precarious. [For discussions of mortgages see Part 2, Chapter 3] Perhaps for this reason, when Peter's boss left for Australia and the remaining partner wanted to find someone else to share the bicycle shop business with him, Peter, now aged 27, offered to put his own money into the business and become a partner. Linda encouraged him. She was earning good money, and she could see that Peter was becoming more enthusiastic about bicycles rather than less. At first, as a junior partner, Peter worked long hours and received little money from the profits. But he was lucky; two new shops opened next to theirs, one a hardware shop, the other a car accessory shop - just the kind of businesses which will attract people who might want to buy a bicycle or get their own mended. Customers came; the business began to make bigger profits; and cheerful, friendly Peter was liked by all the 'regulars'. By the time he was 30 in 1995, Peter was a confident businessman as well as the man who actually got his hands dirty, buying, renovating and mending bicycles.
As a result, Linda and Peter, who had never married but who were comfortably and happily together as a couple decided that they could afford to buy a house. The market seemed to be improving, interest rates were going down, and they had enough money for the deposit. With their joint income, which was rising, they would be easily able to keep up the mortgage payments. They wanted somewhere not too far from Peter's bicycle shop, with good connections to central London for Linda. After much searching, they found a house in south London, a semi-detached, 1930s house in decent condition with a very overgrown garden. They moved into the house in late 1995, at which point, much to Peter's surprise, Linda showed an enthusiasm for do-it-yourself repairs and decoration. Late at night he might find her in front of her sewing machine, making curtains for the second bedroom, or ready to clean the utmost recesses under the sink. Peter had always thought of Linda as smarter then himself, both in her looks and her skills. She had become an indispensable Personal Assistant to the Director of a big company, where she enjoyed much responsibility and the confidences of her boss. So why was she cleaning the cupboard under the sink instead of preparing for the next day? Was she dreaming of a home with children?
Linda was 32. Since her own parents were divorced, she had not wanted to have children until she was absolutely sure that she had found a man who would stick by her. Peter's serious commitment to his work and his love and goodwill had eventually reassured her. Now she wanted to have a family. They had already abandoned contraception and waited for Linda to become pregnant.
The next two years were very stressful. Linda did not become pregnant, and when she eventually discussed the problem with her doctor, he sent her for tests. The verdict was that she would need 1VF (in-vitro fertility treatment) if she was to have a chance of giving birth to a baby. This treatment is now more than thirty years old, but the success rates are still low, and the process is emotionally and physically stressful for the mother. In Britain at that time fertility treatment paid for by the National Health Service was very rare and couples had to wait a long time. Peter and Linda could afford their way of life on the basis of Linda's salary and Peter's increasing income but private IVF treatment was (and is) very expensive. What should they do?
At this point Bill and Carol, Peter's parents offered to pay for one cycle of the treatment (one operation to insert fertilised eggs into Linda's womb). Then Linda's mother told them that she could manage to pay half the money for another cycle. So Linda went through the lengthy and complicated process twice. Each time she failed to become pregnant. This was not surprising -success rates are low, and more than half of women who try 1VF fail to conceive, even after many cycles.
Linda was 35, Peter was 33 and they had no children. Should they - as Peter suggested - accept the situation and enjoy their life together, perhaps developing other child-related interests. For Linda this was difficult advice which she did not want to accept. But she was too sharp and intelligent not to realise that more IVF for her was probably a waste of money and effort. The other possibility was adoption. So they turned to the adoption services. In Britain there are very few babies available for adoption and a long waiting list of would-be hopeful parents; they considered adopting from overseas - Russia, for example -but meanwhile they were on lists of potential parents for children waiting for adoption in their area. They visited one or two homes and studied the case histories of older children. Among these cases was one of two little boys, brothers aged 5 and 3 whom the adoption agency believed should be adopted together. The older boy, Craig, seemed to be fine; his little brother, Stuart, had some problems in his normal development. He stumbled rather than walked, and his speech was behind that of children of his age. Linda and Peter were told a little about the violence of his early childhood which explained these difficulties. After many discussions between themselves and with the adoption agency they took the huge step of adopting two children together. Linda was 36, nearly 37, and Peter was 34 - and now they had two sons. They celebrated the arrival of the Millennium on 1st January 2000, as their first New Year together as a family, two months after the adoption.
Adopting children, especially those who have already had a troubled and disturbed childhood is not easy. (For further discussion of adoption see the next chapter.) Peter and Linda's experiences as parents were very different from Sarah and Mark's. In any case they were new parents with no time to 'practise' on one baby. But they had some immense advantages. Linda was a strong, clear-headed and intelligent mother, committed to giving her children the kind of security she had missed, while Peter, who had always been one of life's 'easy' people, found that he had an ideal temperament for being the father of two troublesome and troubled boys. He had patience, cheerfulness, and a readiness to accept whatever they threw at him (and they threw a great deal, both literally and metaphorically). He was also enthusiastic about bicycles. The children became cyclists; Stuart who would always be slightly disabled was not at all disabled on a bike, Craig had spent his life looking after his younger brother and was very protective. Even now that he is just 13, and keen to show the world how tough he is, he is never tough towards Stuart who loves him and always tries to imitate him. Peter is 43, with a wife (for he and Linda married before they applied to the adoption agency) and two sons of whom he is very proud, and a bicycle business which requires much work. But Peter, unlike some self-employed people, keeps tight control over his working hours. He wants to spend as much time as he can with his wife and sons; they are a close family.