And he is just a boy existing only in your father mind. When the nurse assures you all is well she apologises that it is a girl. And you say that’s alright. And you will give him a name that isn’t Stanley Harold because that’s the one that you’d got planned. And anyway the doctors told you there would be twins and somehow it’s just one girl and not two boys or even one. And though you try to be glad she’s there and screaming and your wife is fine albeit sleeping off the anaesthetic, you have to scramble for another name because this still isn’t Stanley Harold like you were expecting and he was born a girl instead. And her hands and feet are all pink perfect, and thank god everything is there and she is fine. There’d been some worry. And there will be no football practice or shouting on the lines you think. Or first time Boy Scouts or man to mans, and all of that. Though there will be other harder damp and tear stained things instead it’s true, yes probably. But you know that in the pub and at the water cooler you will forever be reminded that he’s a girl and that you had half been hoping, and that now and ever after whatever happens, at the end of all these months of terrifying waiting, you have a boy who isn’t there.