What happens next..

...what everyone wants to know but we so rarely find out.

Occasionally - and this week is one of them - readers really want to know What Happens Next.

Comments closed before I could address them this week, but had I been able to, I would have said that I too would love to know what happens next, but readers rarely tell me. Sometimes they do and it’s wonderful when that happens.

Some years ago a man wrote in to say that they, him and his wife, needed help adjusting to having ‘just’ one child as his wife couldn’t have anymore. I’d not long had my second child and had thrown myself into fertility studies. Very tentatively, off the page, I asked him if he was sure she couldn’t as doctors do get things wrong. This is of course a highly sensitive subject. On the page I addressed his issue, the one he’d asked me about, and said I felt it wasn’t the best thing to do, to sever contact with friends that had more than one child (as he was doing) as, not least, his son might grow up thinking he wasn’t enough for them.

Anyway, a few months later the reader got back in touch. Guess what? He said. My wife is pregnant and she thinks she’s got you to thank for that. Of course, she hadn’t. But that I had that sort of power. But that was one of my favourite What Happened Next stories. I got quite emotional reading it.

Anyway this week’s problem is from a sixteen year old girl. I love getting letters from my younger readers, not least, I’m so full of admiration for them writing in to a newspaper. I wrote into the Woman’s Own problem page when I was fourteen. They replied but the answer - I still remember - whilst kind, wasn’t anywhere near analytical enough for me.

This week’s reader likes a boy but isn’t sure what to do. Who hasn’t been in that situation?

You can read it here.