Sarah Le Marquand

Oh, no, his name was John.

Sorry, I probably left out the most important.

No, no.

I mean, I personally think, Fran, you could probably say 100% sure.

But he didn't say, I'm John Kennedy.

I wanted to ask you about another really interesting aspect of your story is the late bloomer component.

You had your first baby at 40, your second at 45.

You wrote your first novel at 46 and now your third novel, The Nocturnals, at 61.

Fran, I love this idea that I think would resonate with a lot of people, all of those firsts at those age.

Was there a point along the line where you thought, oh, I'm running behind?

Did you have a schedule?

And if so, did you think you were running behind the schedule?

Because we know how things turned out.

But in hindsight, it can be easy to forget some of the feelings we might have felt along the way.

What would you say to somebody who's listening to our conversation feeling exactly that sense?

I've missed it.

I should have done it five, ten years ago.

It's so unhelpful also what we say to one another, something we talk a lot about at Stella and on this podcast, like we don't believe in asking women or anyone that we're interviewing, are you going to have children?

Are you having more children?

Because you don't know.