What drives us to bring children into a troubled world, and who decides, Emma Neale asks in her new novel. It can be more complicated than we might think, she tells Tom McKinlay.

Emma Neale has a couple of anecdotes that provide useful background to her new novel Maybe Baby . There is quite a gap of time between them and they speak to the novel’s themes in different ways, but they’re both instructive.

The first played out more recently, though still a few years back.

Neale was driving one of her children to a sports fixture, with the other one along for the ride. It was one of those rushed, fraying sort of moments.

‘‘Abe and I both saw this young person walking. Actually, it might have been in the Octagon. Walking along. Very tall. Very elegant in a long flowing black dress. Bright red lipstick, but stubble as well. And I think Abe said something like ‘look at that cool style’.…