One cold day in December 2021, a former primary schoolteacher in Suffolk opened her laptop, clicked on a Zoom link and was introduced to a beautician in Ukraine who would carry her baby. Dorothy, then 43, and her husband Charlie, 44, who worked for a printing company, had been trying to conceive for eight years. When the last attempt ended in miscarriage, a consultant had suggested surrogacy.
The agency had sent a number of women’s profiles to choose from. Among them was Anastasia. She had a young son called Alexander, a pet hamster, and didn’t like fish or aubergines. She had a soft round face, dark hair down to her shoulders and a way of looking at her child that Dorothy thought was tender.
