To have stayed overnight in Stephen’s rooms was unthinkable. On more than one occasion, according to Stephen, the eagle eye of Sam, the surly bedder and guardian of the College morals on Q staircase, must have noticed a scarf or a cardigan of mine carelessly left hanging over the back of a chair in Stephen’s study. Scenting the whiff of scandal and a captive prey – for he was no friend to young lady visitors – Sam would put his head round the door of Stephen’s bedroom in the early hours, hoping to catch me squeezed illicitly into Stephen’s narrow single bed. But his expectations of a juicy scandal to report to the college authorities were constantly disappointed, because many of Stephen’s better-established friends regularly offered me hospitality at weekends. Many of these friends already had houses and cars and were now in the process of producing offspring which, for our generation, was the expected progression of events. Ours was the last generation for whom the prime goals were quite straightforward: the ideals of romantic love, marriage, a home and a family. The difference for Stephen and me was that we knew that we had only a brief space of time in which to achieve those goals.
— Travelling to Infinity (Jane Hawking), Loc. 732–40