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“You don’t need your coat on, do you?” Shoulders hunched, Adam sat down, turned sideways, whipped his coat off, and draped it over the back of the chair.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” Anne went on. “About Ebola? Eight thousand cases in Sierra Leone. I know someone who’s gone over there, a nurse. I’d love to volunteer.”

“What’s a bola?” Zora peeped out from the soft folds of Sally’s scarf and cardigan.

“A very serious and deadly viral infection. Persists in semen for more than two hundred days, Adam—did you know that?” Adam recrossed his legs to point them away from her.

“Headache, sore throat, coughs, fever, muscle aches, internal bleeding, liver failure.” Zora coughed twice, her eyes wide. “It’s not in the UK,” Anne said. “Yet.”

“Oh, Sally!” Coralie said. “How’s Charleston?”

“I’ve been doing it a bit less frequently, actually. I only guide one afternoon a week. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that”—she lowered her voice—“a tourist used the loo in Clive Bell’s bathroom.”

“No!” Adam finally looked happy.

“True, I’m afraid. We had to call the conservation cleaner. But, Zora, guess what I brought.” Sally reached down and lifted her tote.

“The paints!”

“Take me upstairs and show me what you want. Is it still rabbits?”

“No, I’ve thoughten of something else!”

“And happy birthday!” Anne suddenly exclaimed.

Adam’s eyes lost their light. “Thanks.”

“Daddy’s thirty-nine.” Zora turned back from the hall. “Tom said it’s one shoe in the grave.”

Adam smiled. “Funny girl.”

“One foot,” Anne corrected.

Sally reached back for Zora’s hand and led her to the stairs, chatting.

“Anyway, Tom’s forty,” Adam said to no one.

Coralie smiled brightly. “Anne, what are your plans? Staying for Christmas, I hope? We made the bed up for you.”

“No, no.” Anne shook her head. “We’ll take lunch, if you’re offering, and be off this afternoon.

Tomorrow I’m working on the local LGBT orphans’ Christmas dinner.

For members of our community who find themselves without family.

Sally’s cooking. Along with a few others.

I’m doing the hall arrangements. The caretaker only opens up for me; I know him from the clinic.

” Anne worked for many years at what Adam called the Eastbourne Clap Clinic (not its actual name, Coralie had found to her cost when she’d used it to Anne’s face by mistake).

“An orphans’ Christmas lunch!” Adam rolled his eyes after Anne went off to the bathroom. “The only orphan around here is me.”

Coralie had a strong urge to point out that, far from being dead or even absent, his mother was right there, in the house, visiting him at that moment, on the occasion of his thirty-ninth birthday.

Instead, she took out the red onion and peppers and began to prepare the stew.

If Anne and Sally were staying for lunch, they could have the special meal then, and for dinner she’d find something else.

···

“I think it’s fairly common for children to prefer food they know at this age,” Adam said mildly. He’d opened a bottle of wine the minute the clock turned twelve. The bottle on the lunch table was their second, even though Anne and Sally weren’t drinking.

“We never would have allowed it,” Anne said. “Or, at any rate, we never needed to. You ate like an adult from a very young age. Chicken rice, nasi lemak, laksa. You’d have whatever the amah had.”

“Zora knows we listen to her,” Adam said pointedly. “She’s able to ask for what she wants.”

“I like tomato ketchup next to the rice and peanut butter next to my carrots,” Zora said. “But I don’t want the carrots to touch the rice. Or the ketchup and peanut butter to touch.”

“Very reasonable.” Sally nodded. “This lunch is absolutely stunning, Coralie. I mean, really superb. The recipe is from Moro, you said? I’d love to go there myself, one day.”

“Coralie was at Moro recently,” Adam encouraged.

“We were having a work lunch,” Coralie began.

“My boss loves Moro for work things. They have this sort of utility corridor where there’s a coatrack, storage, the bathrooms. I was standing in there gossiping with my colleague Stefan, who’s probably about my height, maybe less.

Suddenly this man lumbers in with a mountain bike on his shoulder.

He’s wearing a helmet and a suit, all wrinkled, the shirt untucked.

As he barges past us, his muddy, disgusting bike wheel scrapes Stefan’s face. ”

“Goodness me,” Sally exclaimed.

“Stefan sort of yelps, like ‘Ow!’ But the guy doesn’t turn around until he’s stored his bike, taken off his helmet, and run his hand through his sweaty hair.

Then he tries to rush straight back past us to the restaurant.

Stefan says, ‘Excuse me.’ The guy looks surprised, and then he puts on a dismissive voice and says, ‘You’re excused.

’ And I say, ‘You hurt my friend—you hit his face with your bike.’ Stefan’s cheek has a smear of dirt or grease or something on it—so it’s really obvious what’s happened.

And the guy sees it, too, he must have, but he says, ‘I absolutely did not.’ We start saying he did, he did, and that he should say sorry.

Finally, he mutters, ‘Sorry, okay, fine—are you happy? Sorry.’ And he walks out. ”

“How incredibly rude,” Sally said. “It wasn’t the owner, was it? I don’t want to go anymore if it was.”

“It was Boris Johnson!”

“How’s the book going?” Anne gave Adam a stern look. “It’s due in January.”

“Oh, you know.” He winced. “It’s shit.”

At that moment, Zora put her glass of juice down on the edge of her plate by mistake and flipped all the food onto her lap. “My dress!” she cried.

It would need more than a tea towel. “Come on, come to the bathroom with me.” Coralie took her hand and escorted her upstairs. “Give me the dress,” she said on the landing. “Now, run up and grab something else to put on. Don’t worry yet, you might still have it for Christmas.”

The bits of peanut butter and rice came off easily, but the ketchup really worried her.

She blasted it under warm water until it swirled, bloodlike, down the sink.

She turned the tap off and squirted shampoo on the dark area, massaging it on both sides of the gray-blue velvet.

When she’d rinsed off the bubbles, she pressed it dry with a clean towel and gave it a blast with the hair dryer. She’d done it! It was fixed. “Zora!”

There was no response. A worrying noise was coming from upstairs. She ran up two at a time. Zora was on her bed, in her tights and singlet, or what Coralie had learned, in England, to call a vest. She was curled into a ball and sobbing. “Oh, no!” Coralie said. “No need to cry—really, look!”

Zora’s face was so wet from tears that her hair was stuck to her cheek. “I didn’t ruin it?”

“You didn’t ruin anything.” Coralie wiped Zora’s hair out of her eyes.

“First of all, it’s only a dress; if cleaning it hadn’t worked, we could’ve bought you another one.

Second, an accident is an accident. You never have to worry about stuff like that.

And, Zora, this is really important: If you’re crying up here by yourself, we don’t know about it.

You should always come down to where the adults are and cry to us.

We all want to help you. Everyone loves to look after you if you’re sad. ”

Zora moved over to the edge of the bed and raised her arms. Coralie slipped the dress back over her head.

“Oh my God!” She was staring at the back of the door.

Sally’s murals took up four full pine panels and were all surrounded by very Bloomsbury circles, squiggles, and lines.

“It’s amazing. Who thought of this? What are these? ”

“A dog with a parachute. He’s going to help soldiers. That one’s a rescue dog. He finds people trapped when a bomb hits their house. A special pigeon? Called Mary? She flew a message with a shooted foot. And that’s a bear from Poland who carried heavy things and got a metal.” (She meant medal.)

“How did you come up with this? Was it your idea?”

“It’s from my fact book. Animals at War. ”

“God.” Coralie reeled. “Where’s my phone? Hello, Met Police? I need to report a child. Yes, she’s right next to me. It’s Zora Whiteman, age six and three-quarters. Yes, very dangerous. I’m afraid she’s far too clever.”

If there was a better feeling than making Zora laugh, Coralie was yet to find it.