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Lunch appeared very finished when Coralie and Zora returned to the kitchen. Anne and Sally were sitting back, their napkins on the table. Adam was standing at the stove and lifting the potlid, a hopeful expression on his face. “Wait, I want some more of that too!” Coralie said. “If there is some.”

“That’s sad to hear. I could eat that entire meal again.”

“Adam,” Anne warned. “You shouldn’t.”

“By the way, Sally!” Coralie said. “The door is so beautiful.”

“I’ve still got a few details to do when it’s dry. All Zora’s idea. We have quite the young historian here.” Tucked under Sally’s arm, Zora glowed.

“Coralie?” Anne was peremptory. “Adam doesn’t have a clue. What are your plans for renovating the house?”

“Oh. Okay. Right.” Coralie turned toward the street and planted her feet. “At the moment there are the two front rooms. The sitting room faces north. Luckily, the window is quite big and still lets in the light. The dining room, with the big table and chairs, is currently not well used.”

“I use it,” Adam said. “I work in it.”

Coralie gave him a look that said, Whose side are you on?

“Every house in this run of terraces,” she went on, “has a blank paved space along the side of the kitchen.” She gestured at the window over the sink, and they all took a moment to gaze at the jasmine and dog rose suffocating the run-down fence shared with their elderly neighbor, Mavis Ballantyne.

“The side return,” Sally said, “I believe it’s known as.”

“Dada? Can I have the iPad to watch Madagascar 3 ?”

Adam got up silently to unplug the iPad from its charger near the fruit bowl.

“Yes, the side return,” Coralie said. “Almost all the houses have extended the kitchen out sideways to make better use of that space.”

“Not next door, though,” Anne observed. “The old Jamaican lady.”

“Miss Mavis is Hackney royalty,” Adam called over his shoulder. “She’s lived there for fifty years.”

Now Anne was staring toward the front door and frowning. “What happens to the back window of the room with the dining table?”

“The whole wall comes off and steel beams go in for support.” Coralie was pacing and waving her arms around, her movements growing more flowing as Anne’s expression remained blank.

“There’ll be a couple of steps down into the newly widened kitchen.

Glass rooflights all along the sloping side of the ceiling.

There’ll be room for more storage under the stairs, a small powder room, a pantry. ”

“No, I don’t understand it.”

“Mum’s not a house person.” Adam sat back down at the table. “I first realized she was with someone new”—he raised his eyebrows at Sally—“when I came home on the weekends and our house was looking nice .”

Sally got to her feet. “I’m going to finish Zora’s door. It all sounds beautiful, Coralie, especially the extra light. When will the work start?”

“My boss, Antoinette—her builders have agreed to do it. They’ll start as soon as their current job is finished. Maybe as early as January.”

“Great time to take the back off your house,” Anne said.

“Great timing for my book,” Adam said in Anne’s voice.

Coralie gave him a long stare.

“Tell me, Coralie,” Anne said in a challenging, BBC Newsnight way. “What’s your status here?”

“Here—in the home?”

“No!” Anne laughed, and for a second she looked quite pretty. “In the UK.”

“My work did all my paperwork. They’ve just renewed my visa. Next time, I can apply for indefinite leave to remain.”

“And how old are you, remind me?”

“Thirty-one.” She added, in spite of herself, childishly rounding up: “And a half?”

“Eight years’ difference.” Anne looked meaningfully at Adam.

“Thirty-one and a half and thirty-nine is nothing like nineteen and twenty-seven,” Adam said.

This was all new to Coralie. “Was that the difference between you and Adam’s dad?”

“It wasn’t the main one,” Anne replied. “But yes, we were also eight years apart. Planning any children?”

Coralie gaped.

“I ask,” Anne said, “because if so, it’s time to start on the folic acid. And, Adam, forty isn’t young, you know. Everyone knows about tick-tock , tick-tock for women. Sperm degrades too.”

“Thanks, Mum,” Adam said. “I’m not quite forty yet. And recovering quite well from my Ebola.”

Who was Anne to snap on her latex gloves, slice and dig into Coralie’s chest, yank out her most cherished private dreams, and examine them like an excised tumor? She wished she’d phoned her own mother when she’d had the chance. But that would have left her empty in a different way.

The doorbell rang and she leaped in her seat.

“Zora,” Adam called. “Marina’s here!”

“It’s only little old me!” Tory Tom was hale and hearty in the hall. “Very unlike us to be early! Sorry about that. We’ve come from a place close to your heart, Anne!”

“Tom, good to see you again,” Anne said. “How are you and your cronies planning on ruining Eastbourne?”

Tom winked at Coralie. “You’ll have to wait and see!”

“I read what you said about people on benefits.”

“I simply said!” Tom laughed his joyful and infectious laugh.

“That people on benefits move to Eastbourne to be on benefits by the sea! It was (a) a joke and (b) a deadly serious fact-based assertion. I mean, if something is funny and true—what’s the crime?

Happy birthday, Adam.” Tom extended his hand and Adam shook it.

“Do you think my car’s safe out there? In Hackney?

Murder Mile? Should I bribe a local youth to look after it? ”

“Your car’s safe in E8, Tom. But I’m not sure you’ll get away with those shoes.”

“What?” Tom angled his calf. “My taupe suede driving loafers?”

“Tom?” Zora called from the sitting room. “I want to watch the iPad in the car.”

“You can’t watch the iPad in the car! You’ll do a sick! We have an iPad at home with all the same awful shows on it.”

Anne nodded at the plastic laundry basket near the front door. “These are our presents for Zora.”

“Oh, that reminds me.” Coralie started up the stairs. “I’ve got to finish some wrapping.”

“Gosh,” Tom exclaimed. “Zora’s a lucky girl. You can carry them out to the car, Anne. You’re the only one here with biceps.”

As well as being the Conservative candidate for Eastbourne, Tom Dunlop was a police barrister.

Coralie had always assumed he was a prosecutor in criminal trials, presenting the case against the accused (the bad guy) on behalf of the good guys (the boys in blue).

In fact, he represented police officers against accusations of wrongdoing as various as sexual assault, negligence, and murder (or accidental death, as murder was known when police did it).

Marina had left Adam, moved to Bartholomew Road, and got together with Tom in suspiciously short order.

Coralie and Adam had attended their wedding the previous summer, more to provide childcare for Zora than anything else.

During his speech, Tom had spoken wittily about his and Marina’s love across the barricades, exchanging flirtatious glances as opponents in the case of the “accidental death” (by violent police restraint) of a mentally ill person.

“I bet if I looked up the judgment, I’d see it was in 2010,” Adam had said darkly.

Coralie had looked up the judgment. The inquest had taken place in 2009, when Zora had been just one.

Her parents had still been living together.

Coralie was thinking about all this as she sat in her pink study wrapping a Barbie in a doctor’s coat, a plush apricot-colored onesie with cat ears, a lilac ukulele, a fact book about the Titanic , packets of Wizz Fizz and Furry Friends from a UK-based specialist online retailer of Australian foods, some floral cloth bunting with the letters Z O R A , and a child-size full kit from Liverpool FC.

Now that Sparebitty was kept at Wilton Way and Rabbitty in Camden, nothing Zora owned had to be urgently transported between houses.

Although—they’d picked her up in her school uniform.

She dug around in Zora’s drawers and added it to her teetering pile.

“Well, send my best to Marina,” Adam was saying as Coralie wobbled down the stairs. “Zora? Time to jump up, poppet.”

There came three very loud knocks. Coralie dumped the presents in the laundry basket and swung the front door open. “Sorry, I couldn’t last in the car,” Marina said. “I’m absolutely bursting. Do you mind?”

“Oh God,” Coralie said. “Of course not!” Marina stomped up the stairs. “Marina’s here,” Coralie announced to the sitting room.

“She must have finished her call,” Tom said. “What’s the deal here, by the way?” He nudged the laundry basket with his foot. “Are they from you two, Father Christmas, or what?”

“I didn’t even think of that.” For a second Coralie was stricken. “No, she’ll recognize the wrapping paper is from us. She’d work it out, I think.”

“It won’t be a problem. Marina’s bought half of Hamleys, and the Amins have gone quite mad, not to mention my own parents, who’ve sent a bloody great trampoline I’ll have to put up in the garden.

You know how many times she’s been on the rocking horse?

Once. The trampoline’s going to be a very expensive camp mattress for the Camden urban fox. ”

“What a relief—whew.” Marina swept down the stairs in her long cashmere coat. “Thanks, Coralie.”

“Mummy!” Zora ran into the hall.

“Wait, wait till I’m on solid ground.” Marina stepped off the last step. Zora leaped into her arms. “My beautiful girl.”

When Zora finally slid down to the floor, Marina’s coat had come unbuttoned. “Oh, Marina,” Anne called from the sitting room. “When are you due?”

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