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“Come inside me,” Coralie told Adam in the stimulating anonymity of the vinegar-scented all-white bed in a boutique Paris hotel.

Adam paused, still inside her. They heard the distinctive nee-no, nee-no of a French police siren. “Shit, it’s the pigs.”

“They’re arresting me for my bad choices.” She meant not using a condom.

“It can’t be bad to do something so good,” he breathed into her ear. “I want a thousand babies with you.”

“I’d love that, too; it’s just hard .”

He leaned down until their noses touched. “It’ll be different this time.”

“Promise me it’ll be different,” she said.

“I don’t want it to be the same.” Her mind had played tricks on her when Florence was a baby.

When things were good, she’d thought they were good.

She’d woken as if from a trance. Work guilt, home guilt, C-section scar still numb, clumps from postpartum hair loss still clogging up the drain.

Having a baby was lovely if that was all you had. Anything else in the mix—forget it.

“It’ll be different.” Adam started to thrust again. “So different, so different, even better.”

···

Two weeks later, Theresa May called a snap election, and Adam was instantly offered a contract for another book.

When, a few days later, Coralie’s period arrived, it was the most operatically dramatic it had been since giving birth.

Hell no , her body seemed to say. If Brexit had made things more difficult on Wilton Way, a long election campaign (and another book project) would smash what little amity remained.

Adam seemed not to sense the danger. His admiration for Ed Miliband had made his first book a torment—that was how he remembered it.

He didn’t have the same inner conflict about Labour’s new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, whom, like many of his colleagues, he viewed as an allotment-dwelling, strategy-free, kindly but irrelevant kook.

And he simply reveled in his new insight into the Conservative Party, which this time he was also contracted to cover.

One day, early in the campaign, Coralie came home late from work and nursery pickup.

The buggy groaned under the weight of Florence, binders of printed-out long-form web copy requiring urgent review, and last-minute supplies for dinner.

Adam, lounging on the sofa in his socks, hung up his call and padded to the door, giggling.

“Guess what the Australian pollsters just called the chancellor—off the record till publication! Coralie? You know, Philip Hammond? I said guess!”

“Could you get the shopping from under the buggy?”

“Fine, I’ll just tell you.” He was laughing so much she could hardly understand him. “A fucking cheese-dick !”

···

Theresa May was a diabetic, apparently, and owned more than 150 cookbooks.

She gave up crisps for Lent. She didn’t have children, which was something she was sad about.

On a rare evening when Adam was home with her on the sofa, Coralie watched the Mays’ first joint appearance on a BBC chat show.

The husband seemed quite sweet. The PM looked sick with nerves.

Was it a fucked-up feminist impulse—trauma, maybe, from Clinton in 2016?

Whatever it was, Coralie found herself full of pity.

“Oh dear, really?” Adam said. “This is a woman who once made an entire conference hall of Conservatives boo the Human Rights Act.”

“Okay, but you know who else is awful? Men in her own party who insist on calling her Te-ray-sa. She’s said it’s Ta-ree-sa. Her husband’s saying Ta-ree-sa right now! And still they do it. Do they think they know better?”

“It’s likely they think they do.”

“Well, they don’t .”

“I know!” Adam said. “Why are you cross with me ? I’m not them! I’m me!”

“You’re bad enough,” Coralie muttered.

He looked puzzled, then hurt, then annoyed.

Princess Diana voice: “There were three of us in this marriage”—Adam, Coralie, and Adam’s bloody book.

For the duration of the seven-week campaign, she did drop-off, pickup, bath time, bedtime, and Zora’s Saturday circus school almost entirely on her own.

There could not have been a worse time to add a pregnancy into the mix.

Luckily, she’d put her dreams of a second baby on ice.

Along with all her other dreams! But Adam was achieving his! So that was great! For him!

“But what other dreams do you have?” Adam asked her in a kindly voice.

What a cunt!

···

Close to election day , Daniel texted and asked if she’d like to campaign with him for Labour in Chingford. If power is lying in the streets , he wrote, pick it up!

I’d love to effect some political change , she bitterly replied. Sadly, I have the girls and a full-time job.

···

May won the election but lost her majority. It was a huge embarrassment for her (and, by extension, all women—or maybe only Coralie felt that). Jeremy Corbyn was jubilant, and so were all his supporters. So close—they were so close . If the campaign had run one week longer, they would have won.

Tom lost his seat to his Lib Dem rival. One day he was an MP; the next day he wasn’t. “I keep thinking WhatsApp’s broken,” he marveled. “But I’ve just been kicked off the groups.”

For the rest of the UK, at least those who visited The Guardian ’s website compulsively, there was no post-election exhale .

The shocking closeness of the result meant nobody could relax.

At fever pitch since the Brexit referendum, at fever pitch they remained.

The days were boiling, too—record high temperatures for June.

Heat shimmered from the pavements, and even people with seats stood up on the bus to suck in air from the windows.

Reaching for her phone one morning, Coralie discovered that a large tower block in one of London’s richest areas had been entirely consumed by a fire.

Residents had foreseen the disaster; no one had listened.

People calling for help had been told to stay inside.

Twelve people died, no, a hundred; actually, no one knew.

Theresa May didn’t dare visit the homeless and bereaved.

(“In office,” Adam said in his quoting voice, “but not in power.”)

Whatever “the room” was, it was clear there were no adults in it. It wasn’t a safe way to live.

One Saturday, waiting at the bus stop after circus school, the back of Coralie’s throat ached from pollution while Zora visibly wilted.

In the buggy, Florence was down to her nappy, passed out beneath a muslin shroud.

At Greenwood Road shop, Coralie bought juice boxes and ice lollies.

Back home in the garden, she dragged the paddling pool into the shade of the bay tree and filled it with the hose.

She achieved five minutes of peace, sitting on the back steps, scrolling her phone, before Adam appeared, stirred up the girls with horseplay, stole an ice lolly, and returned to work upstairs.

“Girls? Zora?” Coralie said. “Could you sit back down in the pool?”

“Cara Lee?” A voice came from the garden next door.

She got to her feet. “Hello, Miss Mavis. Are the girls disturbing you?”

Shrewd eyes were visible through the fence slats. “Aren’t you worried they’ll burn themselves up?”

“They’ve got sun cream on, and they’re in the shade, but you’re right, it’s time to go in soon.”

“Miss Mavis?” Zora had known their elderly neighbor since she was little. “Can I have a Jammie Dodger?”

“I’ve just seen you have two ice lollies, am I right?”

“She is right,” Coralie told Zora.

“That baby’s going to slip on the pavers,” Miss Mavis observed, as Florence did indeed slip, landing hard on her little bum. Her appalled cries brought down Adam, who scooped her up, but not before giving a baleful look at Coralie.

“You fucking do it, then,” she hissed, and stomped off.

She’d just locked the door, sat down on the loo, and mindlessly reopened Instagram when a text popped up from Daniel.

He was at Glastonbury and had filmed a clip from deep within a crowd.

“Oh, Jeremy Corbyn,” everyone roared over and over.

After a bit, before she’d decided on her reply, he sent another.

This time his camera was focused on a huge screen next to the festival’s biggest stage.

The Labour leader looked spritely in a blue open-necked shirt.

His snaggletooth and lopsided eyes lent him a friendly vibe, like one of Jim Henson’s Muppets, or more specifically (and showing her age) a Fraggle.

“If I may, I’d like to quote one of my favorite poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley,” Corbyn said.

A shadow appeared below the door. “Mama, Mama.” Florence rattled the handle. Had Coralie forgotten to close the stair gate? Had Adam just let her roam free?

Back on the screen, the Labour leader was reciting:

“Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number—

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you—

Ye are many—they are few.”

Another world is possible , Daniel wrote.

Still on the toilet, her beloved daughter wailing outside, Coralie broke down and sobbed. How could the world with all its inequalities be made fair—when two people who loved each other couldn’t even manage a life ?

···

Adam submitted the first draft of his manuscript one Friday in late July. They spent the weekend with Zora as usual, circus school (together this time) and two drop-off parties. On Sunday afternoon, Marina came to collect her. “How’s the book? Finished?”

“Done!” Adam said. “Exhausting—insane deadlines. But now I’m a free man!”

“Zora, poppet, go and get your bag,” Marina said. “I’ve got Rup asleep in the car.”

Coralie, who was sitting on the stairs, moved to the side to make space. “Tiptoe past the baby,” she murmured.

Adam leaned on the banister. “How’s Tom?”

“Put it this way,” Marina said. “He now lives in one house, has one job, has his weekends back, sees the kids, earns proper money, and doesn’t talk about Brexit all the time.”