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Coralie pushed her chair back quietly and tiptoed over to the stove. “They’re like two silverback gorillas.”

“Barbie voted Remain, by the way,” Daniel said. “He loves a good debate. I try to…float above.”

“What’s in the pot?”

“Risotto.”

“This is by far the nicest kitchen I’ve ever been in.

It’s actually murdering me—the next time I see mine it’s going to feel all shrunken and cheap.

” She opened a floor-to-ceiling cupboard built into the alcove next to the stove.

Jar upon jar of dried grains and pulses, expensive tins of Italian whole tomatoes, herbs and spices, rice and pasta, pickles, crackers, slabs of dark chocolate, olive oil, vinegar, mustards, Heinz ketchup, and tin after tin of baked beans.

“Aladdin’s cave,” she said. “What is this—No Deal stockpiling?”

“Normal stockpiling,” Dan said. “A cook’s pantry.”

“A cook’s pantry!” Coralie scoffed. “When you lived at Mum’s, I was lucky to find spaghetti.”

“That was different. She didn’t eat what I made. She hardly ate at all.”

“Not like me.” Barbie was up on his hind legs and rubbing his own belly.

“I love everything Dan makes.” He wrapped his arms around Coralie’s brother and kissed him on the top of his head.

In spite of herself, she blushed. Her eyes focused on a glittery magnet on the fridge. In glamorous scrolly writing, it said:

It’s not a whorehouse

It’s a whorehome

“Coralie, your name?” Barbie said. “Go on. Tell me.”

“I want Dan to take me on a tour, show me round the house. Is that okay?”

“It’s his house, too, love. Go for it.”

“Let me put the last of this in.” Dan ladled in the dregs of his stock, turned off the burner, and put the lid on. “It’ll be perfect when we get back.”

They ducked into the hall. “Sorry he’s so massive ,” Dan said. “I was thinking I should somehow warn you.”

“He’s like someone out of a Guy Ritchie film—a lovable gangster.”

“An armed robber with a heart of gold. I won’t bother with downstairs; it’s all modern and boring. It’s the zone for his sons and their wives—the guest rooms and bathroom and a little kitchen for when they stay. That’s hardly ever—they live in Brooklyn. Come upstairs.”

“What’s in here?” Coralie pushed open the door.

“God, it’s massive, it’s stunning, it’s beautiful.

” The double doors between the two rooms were open.

Every surface was painted red. Red walls, red ceilings, even the frames and shutters of the big bay window—surely unusual to have bay windows on two floors.

The cornicing and ceiling roses had been left white.

Unavoidably, the clear comparison was to the womb (if the womb was filled with wall-to-wall books, thick Persian rugs, and giant sofas on tall turned wooden legs).

It made her own tasteful paint job—Farrow they were the momentous daily commitments of life .

“Excuse me for a second, would you?” Adam did a funny stork-like walk to mime searching for a bathroom.

“Just in the hall, at the back,” Coralie said.

Barbie refilled Coralie’s goblet. “Why didn’t you want to tell me where your name was from?”

“First, because you were doing something I fear and hate—asking me a question but not waiting for the answer.”

“Oh, sorry, I do care. It’s my ADHD; it makes me bounce around. Okay, go on, you said ‘first.’ What was second?”

“I don’t like being attached to a town I know nothing about and that no one knows anything about.”

“And?”

“And?” She was three goblets deep. “I suppose I don’t like my dad that much.”

Barbie looked at Dan. “I see.”

“That’s the reason we haven’t got married,” she found herself saying. “I can’t imagine him at the wedding.”

“Well,” Dan said. “Same.”

“You didn’t catch up with Roger when you went over?”

“God, no.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Barbie’s tone was pleasant and his facial expression, as he gazed at Coralie, seemed interested. “I know what Dan says, but what do you say?”

“Ah.” She shrugged. “I can’t even remember now, really.”

“You were the good one,” Barbie said. “And Dan was the bad one.”

“I don’t think…”

“Enough, enough.” Barbie dusted off his hands. “Enough of the hard questions from me. You’re a writer, Dan tells me. How’s the writing going?”

Coralie dropped her head into her hands and moaned.

“Look at you!” Barbie laughed. “You’re like an oyster when the lemon is squirted on. Don’t shrivel away! Just tell me!”

“Ugh,” Coralie said. “It’s fine.”

“Writer’s block? No ideas?”

“I have ideas!” Tears of protest rose to her eyes. “The world is…” She mimed being dizzy. “What’s the point?” Of reading, she meant as well, not just of writing, when no one had time to think.

“You need to get your shit together,” Barbie said.

“He’s being kind,” Dan quickly clarified.

Before she could reply, Adam was back. “Barbie, bloody hell, what’s the story with the lav gallery? Those are some total A-listers.”

“The talent—my talent business. I was a manager, a fixer; that’s how I made a crust.”

With a waiter’s discretion, Dan cleared up around them as Barbie told the story of how he made his fortune. He was a Londoner by birth and grew up around Clerkenwell and Farringdon.

“That’s near…” Where Coralie worked, she was going to say, but Barbie wasn’t listening.

His parents were from Sicily. When they moved to London, his mother worked as a seamstress, and his father in one of the Italian cafés on Clerkenwell Road.

Barbie was smart, and everyone could see it, but he did shit at school and got himself into trouble, beating up anyone who called him thick.

Left school early, got into music, made himself useful, good at all the practical things: venues, tickets, merch, security.

Made himself more and more useful to the more and more famous.

“Anyway,” he said, “that was how I became a success. But it wasn’t easy.

My wife was American, my little sons were settled in New York.

Every time I came to London, I went for these huge, long walks when I was jet-lagged, along all the big main roads, looking for the same kind of place where I grew up, where I could feel the road rumbling and the traffic kept me company.

When I found them, I bought them. Mare Street, Old Ford Road, Graham Road, this place—you can hear the traffic now. ”

They all paused to listen. Something huge drove by. The chandelier crystals shimmered.