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It was probably a bit of a tragedy she hadn’t done an NCT class the first time around.

Or was it an NCT group ? The National Childbirth Trust groups or classes were a rite of passage for middle-class mums—it was where they learned that having a C-section meant they’d failed birth and using a bottle meant they’d failed their baby.

(Coralie had to work that out for herself!)

They were also a matchmaking service for women who lived locally with similar due dates.

Alice had made two close friends in hers: one who worked in art PR and one who was so rich she had a utility-room shower for her dogs.

The three of them went to Clissold Leisure Centre every week for postnatal yoga and smoothies.

Coralie’d had no friends on her first mat leave—aside from Florence.

But beyond the fact that she was an immigrant who hadn’t known about NCT, why hadn’t she joined a mothers’ group?

“You’re a cat who walks alone,” Adam said.

“Anyway, you were reading it all in books.”

At the time of Coralie’s first pregnancy, her own mother had recently died of a gruesome abdominal illness.

There had therefore been no question of optimizing birth; it was simply something to survive.

Perhaps there’d been a little feeling inside her, too, that, as a stepmother, she wasn’t having a pure first-baby experience.

Unlike other new mums, if she didn’t know how to change a nappy, she could ask Adam.

But with this second baby (last baby), she had a craving to do everything better and properly.

She had googled “Hackney birth classes” to discover the Thursday-night classes on Eleanor Road.

Birth, breastfeeding, and parenting were covered, and there was gentle pregnancy yoga too.

Unlike most courses, which went on for the whole final trimester, this one took place over three ninety-minute sessions, which was good, because as the first Thursday approached she began to feel sick at the thought of missing Florence’s bedtime.

I wish I wasn’t doing this , she messaged both Adam and Alice.

It will be brilliant , Adam wrote back. Think how fun it’ll be to google all the mums.

You have to do it , Alice replied. You need a new local Mom Friend. I feel like a dead wife in a romance movie…finding her husband a new love from ~ beyond the grave ~. (Nicky had hit a hot streak producing other artists. They were spending most of the year in LA.)

After work, on the second Thursday in July, she carried on past the nursery bus stop on Mare Street.

While she ached to see her daughter and cuddle her, it was a relief not to have to sprint after Florence on the scooter, living in fear that either of them (or both) would fall and knock their teeth out.

At thirty-two weeks, Coralie was too massive to run, and doing the sideways lean to drag the scooter along was even worse.

These days her entire rib cage creaked as it strained above what she hated calling her “bump.” When she lay on her left side in bed—this was what the books seemed to recommend—her pelvis was so wide that her right leg sloped down like Mount Fuji, which made her hip joint painfully burn.

If she rolled on her back in her sleep, she had nightmares about being choked or crushed.

If she ate after 8 p.m., she woke at midnight, her throat corroded by reflux.

Florence now slept through (thank God). Coralie still woke at five.

There was something slightly zombie film about getting to the end of Reading Lane and seeing pregnant women lumber from three directions.

Coralie stayed on the other side of Eleanor Road so she didn’t have to chat but sped up to enter the front gate with the others so she didn’t have to knock.

An enormous lavender bush spread across the front fence of the compact three-story terrace.

She’d brought Florence past it scores of times on the way to the park.

As the other women chatted, she studied the facade of gray bricks.

The intricate stained-glass windows looked original.

“Shoes off, up to the top floor, bathroom on the first floor,” came a confident voice from behind the open door.

(It was a kind of voice she thrilled to; she was instantly back at school: “Girls! Take out Medieval Women and turn to page fifteen!”) Too shy to look around, Coralie inspected the floorboards.

The varnish had been ruined by decades of traffic.

She longed to get a sander and tackle them herself.

(It was still her cherished ambition to have the white paint buffed off the boards in Wilton Way.) At the first-floor landing, she found a queue for the bathroom.

She checked her phone and, with the focused air of someone responding to an urgent work task, WhatsApped Adam that she was freaking out.

If you hate it, just leave , he replied. But I promise you won’t hate it! CYK!

Upstairs, the top floor was a surprise, a church hall–like space with no dividing walls.

The ceiling had been removed between it and the attic, revealing the contours of the pitched roof.

As well as the front and back windows, four skylights let in the burnished early-evening sun.

Dust motes danced and shimmered. Coralie sneezed.

“Take a cushion, take a place! Don’t be shy, you’re all new, form a circle, find a patch of carpet, sit down and stretch out, lean right over, touch your ankles if you can, your knees if you can’t.

If you watch a baby, the baby’s toes are never just a big block or lump, but each one is separated out. Free each toe. Wriggle-wriggle!”

Finally, from the safety of her own little patch of carpet, she was able to look at people’s faces.

There was Fiona Doherty, the birth teacher, in her sixties perhaps, muscled calves in leggings, a long chambray shirt over the top, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

A bandanna held back her thick gray curls.

Her tanned, expressive face had wrinkles of all kinds: laughter lines, frown lines, diagonal quizzical ones above each eyebrow.

“Draw your knees up to make a bridge,” Fiona cried.

“Reach up! Look at the ceiling! Deep breath! Ahh! Now stretch out one leg, draw the other up in a triangle shape. Roll around, loosen the hip!”

Coralie peeped around at the others. One woman, with her eyes closed, looked to be Coralie’s age.

Her face was normal size, but her features (all beautiful) were enormous, like a movie star crossed with a frog.

Her huge eyes snapped open, catching Coralie mid-stare.

She grimaced in sympathy. Coralie smiled with relief.

“We’ll go around the circle,” Fiona said. “Your name, how many weeks, journey to conception, was it easy, hard? Is it your first baby, any complications, and, finally, one hope and one fear.”

Jesus! Coralie’s mind went blank. She missed the first woman’s introduction almost entirely. “And I suppose my biggest fear is that I’ll have to have a cesarean,” the woman said. “I don’t want that kind of start for my baby. And my hope is, um, that I’ll have a girl.”

“Thank you, Charlotte,” Fiona said. “I’m noticing that you’re not in control of either of those things, are you?

Whether you’ll need a medicalized birth or whether the baby’s a boy or a girl.

Well, during the course, we’ll talk about things you can control, so I hope you’ll find that helpful. Next?”

( Hi, I’m Coralie , Coralie started practicing silently.)

“Hi, I’m Sam,” the next person said. “In my normal life, I’m a man.

” He shrugged and waved a hand in front of his face and torso.

“But my wife can’t get pregnant, it took us years to find out, and the only option was for me to carry.

I’m thirty-two weeks, I cry every day, it’s worse than puberty for messing with my head.

My biggest fear is that the midwives call me ‘Mum.’ Actually, my biggest fear is that they’ll call the trainees in to stare at me.

I’m having a C-section, it’s already scheduled.

Sorry if that’s anyone’s worst nightmare.

” He rolled his eyes, but not at Charlotte.

“Sam, the birthing parent’s in charge at the hospital. Anyone extra who wants to come in needs your permission. That’s one thing I want all of you to take with you when you leave. And your hope?”

Sam had taken off his cap to rearrange his hair. For a moment he kept it over his face. “I just hope it works,” he said. “It took so long, and it was so, so hard. If something happens to the baby, my wife’s heart will be broken, and I’ll die.”

Fiona nodded. “Thirty-two weeks, that baby is already cooked. You could give birth tonight and odds are they’d make it. But try to last the distance if you can: They’re laying down lots of lovely fat.”

Sam nodded, grateful.

“Next?”

“I’m Lydia.” It was the woman with the big eyes and smile. “I’m thirty-four weeks, and this is my first baby. I’m having her on my own, using the sperm of a donor.” The sperm of a donor. What a precise way to put it. Coralie regarded her with respect.

“Yes,” Lydia went on quietly, almost to herself.

“I was a writer first, freelance. Journalism, essays. But then, when I was thirty-five, I suddenly thought, Someone needs to take charge here, or I will not be having a baby. Spreadsheets, I had to work out how to make them. I chose teaching for the mat leave and school holidays. And the pension, I love having a pension; I check it every day on my phone.”

Sam gave an emphatic nod. The whole group was leaning forward.