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“Take a cushion, find a square of carpet, stretch out, touch your ankles if you can. No—you’re too far along for that.

Touch your knees instead. Wriggle the toes, spread them out, baby toes.

Who remembers last week? In pregnancy, some of us bundle up all the fear and danger, and what do we do?

Project it onto the medical professionals, those nasty people trying to control us, and our bodies! Who’s having a home birth?”

Charlotte and one other woman raised their hands.

“Some of us think the call is coming from inside the house!” Fiona said. “The danger is within , something will go wrong with our bodies, and the only thing that can help is a nice doctor in clogs and scrubs! Hospital?”

Coralie, Sam, Lydia, and a few others raised their hands.

“Surely the truth lies in the middle! Midwives, doctors, drugs, they’re there to help. But you, the birthing parent, you have your own strength too. Intuition! A mother’s knowledge! Parental instinct, I mean. Sorry, Sam.”

“It’s fine.”

“We talked about the baby, going from its beautiful, warm, perfectly regulated kingdom, out into this horrible world, where Boris Johnson will be prime minister; our world with its loud noises, bright lights, and cold winds, although not today, this heat is rather womb-like. Leg up in a triangle, lean forward, round and round, massaging the hip. The baby will be disturbed by the change, and, after giving birth—so will you. Two disturbed people. Is that a disaster? Do they take away your parent badge?”

“No, no,” the pregnant people murmured.

“No, they don’t, and while I don’t wish discombobulation on anyone, bone-tiredness, the kind of sleep deprivation that leads to hallucinations—no one wants any of that, but is it bad?

Is it the end of the world? It’s not, because by being in that state, disintegrated, you get a sense of how the baby’s feeling.

Slowly, slowly, you build yourselves back up, together. Change legs!”

···

Coralie and Lydia had both worn Birkenstocks, so they avoided the pileup of women (and Sam) sitting on the stairs to put their shoes on. Outside, on the pavement, Coralie gestured toward Fiona’s house. “Maybe too helpful?”

“Mmm,” Lydia agreed. “Learning too many new things at once is bad for my self-esteem.”

“I feel a bit ripped off. Fiona’s obviously the expert; why can’t she deliver my baby?”

“Maybe she could raise it as well. We can collect them when they’re eighteen. Surprise! It’s me, your mother.”

“Where are you going, are you nearby?”

Lydia pointed at a tall tower block at the end of the street. “I’m up there, tenth floor.”

“Do you overlook the park?”

“I do!”

“Lucky. Will you have a maternity leave?”

“Yeah—you?”

“Yep.” Coralie looked down and pointed one sandaled toe.

“Maybe we’ll…”

“I’d like that!”

She was halfway down Wilton Way, thrilled, before she remembered Zora.

“Yes?” Dan answered the phone in a pretend impatient way.

“Yes, Dan, okay! How’s Zora?”

“Tell her I want to sleep over,” she heard Zora say in the background.

“I’ll say no if it’s too much,” Coralie said quietly. “I don’t mind being the bad guy.”

“I want her to stay, and she wants to stay!”

“Then I’ll get her in the morning.”

“What about work?”

“I can’t say strongly enough: Fuck work.”

“Okay!”

“I’ve got to do something after the nursery run. I’ll see you at eleven.”

One crazy thing about where they lived was that, despite Hackney being miles from the sea, flocks of seagulls regularly flew over, shrieking.

It was Ridley Road Market, all the fish laid out on ice at the stalls.

The birds couldn’t resist. With the warmth on her face, the seagulls screaming, Zora in safe hands, her boy gently kicking inside her—everything felt like it could be okay.

···

At home, dinner wasn’t made. Adam was full of apologies. He’d done Florence’s pickup, and given her dinner, obviously! And put her to bed! But then he’d got a call from the journalist Boris Johnson had once planned to kneecap.

“Hang on,” Coralie said. “What?”

“But I can go on my bike and get Turkish?”

It was already after eight. Having a mixed grill was begging for a sleepless night. She found herself near tears.

“Ah, the reflux thing,” Adam said.

“It’s the reflux thing, the tiredness thing, starvation, and being let down. You don’t even know what my day was like!”

“I’ll make toast,” he said. “Right now.”

···

Darius Guppy (seemingly his real name) was an Eton-educated ne’er-do-well, at one point—could this be right?

—jailed for insurance fraud. He’d been caught on tape asking his school friend Boris Johnson for the address of a journalist he wanted to bash.

As she ate her toast at the kitchen table, Adam read out the transcript of a secretly recorded phone call.

Johnson: How badly hurt will he be?

Guppy: He will not have a broken limb or broken arm, and he will not be put into intensive care or anything like that. He will probably get a couple of black eyes and a cracked rib.

Johnson: A cracked rib.

Guppy: Nothing which you didn’t suffer in rugby, okay? But he’ll get scared and that’s what I want him to do. I want him to get scared.

(They went on in this vein for a bit longer.)

Johnson: Okay, Darry, I’ve said I’ll do it. I’ll do it, don’t worry.

Guppy: Boris, I really mean it, I love you and I will owe you this.

“That’s mental,” Coralie said. “Did the journalist get bashed?”

“No, but I’m getting him on the pod to talk about how scared he was, and how sickening it is that Boris will be PM next week, et cetera.”

“I feel like other things he’s done have been worse. But when was all this, when was the secret tape from?”

“1990.”

“Oh.”

“News is news! Do you still have to go in early for the Feel Thing press thing?”

“No,” Coralie said. “I don’t.”

“Good, because I’ve got an early record tomorrow.”

And then his phone rang, and he answered it, and that was the end of that.

···

Later, in the bath, she was glad he hadn’t followed up about her day. It meant she could carry out her plans without discussion.

···

At first, she wondered if she’d come to the wrong place.

Tucked around the Haggerston side of Broadway Market, it looked like any other community hall.

Through the security grilles on the high windows, she spotted paper cutouts in the shape of children’s hands.

This was it. She rang the bell. Not a sound came from inside.

She knocked. After a full minute, a small woman (gray hair cut short like an acorn cap) came to the door, an expression of polite curiosity on her face.

“Sorry,” Coralie said.

“No need to apologize.”

“I just, sort of, urgently need to enroll my daughter in the school.”

“We don’t really do things urgently ,” the woman said. “How old is your daughter?” She peered around, as if Florence should have come. Coralie hadn’t even thought to bring her.

“Three and a bit? She turned three in March?”

“And is she at a Montessori currently?”

“No?”

“Ha-ha! It’s not a test, you can’t fail. Come in. This is my horrible office, with my horrible computer, ignore the mess. Sit down. Tell me the story.”

“It’s just that I’ve wasted the past two and half years of her life,” Coralie burst out.

“She’s in nursery nine hours a day, in the dark.

She’s really loved there, she knows everyone, she can talk so well and point to the letters in her name.

But it’s just not what I want, for her life and for mine. ”

“I don’t think her life has been wasted. And what do you think we do here?”

“Um? Nothing urgent.” They both smiled. “I like the idea of doing things slowly, and the children having little tasks that they do by themselves, and the day being shorter. And you have a garden.”

“You’ve read about Montessori?”

Coralie had read about it on Instagram. But the woman didn’t need to know that. “I have.”

“I was just about to go home, you know. Term finished yesterday. The classrooms are all packed up. And now you want me to turn on my big, ugly computer?”

“Yes, please,” Coralie said. “And thank you.”

···

At Daniel’s, the poodle sensed her approach. Coralie could hear her thin paws scrabbling at the back of the door. “Madonna,” she called through the letterbox. “It’s me!”

“She’s here!” It was Zora’s voice.

“Get in position,” Daniel hissed. “Hello, welcome.” He pulled the door wide. “Please come in.”

“Are you playing a trick?” Coralie stepped cautiously into the hall.

Zora was at the foot of the stairs, posing with Daniel’s big curve-handled dog-walking umbrella.

She was wearing what looked like a white linen bathrobe, belted at the waist, over a trailing white skirt or dress.

Her long, dark hair was poufed up and tied into a thick plait.

Her face looked exquisite, blush on her cheeks, her eyebrows groomed into an elegant shape.

“Lucy Honeychurch,” Daniel whispered, just as Coralie exclaimed, “ A Room with a View !”

“She got it!” Daniel said.

“Holy moly. Don’t move. Stay right there.” Coralie pulled out her phone to take photos. “How did you manage this! Helena Bonham Carter dot-com! What’s under the bathrobe?”

“It’s petticoats and a slip. We made them out of sheets! We watched the movie on the projector!” Zora jumped off the bottom step and became a child again. “We saw the naked men!”

“Oh, I remember them,” Coralie said. “We always pressed pause on that bit when we watched it at school.”

“I love that movie. Beauty! Joy! Love! ” Daniel shouted to the back of the house.

Zora gave an indulgent smile. “He’s saying his creed.”

Daniel put out his arm to Coralie. “Care for some tea, Mr. Beebe?”

“I’m not Mr. fucking Beebe! But thank you, Mr. Emerson.”

···

It had been the Year 7 taster day, Daniel explained while Zora was downstairs getting her things. “It’s like a practice run for high school.”

“I know what it is—she had one a few weeks ago.”