Page 40

“We did it,” Adam said. “Whew. Well, I’m off. Big day covering the Tory civil war.”

“A disgrace.” Anne frowned at Tom.

“But not my fault, in this instance,” Tom said. (Back at the Bar since 2017, he’d marched for a People’s Vote with an EU flag knotted over his gilet.)

Adam held Coralie to his chest. “If there’s even a hint of the baby coming, or you feel like a hint is potentially imminent, or you just need me specifically to make you a tea, or you need anything at all, just call me. And I’ll leave whatever I’m doing and come. Straightaway.”

“She’ll be fine!” Anne briskly said.

···

Back home on Wilton Way, Sally presided over a perfectly tidy kitchen.

Exhausted by the emotions of the morning, Coralie retreated to her room for a nap.

When she woke up, there was a scary tweet at the top of her feed.

It was from the journalist who’d broken the news about Parliament being shut down.

I remember the poll tax riots sweeping through central London , he wrote.

Cars overturned with drivers in them. Shops smashed up.

Terrifying. Atmosphere outside parliament today similar and very tense.

Just needs a spark , the journalist concluded, with a sinisterly long ellipsis.

Coralie shivered, and the shiver extended deep into her pelvis, tightening into an electric shock. A contraction? Not quite. She lay there for a few minutes, wondering if she’d feel another one. She didn’t, but when she wiped after the loo, she saw a single drop of blood.

Downstairs, Anne was seething in front of rolling BBC news coverage while Sally folded laundry on the rug.

“That was a nice rest,” Sally said. “I’ve made soup, and there’s eggs, or pasta.

There’s bread from yesterday too. When was the last time you had a boiled egg and soldiers?

That’s what I’ll make you, don’t you think?

” She bustled into the kitchen and got started.

“Oof.” Just as Coralie was about to sit down, the jagged feeling came back in her pelvis.

She stood, half bent over, holding the bottom of her bump.

She needed the bathroom again, very badly.

She didn’t think she’d make it upstairs.

She lumbered to the small powder room mere meters from Sally, slammed the door shut behind her, and wrenched on the tap, desperate for some white noise.

She made it onto the toilet in time for a complete and violent evacuation.

In Fiona’s class, she’d prepared herself as much as possible to bravely shit in front of a midwife.

Rubbing it in Sally’s face just seemed like bad manners.

After a few wipes, she looked down at her fourth crumpled handful of loo roll. In the middle, quivering like gelatinous homemade chicken stock, although lighter in color, and with a few flecks of blood, was her mucus plug.

She emerged, pale. “I think it might be happening.”

“Oh, Coralie.” Sally beamed. “Well done.”

···

Was she comfortable calling them contractions? As she ate her toast and drank her tea, two further instances of pelvic tightening left her gasping. She had two more as she watched Anne watching TV.

Later, in the afternoon, Sally poked her head in. “I really enjoyed seeing Florence’s school this morning. I’d love to collect her, if that’s okay with you.”

What a triumph of sensitivity to frame a favor in that way, so Coralie could feel like the helper, rather than the helped.

“Oh!” Anne was looking at her phone. “The legal appeal against prorogation might be heard in the Supreme Court. Now if you don’t mind, Coralie—I’ll turn on BBC Parliament. The prime minister’s making a statement.”

Actually, he didn’t stand up for a further twenty minutes, during which two long contractions (surely she could call them that?) left her breathless.

At the dispatch box, Boris began by noting it was the eightieth anniversary of the date the UK entered the Second World War. “This country still stands—then as now—for democracy, for the rule of law.”

“Ha!” Anne bitterly laughed.

Coralie could never follow Parliament, just as she could never follow football.

She had to zone out, let the action blur, and pay attention to the soundtrack, the roars and emotion of the crowd.

Suddenly, the noise in the chamber was cacophonous, hooting, derisive.

“I wish my hon—” Boris stumbled. “I wish my honorable friend—all the best!” She had to go on Twitter to understand what had happened.

A Tory MP had crossed the floor to sit with the Lib Dems. On his feet as PM for less than five minutes, Boris Johnson had lost his majority.

“Oh-ho!” Anne crowed. “Buffoon.”

“Yesterday, a bill was published—a bill that the leader of the opposition has spent all summer working on,” Boris said darkly, as if working in summer was the most shameful thing a person could do.

“It is a bill that, if passed, would force me to go to Brussels and beg for an extension. It would force me to accept the terms offered. It would destroy any chance of negotiation for a new deal! It would destroy it. Indeed, it would enable our friends in Brussels to dictate the terms of the negotiation. That is what it would do. There is only one way to describe the bill: It is Jeremy Corbyn’s surrender bill!

” The camera cut to the Labour leader, rolling his eyes in tired disgust. “I therefore urge this House to reject the bill tonight so that we can get the right deal for our country, deliver Brexit, and take the whole country forward!”

The Speaker jumped up amid the tumult. “For the avoidance of doubt! There is no vote on a bill tonight. There is a vote on a motion , and if that motion is successful, there will be a bill tomorrow.”

The camera cut to Boris. He was murderous.

“He loves being corrected,” Anne said. “As you can see.”

It was past three thirty. Coralie texted Zora. How was your first day? I know you’ll have a lot on, but please send me your verdict when you have time. An emoji will do!

Anne eyed her beadily. “Are you texting Zora about school?”

“I said an emoji would do. Oh, she’s typing!”

An emoji popped up. It was a skull.

Does that mean bad? Coralie replied.

It means better than good , Zora wrote back. It means it was so good, I died.

“She says it was so good, she died,” Coralie reported.

“ Right ,” Anne said.

Jeremy Corbyn got to his feet. Coralie felt another unmistakable tightening.

Back on her phone, she downloaded a contraction timer from the App Store.

It took an age to get it working. Another contraction had come, and Corbyn was ending his remarks.

“The prime minister is not winning friends in Europe; he is losing friends at home. His is a government with no mandate, no morals, and—as of today—no majority!”

“That’s clever,” Anne said. “He must have ad-libbed that.”

“Are you a Corbyn fan?” Coralie asked curiously.

“We have a lot of Jewish friends,” Anne said. “So no .”

···

On and on the debate went. After a while, Coralie took herself upstairs to the bedroom, planning a short lie-down before Florence came home.

She woke two hours later when a terrible pain entered her consciousness.

For the first time, she began to get scared and cried to herself as she restarted her contraction timer history (she didn’t want her average to be affected by her sleep).

She’d missed two calls and several messages from Adam.

She envied other women the boring jobs of their partners.

Coralie could see what he was dealing with just by tuning in to the news.

In a perfect world, he’d be with her, but Brexit was do or die .

How could she summon him home for a twinge ?

Last time she’d taken so long to dilate that a doctor had called her cervix “recalcitrant.” (Rude!)

She wandered into the yellow nursery and picked up Flo’s toy cat, Catty.

Tears once more came to her eyes. What a fool she was; worse—a criminal.

For ruining a perfect life, with her one perfect child, by taking a punt on another.

She could die in childbirth, or the baby could.

Even if all went well, Flo’s life would be destroyed.

And what about Zora? What if it took her two years to enjoy her half brother, as long as it had taken with Rup?

Coralie had wasted the past ten months of her life, distracted by pregnancy.

Wasted ages before that by trying to get pregnant.

Ages before that by leaving her baby girl in nursery so she could work her stupid job.

She wasn’t a good person, a good mother, or a writer. It was all a complete disaster.

She heard Florence in the kitchen, banging her enamel dinner plate with the sippy cup she insisted on using. Thank goodness Coralie hadn’t slept through bedtime.

“Mama,” Florence said when she went in. “Axe the lottle comes from Mexico.”

“The axolotl, I think,” Sally murmured.

“The axolotl! Did you find out its name?”

“David!”

Coralie laughed until tears came to her eyes. “Of course. David. Oof.” She held the table for support.

“Breathe.” In a louder voice, Sally said, “Flo? Maybe you’d like a Sally bath?”

“Sally bath!” Flo cheered. “Yeah!”

In the sitting room, Anne was drinking a glass of red wine and crunching an abstemious Barack Obama portion of almonds, her chiseled jaw cracking.

On the screen, live in the House of Commons, a scruffy Tory was speaking from the backbench.

“The prime minister,” he said, “is much in the position of someone standing on one side of a canyon shouting to people on the other side of the canyon that if they do not do as he wishes, he will throw himself into the abyss.”

Titters in the chamber, and in the Wilton Way sitting room (Anne).

“Oh, it’s seven—Coralie, do you mind?” Without waiting for an answer, Anne switched the channel.