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From the screen there came the propulsive strains of the Channel 4 News theme, which brought Coralie almost to tears again with its energy and forward motion, as though the news were somehow pioneering, brave, and free, rather than a bleak and disingenuous roundup of the lives and times of malignant show-offs.

Jon Snow was crossing live outside Westminster in a zany airport-shop tie and flesh-colored X Factor headset.

Behind him, the Elizabeth Tower (which housed Big Ben) was clad in a sinister scaffolding exoskeleton.

Beneath it, a carnival of mainly white middle-aged people waved EU or Brexit flags and shouted in each other’s faces.

“MPs have returned from their summer break straight into a defining moment for Brexit,” Jon Snow said.

“They will vote this evening on whether to seize control of the parliamentary agenda from the government. If they win, Tory rebels and other parties could then introduce a law to force a Brexit extension. In theory, that would stop us leaving without a deal at the end of October. Boris Johnson has said that will result in his calling a general election—but to achieve that, he needs two thirds of MPs to vote for one.”

“Ow.” Coralie clutched the sofa’s armrest.

“You seem to be saying that quite often,” Anne said. “Are you timing?”

“I’m trying to use my app…”

Anne stood and walked toward the kitchen. She returned with a piece of Florence’s drawing paper and a crayon. “Let’s do it the old-fashioned way.”

“Mama!” Florence called down.

Upstairs, Flo had been bamboozled by Sally into wearing sweet little pajamas she normally refused to wear, a gingham shirt and trousers.

Coralie got into her big-girl bed with her and kissed her: her cheek, her chin, her delicate temple.

She breathed in her hair and traced the tip of her upturned nose. “Eat me up,” Flo said.

“No, I can’t…” Coralie tried not to devour her daughter before bed. It made Flo overstimulated.

“Eat me up, Mama!”

Coralie squashed her tiny chest, growled, and snapped her teeth near her ear and neck. “Yum, yum, my little girl, will you be my dinner?”

Flo writhed. “No!” she shrieked. “No, no!”

Coralie stopped. (She had read that this was how you “modeled consent.”)

“Maybe a bit,” Flo said.

“Rarrr!” Coralie nibbled her ear.

Florence was laughing so much she had hiccups. “I’ve gorten hick-pups,” she reported soberly.

“Why don’t I tell you a story tonight, instead of reading? I’ll turn off the light but stay in your bed.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, once upon a time. There was a girl. The most beautiful girl in the world.”

“Me,” Florence said.

“You…”

···

Downstairs, on a stool next to the sofa, Sally had arranged bowls of crisps, olives, smoked almonds, cut-up cucumbers, and an herby Greek yogurt dip. She stood like a waiter. “Small glass of wine?”

Coralie hadn’t felt like wine or coffee the whole time she’d been pregnant, but with the night air at body temperature, and a breeze blowing through the big bay window, she suddenly did.

She snacked and sipped her white wine, and as the sky turned navy blue, she zoned out, only the occasional shout of “Order!” recalling her to the television, the room, and reality.

“There’s one,” she said when the pain began, or just grunted if it was awful. “Finished now,” she’d say, and Anne would mark it on the page, hardly taking her eyes from the BBC.

The candles on the mantelpiece were really just ornamental, but no one had told Sally that, and rather than put the lamps on, she’d lit them. Still half in her dream, Coralie checked her phone and saw Adam had WhatsApped: CYK.

She had the absurd thought that she should name her baby boy CYK. (Could they be his initials? Claude was on the list.)

“Sit up!” Anne shouted.

Coralie, who had been lolling to the side, shot upright.

“Silly,” Anne said. “No, look on the TV—Jacob Rees-Mogg.”

The insufferable Tory languidly reclined across three seats on the front bench. He was a poor person’s idea of a rich person (a snob had once told her at a party), and Boris a thick person’s idea of a clever one.

“Sit up,” MPs shouted. “Sit up, man!”

“Ow!” Coralie gasped.

Anne glanced at her watch and made a note. Soon, the whole page of drawing paper was full of scribbled figures. “Almost a minute each, every five minutes. You’re really getting there.”

“Wonderful, Coralie,” Sally said.

A wave of well-being swept over her, so powerful she felt she could almost fly up to the ceiling.

On TV, shouts interrupted someone speaking. Out of nowhere, the Speaker called a vote. “Division!” he howled. “Clear the lobby!”

The audio feed to the chamber was cut. MPs got to their feet and milled about.

“So old-fashioned, to have to use their bodies to vote,” Sally mused. “It takes forever. Use phones, screens, or buttons, or something.”

“The Russians, you know,” Anne said. “Hacking.”

Slowly they drifted back in. Men in suits.

A Sikh in a red turban. “Those old biddies with their handbags,” Anne muttered as women MPs slid to the back of the green benches and hunched over their phones.

Clerks lined up to share the results. “The ayes to the right—328,” one called.

There was a sharp intake of breath. “The nos to the left—301.”

Was that good or bad? Once more Coralie found herself at sea. “Oh-ooh!” everyone in Parliament chorused. Scattered laughter and a few slow claps. Someone called out chidingly, “Not a good start, Boris!”

Good, he must have lost.

The prime minister rose. “Thank you, Mr. Speaker.”

“His hair is quite golden,” Sally said. “He’s genuinely towheaded.”

Boris had on a humorous face, as though he’d made a joke.

Jeers filled the chamber as he spoke. “I do not want an election, but if MPs vote tomorrow to stop negotiations and to compel another pointless delay to Brexit, potentially for years, that would be the only way to resolve this! And I can confirm that we are tonight tabling a motion under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011.”

A motion for what? Another election?

Another campaign. Another of Adam’s books .

Suddenly realizing what this meant for her “fourth trimester,” her mat leave, her mental health, and her life, Coralie started to cry, and her contractions slowed down, and then stopped.

···

Adam didn’t get home until almost midnight. She listened as he showered and used his electric toothbrush for what seemed like forever. He scrabbled for his charger cord, plugged in his phone, slid into bed, and molded himself around her. “Clomping and clattering,” she said. “Lucky I wasn’t asleep!”

“Oh no! Cor! Sally said you were asleep. I thought you were getting a good rest!”

“Is Sally still here?”

“She was, when I came home, in case you needed her. I told her she should stay the night upstairs, but she said Anne ‘liked her to be there’ when she woke up.”

“Weird.”

“I know, Anne doesn’t like anything, as far as I know. I walked her round to the flat. It’s nice.”

“Barbie owns the whole house,” Coralie yawned.

He cradled her belly. “Any more…developments? Sally said it was quite exciting?”

“Actually, no!” She propped herself on her elbow to turn and whisper-shout at him. “It may surprise you! But guess what! Your absence, and finding out there’s another election coming, so you can abandon me—and ruin my life—is not conducive , is it! To relaxing! And contracting!”

“There won’t be an election for months. Everyone’s too worried there’ll be a No Deal. Labour will oppose it; everyone will.” He sat up and studied her. “Do you mean it’s slowed down? All the action? Or stopped?”

“I don’t know!” She was tearful in the dark.

He leaned down and spoke to the bump. “What are you up to in there, little boy?”

Inside her, the baby elbowed her and kicked out with his foot. “Did you see that? He heard you.”

“He’s telling us he’s okay. Do you think you can sleep? Maybe he’s giving you a break on purpose so you can rest.”

“That’s a nice way to think about it.” She turned back over onto her left side. “Rather than me failing at birth again.”

“What would Fiona say, your guru from Eleanor Road? How would she view this kind of negative self-talk?”

“I can’t remember, I’m too stupid and exhausted.”

“Oh, Cor, beautiful Cor.”

They lay there for a long time.

“Boris expelled twenty-one Tories for voting against him,” Adam murmured.

Coralie didn’t reply. Like a boat slipping its mooring, she drifted off, asleep.

···

By 6 a.m. the next day, she was walking around the hidden green space in the middle of a Hackney estate.

There were two conker trees—what was their real name?

Horse chestnut. She was trying to have an “active birth” this time, and active meant walking , not lazing on the sofa while Anne made snide remarks about the news.

She was back on the timer app, a contraction for a full minute every five.

Even as she walked laps and breathed through the pain, part of her was eagerly anticipating Adam waking up and finding her gone.

At seven, she received a video call. The screen opened up, but all it showed was darkness.

“Flo.” She could hear Adam’s voice. “Flo. You can’t eat it. ”

“Send Mama a kiss-kiss,” Flo said.

Adam seized control of the phone and held it at arm’s length. They were in bed. “Where are you?”

Her labor couldn’t be serious if she was still trying to achieve a good angle on FaceTime. She sighed. “I’m out near the school. Hello, Flo-Flo. I love you. I miss you.”

“Oh, she’s run off,” Adam said. “Are you coming home for breakfast?”

“I suppose so.”

“Should I put the tea on?”

“I suppose so.”

“You’re doing so well, my darling.”

Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t think I can do this, not much longer. I should have booked a C-section.”

“Come home,” Adam said. “We’ll be here.”

As she trudged up to Wilton Way, she heard someone running behind her. She struggled to stow her phone in the pocket of her ASOS leopard-print maternity dress. Not now, she couldn’t afford to be mugged now .

“Coralie!”

“Anne!” Coralie held on to a fence for balance, partly from exhaustion, but also from shock—Anne was wearing toe-shoes, those running shoes like gloves for feet.

As she reeled, Anne beeped her sports watch and walked in a circle, hands on her hips.

She was very trim in her black leggings. The toe-shoes! God, don’t look.

“I see you’re admiring my Vibrams,” Anne said. “Closest thing to barefoot running! I don’t use them all the time. Just sometimes, to keep all the muscles toned and the bones, especially my arches, very strong.”

“Ow.” Coralie buckled over. For a moment she thought she’d be sick.

Anne put her hand on Coralie’s shoulder. “Coralie?”

When she was young, and living in Canberra, her parents had given in to her pleas for a pet, allowing her a goldfish, because by the time her father got a new posting, it would probably be dead.

They drove to the pet shop in Woden, where she picked out a black fish with googly eyes.

The pet-shop man caught it in a net and plopped it into a thick plastic bag full of water.

She kept the plastic bag, about the size of a basketball, on her lap for the drive home, marveling at the fish, which belonged only to her.

She set up the small bowl (with the colored stones, two special weeds, and a treasure-chest ornament) on her desk so the fish could keep her company while she was doing her homework.

Concentrating, she sat down, forgetting that the fish, in its bag, was on her chair.

Pop! The bag burst open, the water flooded out, and the fish was a meter away, flapping on the carpet.

He was fine. Her father heard her screaming, ran in, and saved the day. He was great in a crisis, always happy when life was hanging in the balance, actually pretty angry when it wasn’t.

And that great pop, and splash, and shock, was exactly what it was like when Coralie’s waters broke on Lansdowne Drive.

“Coralie!” Anne cried, looking down at her soaked left toe-shoe. “These cost a hundred pounds!”

···

What was there to say? Some people just couldn’t give birth.

She arrived at hospital contracting like mad, refused all pain relief except gas and air, was four centimeters when examined (not too bad), and dilated to ten full centimeters over the course of nine hours, but the baby was floating off somewhere like an astronaut in space.

“Baby’s not there,” she heard someone say, and a huge shame engulfed her. She wasn’t even pregnant. She had wasted everyone’s time. But what about the kicks she’d felt, and the printed-off sonogram photos on the fridge, his perfect nose pointed upward like a puppy in 101 Dalmatians ?

Someone had to say something—she should advocate for herself.

Or maybe that was Adam’s job. He was huddled next to the bed wearing the baby blanket she’d packed in the hospital bag.

It got very cold in the hospital, as anyone could have told him.

God forbid he dress adequately and look after himself!

“There is a baby,” she said. “I’m going to be sick.” A papier-maché bowl reached her just in time. Afterward, the midwife discreetly wiped her arse. She’d done it. Shat herself! Bestial!

But somehow the baby hadn’t descended enough to be sucked out with a vacuum or levered out with forceps.

Compression socks, gown, the spinal. She was wheeled into the operating room, a curtain set up across her.

“Senorita” played on Kiss FM. The anesthetist stroked Coralie’s hair from her forehead with a delicate gloved hand.

A chorus of ah s as a long, thin creature was held aloft over the curtain. Coralie’s gown was pulled down and the creature was deposited on her chest, warm and slimy like her own heart or entrails. Beside her, forgetting to take photos as usual, Adam wept.

The miracle of her new boy’s alert black eyes. He craned up, tap-tap-tapp ed his little chin, and fastened his mouth on her breast.